Production of Coal Bed Methane {Standing Committee Report}

The Standing Committee on Petroleum & Natural Gas (Chairperson Pralhad Joshi) has recently submitted its Fourteenth Report on ‘Production of Coal Bed Methane (CBM)’

Key recommendations

• Comprehensive policy: The committee has recommended for the release of a new comprehensive CBM policy as the CBM policy of 1997 is not enough to achieve the objective of production of CBM to the expected potential.
• The committee has recommended that the new policy should address the following issues:
  • coordination between multiple agencies,
  • simultaneous mining of coal and CBM,
  • use of CBM from existing coal mines, and
  • pricing of CBM.
• Reassessment of CBM: The committee has opined that the potential of CBM in the country needs to be reassessed. The last assessment was done in 1990s. The committee has observed that this could be one of the reasons for the poor performance of the CBM blocks.
• Allocation of CBM blocks: Since 2008 no new CBM blocks have been awarded by the government. So, the committee has called for the early award of the new and relinquished blocks under the ambit of the new Hydrocarbon Exploration Licensing Policy.

For basic information on Coal Bed Methane, you may refer to Infra-2 document or this blog.