Kolkata: Plans are on the anvil by Coal India (CIL) to retrieve production from its discontinued underground mines. The company has so far identified 12 such mines with provisional mine-able reserves of around 1060 million tonne (MT). Of these 12 UG mines, eight belong to Eastern Coalfields (ECL) and the remaining four fall under Bharat Coking Coal (BCCL), spread over the states of West Bengal and Jharkhand.
“The project is on the drawing board but CIL aims to start the process soon to bring these mines back to active production. This is in effort to increase production through indigenous sources,” said a senior executive of the company.
According to CIL officials, the company is keen to fast-track the issue once the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute (CMPDI), its in-house mine consultancy arm, which has been entrusted to prepare a data dossier submits its report on the feasibility. These mines were discontinued not because of exhaustion of reserves but on several considerations like difficult geo-mining conditions, economic unviability and non-availability of suitable methods to extract deep-seated reserves at the time. These mines combined have substantial reserves.
