Kolkata: World over, fossil fuels such as coal dominate the energy scene, and more so now, in the wake of the volatility in oil prices. But coal has always been condemned as a dirty fuel, whose mining and burning for electricity generation creates pollution. In these days of global environment consciousness, efforts are thus focussed on finding clean coal technologies, and underground coal gasification (UCG) is one of the options.

Experts from Australia, China and the U.S. will deliberate on UCG at a seminar on "Indo-U.S. dialogue: working group on coal and Asia-Pacific partnership: coal mining task force workshop on underground coal gasification."

The Coal Ministry, U.S. Department of Energy and the Australian Government, are associated with this endeavour, which began in the city.Addressing the inaugural session, Union Coal Secretary H. C. Gupta said the Mines Act and the Coal Mines Regulations would have to be amended and a regime of tax concessions, to attract the private sector, would have to be put in place before India could begin commercial exploitation of the UCG.

Commercial utilisation of the UCG could be started in India by 2010-11, once the necessary changes were made.

The UCG technology enabled clean coal production and reduction in the gas and oil import bill by producing a fuel, through mining of coal in deep seams.

The deposits could not be mined through conventional methods. Though the UCG was conceptually simple, in practice, the development of a working system proved difficult.

MoU with ONGC

India had taken up pilot projects and the Ministry had decided to fund a Neyveli Lignite Corporation (NLC) proposal for a pilot-scale test in the UCG for lignite reserves in Rajasthan. The NLC had entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) to conduct studies in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan.

Fiscal incentives and tax concessions, now applicable under another clean coal technology — coal bed methane, might be necessary for attracting the private sector.Moreover, a mechanism for the allotment of coal blocks would have to be developed.

Mr. Gupta said that coal was expected to remain at the hub of India's long-term energy security and the industry was witnessing a steady growth of about six per cent annually.

As part of the Ministry's efforts to encourage private participation, 123 coal blocks with about 30 billion tonnes of reserves had been allocated for captive mining.

Union Coal Minister Shibu Soren said that the coal sector would have to adopt advance technologies if it had to meet the demand — set to cross two billion tonnes in the next 25 years.

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