Coal exploration starts at two new Thar blocks
KARACHI: Another local company, Deep Rock Drilling, has started drilling work recently for coal exploration at two new blocks of the Thar coal sites.
Sources in Sindh Coal Authority (SCA) told Daily Times on Friday that the authority had awarded drilling work contract to Deep Rock Drilling company at Block VII and VIII.
The company started drilling on Thursday and it would drill 80 holes in both the blocks and would complete the work in three months.
The sources said that the work on developing further two blocks at Thar had been started early this year and 100 square kilometers area is allocated for each block.
The entire development work at the blocks would be completed by end of this year, the sources said, adding that both the blocks have potential of six billion tonnes of coal reserves.
The SCA has developed six blocks so far at the Thar where an estimated 12 billion tonnes reserves of coa liesl.
The sources said that the new blocks would attract investors for coal-based power generation because of larger area and the development work was being done on modern lines.
The SCA had awarded licences at the six blocks to American AES, Hassan Associates, Australian-based Couger Energy, Sindh Carbon Energy Limited, Associated Group and Thar Coal Mine Company.
The Geological Survey of Pakistan had discovered the huge deposits of coal at Thar in 1992 during the research programme assissted by United States Geological Survey (USGS).
The area of Thar coal is spread over 9100 square kilometers with dimension of 140 km (north-south) and 65 km (east-west).
Geologists believed that the estimated reserves of Thar are about 175.506 billion tonnes of coal and are sufficient to meet fuel requirements of the country for centuries, having potential for generating about 100,000MW of electricity. muhammad yasir
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?p...2-4-2008_pg5_11