Coal India Not to Focus on Shale Gas

Coal India is not looking to venture into shale gas and will remain focused only on coal related items like coal bed methane. Last year Partha S Bhattacharya, former chairman and managing director (CMD), had indicated CIL might foray into production of shale gas.

Business Standard has reported that the company plans to diversify into coal liquefaction (CTL) and gasification. In the area of unconventional gas, CIL may look at CBM as a possible option.

“It needs different regulatory and technological requirements. Our exploration is up to 600 metres and exploitation is up to 300-400 metres. For CBM, you have to go up to even 1,000 to 1,200 metres,” S Narsing Rao, the present CMD said.

“We have to do diversification, but at this stage, our focus is only on increasing coal production and to meet the target. If we have to look into it, the foray would be to coal and coal-related items, rather than venturing into unrelated areas like shale gas,” the newspaper quoted the CMD as saying.

The newspaper report said that the company had plans to foray into a CTL project with Sasol of South Africa, which has one of the largest CTL projects in the world, at Secunda in that country. Last year, CIL had written a letter to the coal ministry for allocation of the Deocha-Pachami block in West Bengal, with an estimated reserve of at least 19 billion tonnes, for the CTL project. Sasol and the Tata Group had formed a joint venture for a CTL project in Odisha.