The agreement signing ceremony of Coal India Limited’s first commercial extraction of Coal Bed Methane (CBM) was concluded between Prabha Energy Private Limited (PEPL) and Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) at BCCL’s HQ, Dhanbad. PEPL is the CBM developer for Jharia CBM Block-I (BCCL Leasehold areas) of Jharia Coalfields and it is selected in the CBM Developer Global bid. CMPDI is the Principal Implementing Agency (PIA) for the implementation of this project and years of efforts of CMPDI, CIL and BCCL will be fruitful through this project. The agreement was signed by Prem S. Sawhney, CEO, Prabha Energy Pvt. Ltd. and J.S. Mohapatra, General Manager (West Jharia Area) on behalf of BCCL. Chiranjib Patra, General Manager (CED), CMPDI was present on the occasion.
On this occasion, Pramod Agrawal, Chairman, CIL; Binay Dayal, CMD, CMPDIL and Director(Technical), CIL; R.N.Jha, Director (Technical/RD&T), CMPDIL ; AK Rana, Director (Technical/P&D), CMPDIL, Manoj Kumar, GM (Coordination), CMPDIL attended the signing ceremony through VC. Chanchal Goswami, Director (Technical/Operations), BCCL and JP Gupta, Director (Technical/P&P), BCCL and Chiranjib Patra, General Manager (Clean Energy Development), CMPDIL were physically present at Dhanbad.
Coal India Limited is working in line with the Methane reduction program by taking initiatives for drainage of methane before the coal mining. This initiative is likely to reduce methane gas emissions arising out of coal mining , although, coal mining and its allied activities in India has very less contribution to methane emission. In addition, the safety of personnel working in underground Coal mines in these Coal Blocks will increase due to CBM extraction. The extraction will also enable utilization of energy which would have been wasted due to release during mining.