The much delayed coal bed methane (CBM) policy has been finalised by the Petroleum Ministry and is to be sent to the Cabinet any time this month, even though Coal Ministry officials say that there are still some “outstanding overlapping issues” which remain to be addressed as off late there have been a lot of discussions between the two ministries in recent times over reallocation of several blocks containing the natural resource.
In fact Coal Ministry officials expressed surprise that the Petroleum Ministry was planning to take the CBM policy for Cabinet approval.
Official sources told The Pioneer that the much-delayed CBM policy has been given the final touches by the Petroleum Ministry and is now to be taken to the Cabinet in the following weeks as all issues with the Coal Ministry have been resolved.
Recently the Defence Ministry gave its go ahead to 21 oil and gas blocks on which it earlier had put restrictions against any exploration activities owing to security concerns. Petroleum Ministry sources said that some of them are CBM blocks and with the policy almost ready, due diligence on them would be done once it is cleared by the Cabinet.
They added that the Petroleum Minister M Veerappa Moily gave a major push to the policy after taking charge of the ministry in October last year with the focus being on making the country more self reliant in the field of natural gas production.
The minister had earlier mentioned that there are an estimated 92 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in the country which need to tapped in order to prevent over-reliance on imports.
A top Petroleum Ministry official said that with around $1 billion worth of investment spent in importing gas, forward looking steps are required to push greater exploration of CBM as well as shale gas.
While the CBM policy is expected this month, ministry officials said that the shale gas policy too would be sent for Cabinet's nod soon after that.
However Coal Ministry informed this correspondent that though major issues of difference have been resolved, there are several “outstanding overlapping issues” on which discussions are still going on.
As most of the CBM deposits available in the country are situated close to coal blocks, there were several differences between Coal and Petroleum Ministries over jurisdiction. Both the ministries lay claim to the natural resource, while Coal Ministry said that since CBM had been found near coal deposits, they had the first right to explore them. The Petroleum Ministry on its part felt that CBM being a variant of gas, came under its jurisdiction.
While officials from both the ministries claim that the jurisdiction issues have been resolved to a large extent - when it was decided that deposits would be allotted to each of them depending on whether they contained more CBM or coal - the Coal Ministry is said to have written to the Petroleum Ministry to give it back certain blocks containing greater amount of coal, as it wants to re-issue these to the power sector.
These blocks, sources said, were earlier relinquished by the Coal Ministry in favour of the Petroleum Ministry as these had substantial quantities of gas. However apparently it now wants these back, in order to fulfill the requirements of the power sector, which has been seeking greater coal supplies for its plants.
Attempts to seek response of the Coal Secretary S K Srivastava on this however proved futile.