Separately, coal minister Pralhad Joshi said his ministry has also decided to open up coal exploration for private sector and shortlisted 14 qualified agencies for the purpose. Coal exploration was till now limited to Geological Survey of India.
Joshi said about 1,950square km is expected to be explored with the allotted fund till 2025-26, which a government statement said is the terminal year of the 15th Finance Commission.
Coal exploration has two stages — promotional, which is regional in nature,and detailed exploration in non-Coal India blocks. The Cabinet has approved an outlay of Rs 1,650 crore for promotional (regional) exploration and Rs 1,330 crore for detailed drilling in nonCIL areas.
BP’s Energy Outlook 2023 recently put the shareof coal in India’s total primary energy basket at 45%, remaining steady for the last 40 years. But the International Energy Agency had in 2021 said coal will remain king for India inspite of the government’s aggressive pursuit of non-fossil sources with a target of 500 gigawatts capacity by 2030.
Exploration is required to prove and estimate coal resources available in the country, which helps in mapping detailed project reports for starting coal mining. The geological reports prepared through these explorations are used for auctioning new coal blocks and the cost is thereafter recovered from successful allottees.
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