CIL invites companies to assess CBM potential

By: Ajoy K Das
14th June 2012
KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) - Coal India Limited (CIL) has invited foreign and domestic companies to assess coal bed methane (CBM) reserves at its coal mines across the country.

“India has large coal reserves which may be amenable for harnessing of coal bed methane. Several blocks have been carved out and allotted for commercial extraction of CBM,” a CIL notice inviting expression of interest (EoI) said.

“Carving out more blocks in the greenfield areas for commercial development of CBM is to be taken up on priority basis to augment energy supply in the country. For reliable assessment of CBM resource for carving out CBM blocks in greenfield areas, proving of coal reserves is a pre-requisite,” the notice said.

According to government data, India’s CBM production was estimated to touch four-million cubic meters a day by 2016/17, against 0.23-million cubic meters a day in 2011/12. In order to increase production of CBM, 33 bocks have been awarded to date, from mines carved out of CIL leaseholds.

CIL’s initiative on CBM followed the resolution of a turf war between the Coal Ministry and Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas over regulatory control of exploitation of methane from coal reserves.

The latter agreed to permit CIL extraction of CBM from its mines subject to the condition that CIL, under administrative control of the Coal Ministry, should seek permission from Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas before starting each extraction project.

It was mandatory for any CBM extraction agency to pay a production-linked royalty to the Indian government that is administered by the Ministry for Petroleum and Natural Gas.

CIL has several extremely gassy and unsafe mines under its leasehold areas where extraction of coal was not possible. It was expected that with CBM extraction projects taken up, incremental production of 100-million tons of coking coal could be achieved from such mines apart from 25-billion cubic meters of methane, a ballpark estimate of the miner, CIL officials said.

According to the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute, a subsidiary of CIL, methane capture projects were not being taken up on a large scale in India because of lack of latest technology, a lack of experience and persistent doubts over commercial viability of exploitation.

Most of India’s coal exploration activities were to depths of 600 metres and exploitation up to 300m or 400m, while in the case of CMB exploitation depths of between 1 000m and 2 000 m were often necessary, an official said.

Edited by: Esmarie Swanepoel