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After many weeks of challenges, New Zealand Police announced it would hand control of the mine back to receiver PricewaterhouseCoopers on Thursday afternoon.
Pike River Coal has around $NZ10 million ($A7.76 million) of cash and PwC has until 5pm local time today to announce its intentions for the mine.
PwC receiver John Fisk said he would ideally like the mine to be sealed temporarily, according to Radio New Zealand.
The same report said that families of the lost miners were considering possible legal action to prevent the mine from being sealed.
The first of a series of explosions over several days struck the West Coast underground mine on November 19 with 29 men unaccounted for since.

