CIL fights fire for 17 billion tonne coal bounty

Dousing the fire that has been burning beneath the Jharia coal deposits in Jharkhand for the past 180 years would free up about 100 million tonne of finest coking coal every year, which would substitute imports.

But challenges remain as both Coal India as well as Jharkhand government need to shift thousands of people residing over these burning mines. The livelihood of these people depends on making a living out of illegally mining this coal with the fire helping them stay undetected.

With the recent visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Coal India sees a solution to this century-old problem.

"Our recent talks with the chief minister of Jharkhand and also the chief secretary have been quite fruitful. We see an end to this major human, ecological and economical problem soon," Coal India chairman Sutirtha Bhattacharya told dna.

Successful management of the disaster spread over a vast 9.5 lakh square kilo metre area would put an end to continued loss of precious resources and ground subsidence which is destroying habitat and displacing mass of humanity on a regular basis. It would also free up a huge reserve of coal.

Geological studies put the Jharia reserve at 17 billion tonne, out of which about 12 billion tonne are lying just beneath the ground at 300 metres.

Bharat Coking Coal, a Coal India subsidiary, can produce 100 million tonne of prime coking coal every year from the coalfields of Jharia if the crisis is managed.

"We can produce about 50 million tonne by 2020 under present circumstances. But production can touch 100 million tonne a year if people residing on affected regions, about 1,00,000 families are rehabilitated in time," said Tapas Kumar Lahiry, chairman and managing director of Bharat Coking Coal, the subsidiary under whose control the burning mines lie.

But that is easier said than done. There are three aspects to this continued disaster, senior Coal India officials said.
First is dousing the fire, on which Coal India has achieved some degree of success after years of trial and error and several failed attempts.

"According to a recent study done by the National Remote Sensing Agency, the fire that had been burning over 8.9 sq km of area (in 1995-96) has now been contained at just 1.8 sq km. This is a major success after we started sticking to a standardised yet simple technique to manage the fire. The process started scientifically only from 2008, before which close to Rs 1,000 crore were wasted on various failed attempts using mostly chemicals," Lahiri said.

Techniques that have been used to manage the fire involve complete excavation of coal on fire, cooling by water curtain, isolation by trenching, blind flushing to fill up the void spaces and surface sealing.

Before that various complex chemical process were used like gas and chemical injections.

Even as the fire gets controlled, shifting and rehabilitation of employees of Bharat Coking Coal and also others remains another major challenge.

Coal India has shifted about 25,000 employee families to safe zones since 2008, but there were about 53,000 houses of non-employees and encroachers.

Shifting these non-employee people is the responsibility of the state government, which has been rather slow in creating alternative housing facilities.

"Till now, only about 2,000 houses have been built and an additional 8,000 hectares of land has to be acquired for building the township. Much is left to be done," Lahiri said.

Another hurdle, which is more sociological is nature, is convincing these people whose livelihood, ironically, depends on the burning coal which has been killing them.

"Most of these people earn through illegal mining and stealing coal. The fire even helps them stay undetected. It would be a huge challenge shifting them," said Partha Bhattacharya, former Coal India chairman said.