Pakistan Today on 22 October, 2011 has published a Thar Coal Technical Overview by Mr Zahoor A Abbasi which shows the exploitation of Thar coal to be a catch-22 situation which might get bogged down in the end after spending colossal amount of money due to lack of an integrated approach. Following para of overview is quoted which is self-explanatory.
“Underground coal gasification process on the other hand works at cross purposes with both CBM (Coalbed Methane) as well as conventional coal mining in Thar. For example, the very same water and hydrostatic pressure that is needed to be removed by dewatering for CBM recovery and coal mining is necessarily needed to be retained in the ground in order to contain and control the UCG’s coal burn from spreading into the adjacent mining and power generation operations, thus creating an extremely significant hazard and a potentially very dangerous situation.”
Now with the above observation somebody, including Dr Samarmand Mubarak, ought to demystify the grandiose coal project that is overshadowing even the dire need of megadams in the country.
DR MUHAMMAD YAQOOB BHATTI
Lahore
