A five-month delay in extraction at the country’s lone coal mine in Dinajpur due to uncontrolled water levels inside the coal field, could hamper energy production at a nearby coal-driven power station.
The Power Development Board (PDB), Barapukuria coal mine’s largest customer, procures 80% of the extracted coal for use at the country’s sole coal-fired power plant.
Barapukuria power station, with a production capacity of 250MW, requires around 2,500 tonnes of coal every day. It currently has more than 100,000 tonnes, or roughly 40 days’ reserve, in its stockyard.
“We have started coal extraction from the new 1205 face at the end of March this year after completing extraction from the 1206 face. The work, however, was halted in the first week of May as water broke on the new face,” Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Ltd (BCMCL) Managing Director Md Aminuzzaman told the Dhaka tribune yesterday.
A BCMCL official said the water level of the mine increased soon after a new method named Long Wall Top Coal Caving (LTCC) was applied to double the existing coal production from the mine.
Under the new method, the daily production would stand at around 5,000 tonnes per day.
The mine’s operators said they were trying to begin extraction from a new face within three months.
Aminuzzaman said the company had to do abandon the 1205 face because the underground water level could not be controlled. It is now preparing to extract coal from the 1212 face.
“We are not sure that we will be able to solve the problem of the 1205 face. But we hope that we can start production from the 1212 face within three months,” he said.
The Chinese company XMC, together with another consortium led by China National Import and Export Corporation (CMC), has been producing coal from the mine since 2005.
After the expiry of a previous maintenance and production contract on August 10, 2011 a new management, production, maintenance and provisioning services (MPMP) contract was signed between BCMCL and the XMC-CMC consortium at a value of Tk2314.55 crore to produce 5.5 million tonnes of coal over 72 months.
Some steel mills, heavy industries, and brickfields also buy coal from the BCMCL, with brick kiln owners purchasing coal between August and December every year.
The mine has a reserve of 390 million tonnes stretching over 6.68 square kilometres of Barapukuria under Parbatipur upazila, according to a 1985 study by the Geological Survey of Bangladesh.
