Auxiliary shaft of the Livezeni hard coal mine in the Livezeni district of Petroșani, part of an operation scheduled for closure by 2032.
Pușul Auxiliar III E.M. Livezeni is an auxiliary shaft of the Exploatarea Minieră Livezeni, an underground hard coal mine located within the Livezeni district of the city of Petroșani, Hunedoara County, in the Jiu Valley of southwestern Transylvania. The Livezeni mine as a whole was opened in 1967 with the sinking of the first shaft, then named Puțul Est, and began production in August 1972. First surveys of the Livezeni coal field had been conducted in 1914, with further investigations between 1955 and 1956.
From 1967 the opening was advanced and the mine became one of the productive operations in the valley. A catastrophic methane explosion on 29 November 1980 killed 53 miners and wounded 77. Livezeni was assessed as one of the four profitable operations in the Hunedoara Energy Complex and is scheduled for definitive closure by 31 December 2032 under Romania's national decarbonisation programme.
The Livezeni coal field attracted preliminary geological attention as early as 1914, when the first surveys of the area were conducted. These surveys were resumed between 1955 and 1956. Active development of the mine began in 1967, when the first shaft — designated Puțul Est — was sunk to open the field.
The first production capacity was brought into service in August 1972, when the mine extracted its initial 50,000 tonnes of coal. The mine is located within the Livezeni district of the city of Petroșani, at Strada Lunca no. 153, though the wider enterprise includes outlying shaft installations across the Livezeni field, including a shaft at the Maleia area used for underground access and ventilation purposes. The mine was administered within successive state structures: SOVROMCĂRBUNE until 1954, then the Combinatul Carbonifer Valea Jiului from 1956, Centrala Cărbunelui Petroșani from 1969, and the Combinatul Minier Valea Jiului from 1977.
In 1991 these were reorganised under the Regia Autonomă a Huilei, and from 1998 under the Compania Națională a Huilei. On 29 November 1980, two successive methane explosions at the Livezeni mine killed 53 workers — miners, construction soldiers, and engineers — and wounded 77 others, in the most serious collective mining accident in post-war Romanian mining history. The communist authorities at the time officially announced only 49 deaths to avoid a declaration of national mourning.
The victims are commemorated by a memorial cross erected in the mine yard. The mine was assessed as one of the four profitable operations in the Jiu Valley and incorporated into the Hunedoara Energy Complex (Complexul Energetic Hunedoara) alongside Vulcan, Lonea, and Lupeni. Key infrastructure at Livezeni includes multiple headframes and vertical shafts reaching depths of approximately 300 metres across several mining levels.
In 2017 the mine celebrated its fiftieth year of operation with around 800 employees. CEH entered insolvency in 2019 and was declared bankrupt on 31 March 2025. In November 2024 the European Commission approved €790 million in closure support for the four remaining Jiu Valley mines.
Under GEO 108/2022 and Romania's National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the Livezeni mine — and with it Pușul Auxiliar III — is scheduled for safe closure by 31 December 2032, with final land reclamation to follow. Pușul Auxiliar III is one of several auxiliary shafts within the Livezeni enterprise; specific construction or commissioning dates for this shaft have not been identified in the consulted sources.