Kemerovo Oblast
Kuzbass produces 60% of Russia's coal but 66% of its mines lose money—2026 tests whether rail bottlenecks and price collapse transform Russia's energy heartland into its Rust Belt.
Kemerovo Oblast exists because coal exists beneath the Kuznetsk Basin. The Kuzbass—covering 10,000 square miles—produces 60% of Russia's coal and anchors the regional economy so completely that coal price fluctuations feel like weather: inescapable, unpredictable, total. For two decades, this export-oriented model provided stability. Now it provides crisis.
The 2024-2025 collapse revealed what monoculture creates. Exports from Kuzbass dropped 10.4% in 2024 to 102 million tonnes. Of 123 Russian coal companies, 81 (66%) operated at a loss. Twenty-three companies closed by September 2025; another 53 face shutdown. Eight Kuzbass mines closed in 2024. The Spiridonovskaya mine—one of Siberia's largest, employing 900 workers—suspended operations in June 2025, leaving employees unpaid for months while losses quadrupled from 422 million rubles in 2023 to 1.8 billion in 2024.
The causes compound: global price decline, international sanctions restricting export routes, rising railway tariffs, increasing production costs. Rail bottlenecks east create a chokepoint that export quotas cannot resolve. Kuzbass retained its guaranteed eastward export quota for 2025 at 2024 levels—but quotas without rail capacity mean coal that can be mined but not shipped.
By 2026, Kemerovo Oblast will test whether a coal-dependent economy can survive coal's decline. The region plans 202.5 million tonnes of exports in 2025—but 2024's 102 million tonnes of actual exports suggest aspiration exceeds capacity. Whether the Kuzbass diversifies before mines exhaust or whether it becomes Russia's Rust Belt—a monument to single-resource dependency—depends on investment in sectors that do not yet exist at scale.