Reported By:
| Edited By: Promit Mukherjee |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 17, 2018, 06:48 AM IST
Coal India (CIL) has extended the deadline for submitting bids for underground coal gasification project on the request of several companies.
To tide over the predicament of commercially exploiting coal blocks located in difficult terrains, country’s biggest miner had put up two of its coal blocks on offer to be developed for underground coal gasification.
However, due to requests from various players and consequently lesser number of bids, the company postponed the last date of submission and opening up of the bids from February 10 to February 28.
“It is a new initiative and will be requiring a new technology so companies have requested us to extend the date,” said a source in Central Mine Planning and Design Institute (CMPDIL), a subsidiary of Coal India, which has the mandate for overseeing the bidding process.
The Thesgora C block, located in the Pench-Kanhan coalfield in Chindwara district of Madhya Pradesh, falls under the command area of Western Coalfields (WCL).
The second block, named Kaitha block, under Central Coalfields (CCL) command area, is located in the Ramgarh coalfield in the Ramgarh district of Jharkhand.
The company is looking for private players that can develop the blocks and produce gas from them for a period of 25 years.
While the first two years would comprise exploration and preparing a mining plan, the next three years are assigned to run the blocks and produce gas from them on a pilot basis.
After that, these companies will run the block for a period of 20 years. The firms will be solely responsible for producing the gas and transporting them to the desired players.
“The technology for coal gasification existed for quite sometime but not in India. Russians are the leaders in it. No Indian company has expertise in underground coal gasification,” said Anish De, chief executive officer, Mercados Energy Markets, an energy consultancy company.
According to World Coal Association, UCG is a method of converting unworked coal into a combustible gas which can be used for industrial heating, power generation or the manufacture of hydrogen, synthetic natural gas (syngas) or diesel fuel.
