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Eastern Coalfields Ltd (ECL), a subsidiary of Coal India, is focusing on expanding its underground mining operations to achieve more than double production from such activity at 20 million tonne by 2028, a senior official said on Sunday. This has been planned to support Coal India's target to ramp up underground coal production from all mining subsidiaries to 100 million tonne by 2030 from a level of 25-26 million tonne now, he said. ECL underground coal commands a premium of three to four times over average notified prices, and now, it accounts for 25 per cent of its total production, while the rest is from open cast operation, ECL Director (Technical), Niladri Roy said. The miner aims at achieving the goal through a combination of strategies, like greater automation, engaging mine developers and operators (MDOs), and offering abandoned blocks to the private sector for residual coal mining in a revenue-sharing model, he said. We are currently producing nine million tonne from aro
Coal Minister Pralhad Joshi on Thursday directed the officers of the Eastern Coalfields Ltd (ECL) to work for achieving the production target of 50 MT during the current fiscal to meet the energy requirement of the country, a statement said. In 2021-22, ECL produced 45 million tonnes (MT) of coal. On the second day of his two-day visit to the ECL areas, Joshi inaugurated several infrastructure projects that would help increase coal-loading capacity and control the pollution caused by coal production and dispatch, the statement said. Joshi also visited the View Point of Sonepur Bazari opencast project. He inspected the project and held a review meeting with officials. The minister also visited the underground coal mine in Jhanjhara, about 225 metres deep. At an annual production capacity of 3.5 MT, it is the most coal-producing underground mine in India, the statement said. Joshi is the first coal minister to visit the mine. There, he interacted with coal mine workers, besides ...