Product Description
SPITZBERGEN - Value - 1 Kopeyka
Issued by: Ministry of Coal Mining Industry
Date: ND (1979)
Catalog: Norske Pengesedler 1877 - 1994 - AR0073
Purpose for purchases of goods in shops of Arktikugol' (Arctic Coal)
More info: Arktikugol (Russian: Арктикуголь, lit. 'Arctic Coal') is a Russian coal mining unitary enterprise which operates on the island of Spitsbergen in Svalbard, Norway. Owned by the government of Russia, Arktikugol currently performs limited mining in Barentsburg. It has carried out mining operations in the towns of Pyramiden and Grumant, which it still owns, and once operated a port at Colesbukta. The company is headquartered in Moscow and is the official agency through which Russia, and previously the Soviet Union, exercised its Svalbard policy.
From the 1960s through the 1980s, Arktikugol carried out a series of oil drilling attempts on the archipelago but never succeeded at finding profitable reservoirs. From the 1990s, the company lost many of its subsidies and cut production, resulting in Pyramiden being closed in 1998. The company has attempted to diversify without success.
