Sudbury mining centre gets $15M for deep mines research

The head of the Centre of Excellence in Mining and Innovation in Sudbury says deep underground mining research could change how oil and gas companies approach fracking in the future.

On Wednesday, the federal government announced CEMI will receive $15 million for research in ultra-deep mining.

The government said the research could assist the oil and gas industry to improve its ability when extracting deep shale deposits.

The president and CEO of CEMI said deep mining research could allow those companies to have a better understanding of the impact of fracking.

"It will make it much better understood so they will be able to manage and control what they do and the affect that they have,” Douglas Morrison said.

“So it should certainly have a better effect on what they do because it just gives them more information and more control over the process. It's not really a large part of what we want to do, it's just we have the kinds of facilities that they can use also to improve their operations."

Mining in deep conditions often means working in high temperatures, Morrison noted. He said the research will also look at how to deal with those conditions, while still able to extract the ore safely.