Unfinished concrete skip shaft tower at Mina Lonea, sunk before 2010 and never brought into operation.
Puț Schip is the skip shaft structure at Mina Lonea, located in the mining settlement of Lonea, administratively part of the city of Petrila in Hunedoara County. Lonea is one of the oldest hard coal mines in the Jiu Valley, with its first shaft sunk in 1873. The current skip shaft tower at the mine entrance was constructed before 2010 as part of a planned modernisation of the extraction system, but was never commissioned and remained unused while the older skip shaft continued to serve the mine.
The older puț cu schip was subsequently demolished during insolvency proceedings. Mina Lonea, under the operator Complexul Energetic Valea Jiului S.A., was formally included in Romania's binding closure programme, with underground operations scheduled for safe closure by 31 December 2026 under the national decarbonisation framework. As of 2025 the mine was still undertaking preparatory safety works ahead of final closure.
Mina Lonea has its origins in 1873, when the first extraction shaft in the Jieț area of Petrila was sunk. Over the following decades the mine expanded into separate workings: Lonea I, Lonea II, and Lonea III (also known as Jieț), the last of which saw continued shaft sinking between 1873 and a deepening phase between 1894 and 1895. Lonea I was closed in 1928, and Lonea II after 1 April 1930 during the period of the global economic crisis.
Lonea III remained active as the sole surviving sector. In 1926 the Societatea carboniferă Lonea had been constituted to manage the concessions. During the communist period, Lonea I and II were reopened in 1949 and consolidated into the unified Mina Lonea, which subsequently underwent continuous development under state management.
In the communist era the mine's coal output reached its peak, with coal trains on the Lonea–Petrila narrow-gauge industrial railway running at fifteen-minute intervals. By the late 1980s the Jiu Valley as a whole was producing approximately ten million tonnes of coal annually, with Lonea playing a central role. Following the collapse of communism the mine passed through successive organisational restructurings: first under the Regia Autonomă a Huilei (from 1991), then under Compania Națională a Huilei S.A. from 1998, and eventually within the Hunedoara Energy Complex (Complexul Energetic Hunedoara, CEH), which entered insolvency in 2019.
A new skip shaft was constructed at the mine's surface entrance before 2010 as part of investment plans intended to improve extraction efficiency and working conditions, but the shaft was never brought into service. The older puț cu schip, which had functioned in reduced-speed operation for extended periods due to cable wear and maintenance difficulties, was later demolished during the insolvency period and its steel structure sold as scrap. In 2016 the European Commission approved state aid for the closure of Lonea and the neighbouring Lupeni mine, initially targeting 2018, but successive deadlines — revised to 2020, 2021, and 2024 — were not met, in part because the inadequate staffing levels of around 400 workers made it impossible to complete the necessary underground safety works on schedule.
In January 2023 a successor entity, Complexul Energetic Valea Jiului S.A., was established under Ministry of Energy ownership to manage the surviving operations. Under Romanian Government Emergency Ordinance 108/2022 and subsequent decisions, Lonea was formally committed to safe closure by 31 December 2026. In November 2024 the European Commission approved €790 million in state aid to fund the closure costs of the four remaining Jiu Valley mines, including Lonea.
Plans drawn up in 2025 by the Agenția de Dezvoltare Teritorială Integrată proposed preserving several of Lonea's surface buildings as mining monuments, with proposals for future cultural or touristic reuse modelled on the experience of the former Mina Petrila, which closed in 2015. As of 2025 the mine remained in operation for safety works, with the unfinished skip shaft tower still standing at the mine entrance.