Sarkaritel.com News and Features-Corporate News

ONGC to soon establish two pilots for Underground Coal Gasification

New Delhi, September 24, 2005 

ONGC is progressing on fast-track to tap deep-seated energy resources by establishing two pilots for Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) – one in Coal and another in Lignite. 

A Memorandum of Understanding was entered by ONGC with the public-sector Neyveli Lignite Corporation Limited (NLC) in New Delhi on 24th September 2005, for initiating one of these UCG pilots, in shallower Lignite to start with.

The MoU was signed by Executive Director (R&D) of ONGC Dr. D M Kale and Director (Mines) of Neyveli Lignite Mines Mr. K S Anandam, in the presence of Director (HR) Dr. A K Balyan and Director (Exploration) of ONGC Mr. D K Pande. 

Four sites have been short-listed for the first pilot – three of them in Tamilnadu and the fourth in Rajasthan. 

The pilot in Coal will be established in collaboration with Coal India Limited. 

To implement the UCG projects at various locations, ONGC has been tying up with local enterprises. A MoU was signed with the Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation (GMDC) at Ahmedabad a few days back on 19th September 2005. More MoUs are lined up with Coal India Limited (CIL), Gujarat Industries Power Corporation Limited (GIPCL) and Singreni Coal Company limited (SCCL). 

These pilot projects are being carried out as per recommendations of the consultant – the world-renowned Skochinsky Institute (SIM) of Mining of Russia, with whom ONGC entered into an Agreement of Collaboration on 25th November 2004, in the presence of the Hon'ble Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyar. Russia has decades of experience in utilizing UCG reactors to provide low-heating-value gases for local use, for industrial fuel gas and for power generation.

The Russian Institute has given encouraging response after analyzing the geo-mechanical and hydro-geological data of the sites provided to them. In fact, ONGC will have discussions with the Institute to shorten the time-frame of the project, in view of the inherent strengths of ONGC and expertise in some of the fields which are relevant to UCG viz. horizontal drilling, high pressure air injection and In-situ combustion. 

UCG is a new method to develop coal deposits by directly converting coal to gas underground. Though UCG, as an environment-friendly technology, was initially conceived for deeper coal seams, the pilots world-wide have demonstrated it to be the appropriate technology even for shallower coal seams, and also for abandoned ones with residual coal pillars. 

Apart from Russia , a number of other countries like UK , France, Italy, Belgium , Spain and Australia, have attempted to implement UCG technology. The achievements of UCG in these countries have been confined to gasification of shallow coal seams, generally less than 500 meters. Germany shared a field experiment with Belgium to establish the feasibility of UCG at greater depth i.e. 860 meters. China has the largest on-going UCG programme currently underway. 

UCG has a great potential in India – the country with the sixth largest coal reserves, and the third largest coal production. ONGC, while drilling for oil and gas, has discovered large reserves of coal at depths more than 600 meters. In Gujarat alone, these coal reserves have been estimated to be around 63 Billion Tons in Mehsana-Ahmedabad block and 60 Billion Tons in Patan-Tharad block. 

The recoverable energy from coal reserves of Mehsana-Ahmedabad block (of 63 Billion Tons) alone in the form of gas is assessed to be around 15,000 Billion Cubic Meters (BCM) of Natural Gas - which is more than 70 times the free gas reserves of ONGC. Even if a fraction of it is realized, it will go a long way to meet the national energy needs. 

In the Indian context, use of UCG will result in a more optimal energy mix, vis-à-vis the country's natural endowment. That is why, the national energy company ONGC is seriously into this UCG business. 

E-Mail : newseditor@sarkaritel.com