A high-level delegation led by Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal will visit the US in June for scouting for mining properties and seek expertise for an ambitious project to convert coal into gas among others.
"I will lead a delegation to the US in June with an aim to buy coal mines, procure latest mining equipment and forge alliance in underground-coal gasification technology," Jaiswal said on the sidelines of the Coal Gas 2010 conference here today.
The delegation would comprise senior officials from the Coal Ministry and PSU Coal India Ltd.
Coal India, the country's largest coal producer, is unlikely to meet production target of 435 million tonnes (MT) for this fiscal and has already revised downward its estimated output for 2011-12 to 486 MT from 520 MT mainly on account of regulatory hurdles.
"Coal India is already looking to buy or jointly develop mines abroad to bridge the domestic demand-supply gap. Its domestic expansion projects are facing delays," Jaiswal added.
The US, which has one of the world's largest coal reserves, has rich experience in converting coal into gas.
"There is an urgent need for adoption of clean coal technologies including coal washing, coal bed methane, coal mine methane, underground coal gasification and coal liquefaction as these are also important in improving the coal usage in an environment friendly manner," Jaiswal said.
The country has about 265 billion tonnes of estimated coal reserves, of which a little over 100 billion tonnes are minable. The project will seek to utilise more of the domestic coal reserves.
The coal ministry is also scouting for sophisticated mining equipment from abroad to dig out more from domestic coal deposits. It has also sought reduction in customs duty on such machineries to about 3 per cent from around 10 per cent at present in the upcoming Union Budget.
"The coal demand reached a level of 550 million tonnes in 2008-09 is envisaged to be over 2 billion tonnes by 2031-32. There is need to increase the domestic coal supply," Jaiswal added.
Currently, state-owned CIL is already in pact with GAIL to produce gas from coal, among many other domestic firms.