Phulbari, Barapukuria coal Mining method puzzles bosses

The authorities of the Phulbari and Barapukuria Coal Mine Company are facing insurmountable difficulties in adapting one particular method of coal extraction, "open pit" or "underground" for a large scale mining.
To support the coal-fired power plants and other industries, the authorities' mulled an expansion plan two years back but failed to choose a 'method' for the expansion programme, as the structure of the coal mine and present designing of the coal extraction programme cannot support any single method, authoritative source told the Daily Observer.
Echoing the Institute of Water Modelling (IWM) survey report on Barapukuria coal mine to select the method of coal extraction, AKM Shamsuddin, an independent researcher and a former scientists of Petrobangla, made it clear that there is no way to go for open pit mining at Barapukuria or Phulbari.
And at the same time if the government wants to go for huge expansion of the mines through shaft mining then it needs to go for re-filling the gaps to stop massive landslides at the food scarce areas of the country.
Geologists are of the opinion that there is aquifer under the Phulbari Coal Mine which extends to the Barapukuria Coal Mine.   
To discuss Shamsuddin's survey report the top officials of the Energy Ministry, Petrobangla and Barapukuria Coal Mine Company met on Tuesday at the Energy Ministry but failed to reach a conclusion.
"We cannot go for shaft or underground mining at Barapukuria coal field and if we want to go for expansion plan we need to inject sand to fill hallows created by coal extraction to stop landslides, which is 40 km away from the mining area," Energy Secretary Nazimuddin Chowdhury said.
With the aim of opening up the northern part of the Barapukuria coal field on a "small scale", the Energy Ministry had launched the initiative 10 years ago. To endorse the plan, it formed different committees and completed two studies, but failed to reach any conclusion. In its third attempt, it engaged the IWM to complete water modelling to preclude any controversy over the method of coal extraction, however, it failed to yield any fruit.
Bangladesh has five coalfields with around 2.55 billion tonnes of reserves, but has been unable to extract the mineral since a national coal policy has not been finalised yet. Experts are facing difficulties in choosing one single method. Due to all these difficulties the country has only been able to produce a meager quantity of coal from Barapukuria Coal Mine Company for the last 10 years.
The government plans to increase coal production in a very aggressively as the reserve of gas is decreasing very sharply. It needs to produce around 24,000 MW of electricity by 2021 to support the system, however according to government announcement it will produce 8,000 MW from local coal.
"For this purpose we need to extract or ensure 80,000 tonnes of coal supply per day to the coal-fired power plants. Barapukuria is producing around 2,060-2,300 tonnes of coal per day," a senior official of the Energy Ministry said.
The Barapukuria coal field has reserves of around 389 million tonnes, but only 10 to 12 per cent of this can be extracted by the underground method.
 "We engaged the Institute of Water Modelling (IWM) to examine all these issues in 2014, we asked them to examine the impact of open-pit mining on the groundwater level at Barapukuria Northern part, later they complete the feasibility study on shaft mining there but the result was the same," a senior official of BCMC said.
According to the sources in the Energy Ministry, experts suggested that if it choose open pit mining method then the water will destroy the crop fields there and if it opts for underground method then huge amount of sand will be needed to re-fill the empty spaces to stop landslides.
 "We can go for open-pit mining in the northern part of the Barapukuria coal field, subject to the technical feasibility study on mining issues and the economic viability of water pumping with respect to biodiversity and ecological stress on food production and their impact on the gross domestic product (GDP). Otherwise, how can we assess the profit and loss of a project? The study has failed to discuss these aspects," Petrobangla's former chairman Md Mosharrof Hossain, who is the coordinator of the government monitoring committee that guided the IWM's survey, told the Daily Observer.
According to Petrobangla, it was mentioned in the TOR that the study, covering an area of 2.81 sq. km, would assess the impact on the groundwater level as a result of dewatering, irrigation and supply of drinking and industrial water. It would find possible remedial measures for underground sustainability through different opinion studies and recommend developing mine water management systems.
Though the IWM report said an area of some 560 sq. km of Barapukuria would be impacted if the government decides to open Barapukuria North for open-pit mining and the water table of the areas would go down from seven metres to more than 30 metres at different points, but to make it operational, it would require de-watering from 400 million cubic metres (mmc) to 232 mmc every year.