Regardless of the sector's contribution to the trade deficit, overall investment, jobs and other regional economic benefits, the devastating loss of 29 lives was too much for the country.
If blame and liability need be apportioned, so be it, but foremost, improved safeguards must emerge from the numerous inquiries under way.
As the rest of the labour force move safely into the 21st century, cocooned by increasingly high-tech ways to anticipate and minimise risks, with its unpredictability, underground mining remains vulnerable to chaotic subterranean forces - lives will always be at risk.
In 2011 attention will be focused closely on the findings of various investigations, from the those of the police inquiry and the royal commission of inquiry to coronial and Labour Department scrutiny.
The other issue will be whether the Pike project can be restarted - up until the first blast on November 19, about $290 million had been spent developing the mine, with a mere 60,000 tonnes of coal removed from the estimated 18 million-tonne high-grade reserve.
As Australia's resource sector regains momentum, coming out of the global financial crisis, New Zealand's is similarly showing signs of recovery, but it has not been an easy road.
While small-scale operators are buoyed by stellar gold prices, making small claims commercially viable, larger companies are still contending with a credit and investment squeeze at the tail end of the financial crisis.
Craigs Investment Partners broker Peter McIntyre said Australian interest in New Zealand was likely to be heightened in 2011, with New Zealand miners looking to extend their "life of mine", by bringing on board new partners.
"You're likely to be seeing more joint ventures in New Zealand in 2011, both Australians and other internationals, because of accessibility, ease of business and historical data to hand," he said.
While New Zealand has "an abundance of resources"- in coal-seam gas, gold, iron sands, hard coking coal and lignite - its operations do not have the local capital backing, cases in point being Oceana Gold and Glass Earth Gold, which have repeatedly been able to raise capital on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Glass Earth is a junior explorer, while Oceana is New Zealand's largest gold producer and third biggest among Australasian gold miners.
At this year's New Zealand branch conference of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM), listed L&M Energy and Glass Earth Gold outlined their respective advances in coal-seam gas and gold exploration and production.
Glass Earth, L&M and their subsidiaries have spent more than $55 million, mainly on southern prospects, during the past decade or so.
However, Glass Earth chief executive Simon Henderson, who spent 60 weeks travelling overseas raising capital for the project during the past five years, described a bleak story of "doing the hard yards during the global financial crisis".
Glass Earth's spend-up during exploration has been more than $25 million so far - with nil cash flow.
Then, during the financial crisis, with a share price slumping from 20c to 1.5c, cash reserves were dwindling and the company had to be restructured and was otherwise "on short rations", he told conference delegates.
Glass Earth had to move from explorer to gold producer, with almost 1000oz coming out of its McAdies prospect in the Ida Valley between January and December 2010.
He said he expected a total 7500 ounces from McAdies during 2011.
Mr McIntyre said timing remained Glass Earth's biggest problem because of the "cash-burn" involved, and after spending more than $25 million it was "time to get runs on the board and produce cashflows".
However, its "exciting prospects" in Central Otago and Waihi were well positioned to underpin future funding.
Mr Henderson's persistence is paying off in the North Island, in a 65%-35% joint venture with Newmont, next to its Martha open-cast mine at Waihi and underground Favona, which Mr Henderson estimates could yield a total half-million to 1 million ounces.
After his presentation, Mr Henderson said Otago exploration plans would not suffer from the Waihi venture, which was largely being overseen by Newmont and it remained "business as usual" in the South.
Similarly staying in the game is L&M Energy in Southland, the company getting closer to commercial viability after it pared back the wider interests of its subsidiaries to focus more on coal-seam gas exploration.
Its Southland coal-seam gas interests around Ohai are estimated at 274 petajoules, and managing director Kent Anson wants to upgrade the project to certification during 2011.
"This area has the potential to be the second-biggest gas resource in New Zealand," he said, saying reticulation of gas to Dunedin or Invercargill "was not unfeasible".
Gas had application for transport, industrial purposes such as Fonterra operations and the Bluff aluminum smelter, residential use and energy generation, including contributing to the national grid.
Mr Anson said that with a substation barely 1km from the coal prospect, an application had already been made to connect to the national grid.
L&M has drilled 10 wells at Ohai and the company has a pilot project under way to measure gas content, quality, flows and permeability.
The coal seams, up to 15m thick, lie 200m to 1200m below the surface and tests have shown methane content of up to 98%.
"I'm hopeful there will be an upgrade to certification by the New Year," Mr Anson said.
Mr McIntyre noted L&M had successfully raised $11.2 million during the year and held "good tenements", with drilling progressed and a pilot plant at Ohai under way to measure gas flows.
However, like Glass Earth, it was necessary for L&M to "prove-up" its resource estimates during the next two years so investors "see some projects turned into cash flows".
Gold, which appreciated in value about 20% last year, and almost 80% over the past three years to hit $1427 last month, offers investors no interest and relies on more speculators coming on board.
Almost on a weekly basis during 2010, new records were hit on either the London Metals Exchange or Comex division of the New York Stock Exchange as spooked investors and funds repeatedly turned to gold, after the latest dose of depressing economic news from either the United States or Europe.
There were the "PIGS" - Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, which had spiralling sovereign debt issues - yo-yo economic data from the US; the sagging value of the greenback; all capped by the Federal Reserve throwing another $US600 billion into the underperforming US economy.
As governments the world over reacted to the recession, and the tail of the global financial crisis, by pouring trillions of dollars into deflated economies, investors increasingly turned to gold.
Triple-listed Oceana Gold, which posted a record delivery of 300,391oz of gold for calendar 2009, is back on track after it stumbled during the global financial crisis and had to mothball its gold/copper development mine in the northern Philippines.
The project suffered a cost blowout of US$320 million followed by a lack of outside investment interest.
Last year was marked by a recovery and a record share price of $5.41, buoyant quarterly reports well within Oceana's target range for the year and some positive movement towards refinancing its mothballed Didipio development mine in the Philippines.
Mr McIntyre described Oceana's recovery as "one of the most unparalleled success stories globally", considering its shares had risen from a "desperate" 22c to more than $5.40, and the company was now valued at more than $1 billion in market capitalisation.
Oceana had extracted itself from onerous and costly hedge-book obligations, while at the same time working hard to keep production costs down.
"De-hedging allowed it to take [increased profits] from record spot prices, and it also raised funds at a time of [global funding] constraint," he said.
After the surprise loss of two chief executives in a 16-month period, Oceana was in mid-November confident its gold/copper development mine in the northern Philippines would be in full production by 2013, boosting annual gold-equivalent production well beyond 300,000oz.
Oceana will end 2010 with estimated gold reserves in New Zealand at 1.94 million ounces, with the Philippines mine forecast to contribute a further 1.41 million ounces of gold and 170,000 tonnes of copper. During 2010 Oceana bought back its forward hedge contracts so it now trades entirely on the buoyant spot gold market and easily raised $NZ151 million in October through warrants to be traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, which will be used to restart Didipio.
A project development team for Didipio was being assembled and plant commissioning was expected to be finished in 15 to 21 months, with total capital expenditure of $US140 million already fully financed.
Gold production at Didipio is expected to run just below 300,000oz a year between 2010 and 2015, and copper production at the mine has been forecast at 35 million lbs in 2013 and 2014 , rising to 36 million lbs in 2015.
At the AusIMM conference, Oceana's vice-president of corporate and investor relations, Darren Klinck, said the company had spent about $12 million on exploration during the past financial year and expected to maintain a similar level in the year ahead, about half of which would be committed again to its Reefton open-pit operation. Analysts had been critical of the Didipio development and hedge-book and exploration expenditure during the past two years, but Oceana appears to have appeased those concerns.
In a possible sign of the times, in early November Oceana investors cashed in only $A2 million ($NZ2.63 million), from a possible $A55 million, in $A1 convertible notes, revealing strong investor confidence.
Oceana remains confident its New Zealand operations will return the 270,000oz-290,000oz forecast for this year, working through lower ore grades.
While headline-grabbing gold continues to gain strength, it is the less glamorous premium hard coking coal and lignite resources which remain at the forefront of attentions in the South.
Aside from assessing the viability of the Pike River Coal mine, state-owned enterprise Solid Energy is quietly continuing to assess using its vast tenements of lignite for either briquettes, transport fuel or fertiliser, with respective set-up costs reaching into the billions of dollars.
Carbon emissions from the conversion of lignite, the poorest form of coal, into usable form will be the centrepiece of arguments by environmentalists against its development.
Southland and Otago are estimated to contain more than 8 billion tonnes of lignite.
During the AusIMM conference, Australian-based Bathurst Resources, a coal miner valued at more than $A300 million, listed on the New Zealand and Australian stock exchanges.
Bathurst managing director Hamish Bohannan said a $A110 million capital-raising was being done for a West Coast venture, with $A18 million needed for working capital, $A35 million for the acquisition of the field and $57 million for capital expenditure.
Contracts for the premium-quality hard coking coal are expected to be announced soon.
Development should be under way in about 15 months, with production beginning in mid to late 2012.
The Escarpment mine in Buller would be targeted first, where there was an estimated 7.3 million tonnes of coal, with the Deep Creek prospect potentially holding almost 11 million tonnes.
Mr McIntyre said Bathurst's entry to New Zealand was "very promising", as investors had an opportunity to take part in production of a widespread resource, with about half the country's hard coking coal estimated to be in the Buller region.
"Bathurst, with its $A300 million market cap, is close to the ASX top 300, have already raised some funds [$A100 million] and have the permits and resource consents in place ...
It's a green light and all go," he said.
Bathurst's project in Buller was targeting total exploration of 60 million to 90 million tonnes of coal, while by comparison the Pike River mine was targeting 18 million tonnes over 18 years.
In Queenstown in August 2009 the Government announced a "stock-take" of New Zealand's mineral wealth then stunned the entire country by suggesting conservation areas expressly protected by the "schedule 4" in the Crown Minerals Act could be mined.
"Shot themselves in the foot" was an expression bandied about by even some of the most strident pro-mining advocates.
Unsurprisingly, the groundswell of public opinion rose to a formidable tsunami of opposition.
With thousands marching and tens of thousands submitting against the proposal and signing petitions, the Government was forced to back-track and jettison the schedule 4 proposal in July last year.
Now that Chinese energy giant Qinghua Group has been confirmed as being interested in southern lignite, iron sands and hard coking coal projects, any entry on its part will be closely scrutinised by the public, politicians and regulators alike.
Qinghua's presence in New Zealand is largely through Australian miner Greywolf Goldmining, which intends holding the permits in a joint-venture arrangement, but on its own has indicated a possible initial public offering in a bid to raise more than $200 million.
Mr McIntyre noted the Qinghua proposal mirrored events in Australia, where mid-cap to large Australian miners were underwritten by Chinese companies during rights issues, helping them recuperate from the global financial crisis.
While the likes of Oceana, L&M Energy and Glass Earth have fought their way through the financial crisis, it might well be the more fortunate, more cash-rich Australian companies such as Bathurst Resources, joint venturers like Greywolf Goldmining and others who provide the headlines during 2011.
