State-owned Barapukaria Coal Mine Company (BCMCL) will place a development project proposal (DPP) on feasibility study for the development of Dighipara coal field at its next board meeting to extract coal.
Petrobangla and Energy and Mineral Resources Division (EMRD) have already handed over exploration licence of 4,000 hectare of Dighipara coal mine area to the BCMCL.
An EMRD official said the company should not be awarded with this coal mine as they are not operating Barapukaria coal mine, which they already have in hand.
They can be assigned only with the feasibility study for development in new Dighipara coal field, not development, he said.
The BCMCL develops the country’s lone coal mine, which has a reserve of 390 million tonnes stretching over 6.68 square-kilometres in Parbatipur upazila.
“A proforma of DPP has already been prepared to conduct feasibility study of Dighipara coal mine at Dinajpur in a total area of 24 sq-km,” a BCMCL official told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
“A consultancy firm will be hired after the DPP is approved by the board,” he added.
The project tenure is three years – from July 1, 2016, to June 30, 2019 – for the feasibility study.
He also said the project’s main objectives would be to identify the total reserve of Dighipara coal basin (within 24 sq-km) and to develop a coal mine of 3 million tonne production capacity per year in the central part of the basin (within 6 sq-km).
In November last year, the Energy Division asked BCMCL to draft a report in this regard.
The government has a plan to set up series of coal-fired power projects to generate 20,000MW of electricity by 2030. But no arrangement has so far been made to import coal for the projected goal.
Thus to meet the demand the government is going to develop the local coal mines. However, all the planned coal-based power plants still remain on paper for coal sourcing crisis.
In 1995, Geological Survey of Bangladesh discovered Dinajpur’s Dighipara mine, which has an estimated coal reserve of 150 million tonnes.
