The recovery of the bodies of 29 workers killed in New Zealand's Pike River coal mine may take years and a trust will ensure a new mine owner does recover the bodies, receiver John Fisk of PricewaterhouseCoopers says.
Mining industry sources have recently told families' spokesman Bernie Monk and Green Party MP Kevin Hague the mine is now considered inert and safe for a recovery mission, the Sunday Star Times reported.
But Mr Fisk told AAP on Sunday that though the mine was now inert it was 'fuel-rich inert'.
People who interpreted inert as meaning 'you can just walk in' were wrong, he said.
The men killed in last year's mine explosion near Greymouth were working in roadways beyond a rockfall at the end of the 2.3km tunnel.
'The practical reality is that you've got a massive rockfall at the end of the tunnel. Even if you can get back into the tunnel, which is what we are hopeful of doing early next year, getting into the main mine workings where we expect most of the bodies to be, if there is anything left, is technically very, very difficult,' Mr Fisk says.
The roadways are full of methane gas.
'It will be a long time. People have talked about two, three, four years,' Mr Fisk said.
A trust with independent trustees will oversee the body recovery after the receivership ends.
'We made a commitment to the families and other stakeholders at a meeting in May this year to ensure that purchasers use best endeavours to carry out a body recovery exercise. But once we have sold the mine we will be gone as receivers. The trust creates some continuity,' he said.
The purchaser would be required to present plans, timetables and costings and effectively inform the trustees of what they were doing.
The receiver said earlier that it does not expect to conclude a sale before December 25. The mine's assets include a 58.5 million tonne resource of premium high fluidity hard coking coal, of which 17.6 million tonnes are estimated to be saleable.
