Page:NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE SURVEY 18; CZECHOSLOVAKIA; THE ECONOMY CIA-RDP01-00707R000200110014-8.pdf/13

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2. Fuels and power (C)

a. Coal and coke

Coal is Czechoslovakia's most abundant energy resource, accounting for 78% of the total consumption of primary energy in 1972 (Figure 4). With a production of hard coal (anthracite and bituminous) at 38 million metric tons in 1972 (Figure 5), Czechoslovakia was second only to Poland among the Eastern European Communist countries, and on a per capita basis it ranked favorably with Western European producers—ahead of France and West Germany but behind the United Kingdom. Its brown coal and lignite production of 85 million metric tons in 1972 ranked third in Europe, behind East Germany and West Germany. According to Czechoslovak projections, production of hard coal will decline to about 24 million tons annually by the year 2000; production of brown coal and lignite will increase to nearly 100 million tons annually by 1980 and subsequently decline.

Czechoslovakia conducts a substantial amount of foreign trade in coal and coke. The country imports about 5 million tons of hard coal per year from the U.S.S.R. and Poland, largely for electric power plants in eastern Slovakia. About 3 million tons of coking coal are exported to both Communist and non-Communist countries. Czechoslovakia also exports about 1 million tons of brown coal per year to West Germany for use in the glass and ceramics industry and imports a similar amount of East Germany in the form of briquettes for home use.

Recoverable reserves of hard coal are estimated to be 1 to 2 billion tons, sufficient to support mining operations on the present scale until well into the next century. Deposits of hard coal are concentrated largely in the Ostravsko-Karvinska Panev, better known as the Ostrava-Karvina basin, which forms part of the Upper Silesian coalfield. This area, credited with 95% of total hard-coal reserves in Czechoslovakia, accounted for 85% of total production in 1971. Less

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