The Brazilian giant’s Moatize operation in Mozambique, on the other hand, has made a major contribution to its 2.5Mt of coal production in the second quarter.

Vale last week voluntarily pulled everyone out at Carborough Downs again after a reactivation of heating in the longwall was detected.

As reported in ILN, the mine had thought it had a gas and heating emergency under control and was gearing up to return to full production after dangerous gas levels lead to a directive by the Queensland mines inspectorate to halt production on May 29.

That directive required the orderly withdrawal of workers and the suspension of all underground operations while mine management deals with the situation.

“At this point, we have begun recovery activities in order to allow for longwall mining to restart,” the company said in its quarterly report.

“We estimate that mining should be normalised during 3Q12. Meanwhile, we are monitoring very closely in real time the gas levels in the mine.”

Production of metallurgical and thermal coal at Integra coal longwall and open cut mines in New South Wales was 266,000t and 121,000t, respectively for the second quarter.

Metallurgical coal production from Integra improved after geological issues were solved in 1Q12 after a troubled 2011. The NSW minister asked that production be stopped at the mine until safety issues were addressed.

Vale achieved an all-time high quarterly figure for metallurgical coal production, 1.277 Mt, which represented an increase of 13.3% over 1Q12.

The output of thermal coal showed an improvement of 65%. In both cases, the ramp-up of Moatize was the main contributor.

The ramp-up of Moatize, the first phase of the Moatize coal project in Tete, is moving ahead as planned, with 728,000t of hard coking coal and 390,000t of thermal coal produced in 2Q12.

Output composition is converging to the planned mining split of 80% metallurgical coal and 20% thermal.

“Moatize, a long-life low cost world-class asset, will reshape our coal business, providing the scale, cost structure and quality – Chipanga prime HCC – required to become an important source of shareholder value creation,” the company said.