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Pratim Ranjan Bose

Delay in awarding of contracts

Kolkata , Oct. 12

The prospects of coal-bed methane (CBM) flowing from ONGC's Jharia block in Jharkhand as early as in 2007 is proving elusive. Originally slated to be brought into production by March 2007, the development of the field is already running behind the schedule due to delay in awarding the contracts.

Though the contracts were finally awarded in favour of a consortium led by Mineral Exploration Corporation Ltd (MECL) in May, the development work could not be initiated due to little progress made by the State administration in acquisition of the land in favour of ONGC.

As things stand today, the company is running at least three months behind the revised production schedule of June 2007.

A nomination block, Jharia is held jointly by ONGC (74 per cent) and Coal India Ltd (26 per cent) and is expected to produce close to 3.5 lakh cubic metre of CBM per day.

According to an ONGC official, though the company has already made arrangements for payment of compensation, there has not been any progress in disbursement.

To by-pass red-tape, ONGC has recently appointed a third party agency to identify the owners of the land subjected to be acquired and convince them of accepting the due payments.

Apart from drilling production wells the land is required to create physical infrastructure such as roads and gas collection centres.

It may be mentioned that apart from developing Jharia block, the MECL led consortium would explore the CBM potential in Raniganj (ONGC 90 per cent, CIL 10 per cent), North Karanpura (ONGC 80, IOC 20), South Karanpura (ONGC 100) and North Karanpura - West (ONGC 100) blocks. Apart from Ranigunj all other exploration blocks are located in Jharkhand.

ONGC has already initiated exploration drilling and identified commercially recoverable CBM reserves in Bokaro (ONGC 80, IOC 20) in Jharkhand.

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