MINA CHUKUROVO [BG]

Exploration #278. Mina Chukurovo. First worked in 1856, Mina Chukurovo near Gabra (Sofia Province) became Bulgaria’s oldest coal mine, later privatized in 2002; operations stopped in 2015 and the concession was terminated in 2020.

Located in western Bulgaria, the Chukurovo open-pit mine extracted lignite, a fast-burning coal historically used for power generation and industrial heat. Its modern phase was reshaped after privatization in 2002, when the state granted a 20-year concession—a formal attempt to keep the deposit productive in the post-socialist economy. Beneath the abandoned workings lies a much older story written in geology: the Chukurovo lignite basin belongs to the Sofia coal province and its coal-bearing sediments date to the Helvetian (Middle Miocene), formed by ancient swamp environments later compressed into low-rank coal.

The site’s decline is documented with unusual clarity: in late 2014 procedures began to suspend operations, and in early 2015 major layoffs marked the effective end of mining activity. With extraction halted, Mina Chukurovo shifted from workplace to industrial relic—an austere landscape of cut slopes and infrastructure that now preserves, in place, one of Bulgaria’s longest-running chapters of lignite history.