GalleryShale—Estonia's Key Mineral
Combustible shale is Estonia's basic mineral wealth. Its exploitation was started some forty years ago.
However, the shale industry really began to develop in Estonia only after the war, in Soviet times. Between 1944 and 1958, five mines, one having an annual capacity of 1 million tons, were sunk, and a gas-shale factory was also built. Shale output is six times as much as in 1940, and reached 9 million tons in 1958.
One can hardly overestimate the significance shale has for Estonia.
Most of the electricity output in the republic is generated by power stations working on shale. It is also used for heating enterprises, offices and houses.
Tens of thousands of flats in Tallinn, Leningrad and Kokhtla-Yarve are supplied with gas made from shale, while its oil is used as fuel in steam engines and also as a basic material for making many valuable products.
In the seven-year period the output of shale is to increase by 7 million tons to reach 16 million tons—ten times as much as was mined in capitalist Estonia in 1939.
This increase is to be achieved on a completely new technical basis. Currently shale is mined underground, but in the near future it will be extensively quarried.
The Baltic power station going up near Narva will consume a tremendous amount of shale and for this purpose it is planned to open up new shale quarries with a total annual capacity of 10 million tons.
At the same time underground shale mining will also be increased in existing mines, as well as in newly opened ones.
At the big shale quarries we shall see excavators with buckets of over 700 cubic feet in size. They will load the shale not on to 3-ton tip-up lorries as today but on to 40-ton ones!
Shale serves not only as a fuel; it is also a very valuable basic material for the chemical industry. We are already making oil, petrol, combustible mazout and other things from it.
Later on we shall obtain from it such important economic products as plastics, man-made fibre, synthetic detergents, nitrogen fertiliser, glue, varnishes, synthetic tanning agents, and many other things.
More shale is to be processed into household gas for the needs of Estonia's urban population. The second gas pipeline that will be laid to Tallinn by 1962 will not only give the population more gas but also enable several industrial establishments to be switched to gas and thus completely rid the skies of smoke.
The ash from burned shale is also being used. Estonian scientists have learnt how to manufacture excellent building materials from it. There are plans to complete by 1959 the construction at Akhtma of the first section of a factory making wall panels from shale ash. Shale ash will also be widely used as a fertiliser.
Man has still to discover all the secrets of shale. Many Estonian scientists are investigating its properties and the methods used to mine and process it. A special Institute of Shale has been founded in Estonia.
Soviet Booklets, London, England, in December, 1959, as part of the series
"THE FIFTEEN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF TODAY AND TOMMORROW."
We do not endorse the Soviet account of historical events or their circumstances contained therein as factual.
