Anisul Islam Noor :
The government plans to build a large coal-fired power plant near Dighirpara coal mine field in Dinajpur district, Energy Division sources said.
They said the planned 600MW capacity power plant will be run using coal from the Dighirpara coal field.
Considering the experience, the Energy Division handed over the responsibility of operation of Dighirpara coal field to Barapukuria Coal Mine Field of Dinajpur, a subsidiary of Petrobangla, to develop and extraction of coal also from this field.
Meanwhile, state-owned Oil and Gas Corporation Petrobangla showed success in operation and extraction of coal from Barapukuria Coal Mine Field. Barapukuria also learnt to have preparing a plan in this regard
At present, coal is being produced commercially only from the Barapukuria underground coal mine field in Dinajpur. It has gone through a period of eight years of construction and one year of production. Currently, the production rate of Barapukuria is about 1500 tons per day.
Energy experts said there is no option for Bangladesh other than mining its coal for power generation, because the future power demand cannot be met from gas-based power plants as the gas reserve is too limited to run for long.
The only coal-based power plant (250MW) in the country is in operation near the Barapukuria Coal Mine Field, which feeds the plant.
If the Barapukuria mine runs efficiently for its expected lifespan and if feasibility studies conducted at other fields conclude positively only then we can expect that the contribution of coal in the total energy mix in the country will increase in future, the experts said.
Till now five major coalfields have been discovered in Bangladesh. They are Jamalganj (1962), Barapukuria (1985), Khalashpir (1989), Dighipara(1995) and Phulbari (1998).
Barapukuriua coalfield was discovered in 1985 by GSB in Dinajpur district. Coal layers are encountered at a shallow depth of about 18-500 meter. In 1989 GSB discovered another coalfield at Khalashpir in Rangpur district where coal layers are encountered at depths of about 257-450 meter below surface. In 1995 another major coalfield was discovered by GSB at Dighirpara where coal was encountered at a depth of about 250 meter below the surface.
An USA-Australian coal mining company BHP discovered a major coalfield named Phulbari in 1997. Here coal was encountered at depth of 130-260 meter below the surface.
