Coal extraction from the country’s lone coalmine at Barapukuria in Dinajpur has been at a standstill for three months because of rising underground water level.
As a result, authorities fear that achieving target production from the mine will be delayed this time.
“The water level started rising soon after we applied a new method called Long Wall Top Coal Caving [LTCC] to double production,” Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Ltd (BCMCL) Managing Director Md Aminuzzaman told the Dhaka tribune yesterday.
“We started extraction from the new 1205 face at the end of March because extraction from the 1206 face was complete. The work however had to be stopped in the first week of May as water started coming out of the new face,” he said.
“I am not sure if we will be able to solve the problem and eventually come up with the the expected level of production,” he added.
“We are trying to clear water using a pump. For this, we need an alternative power supply... We have already applied to the Dinajpur office of the Power Development Board for an alternative power supply line,” Aminuzzaman said.
Sources said PDB was planning to lay new line in three months. Under the new LTCC method, daily production at the mine would stand at around 5,000 tonnes, the BCMCL MD said.
Chinese company XMC, along with another consortium led by China National Import and Export Corporation (CMC), has been producing coal from the site since 2005.
After the previous contract expired, a new Management, Production, Maintenance and Provisioning (MPMP) services contract of Tk2,314.55 crore for producing 5.5 million tonnes of coal in 72 months was signed between the mine authority and the Chinese consortium in 2011.
The PDB is the biggest consumer of the coal extracted from the mine. It procures 80% of the coal for using in the power plants near the mine. The 250MW plant, which needs around 2,500 tonnes of coal every day, currently has more than 100,000 tonnes in its stock.
Some steel mills and heavy industries and brick kilns also buy coal from the mine. The kilns generally purchase the coal between August and December. They could not do it last year because of the political chaos before the January election.
The mine has an estimated reserve of about 390 million tonnes, stretching over a 6.68 sq-km area, according to a 1985 study of the Geological Survey of Bangladesh.
