Ramagundam Coal Mine Project gets MoEFCC’s nod, set to extract 210 lakh tonne coal per year

Under this project, 182.28 million tonne coal is projected to be produced from open cast mining areas, and 132.70 million tonne from underground mining areas

Hyderabad: The Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has given its nod for the production of 2 Open Cast mines and 3 Ground mines with a capacity to produce 210 lakh tonne coal per annum.

This project has been designed to produce 314.98 million tonne coal, which would be supplied to the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) Ramagundam and other nearby coal-based industries in the Ramagundam region as per the agreements made.

GDK- 10 Incline, which has been shut down, and Vakilpally ground mine, which is going to be shut down, will be converted to open-cast mines, and the remaining coal in those mines will be completely extracted. In addition to this, coal will also be extracted from the Ramagundam opencast 1 expansion project, the Ramagundam opencast 2 expansion project, Adriyala shaft underground expansion project under this project- all are being brought under the umbrella of a special Ramagundam Coal Mine Project.

The initiative has been aimed at producing more coal with lesser costs without causing much environmental damage, by bringing the dysfunctional coal mines back into production, thereby increasing the life of Ramagundam coal mines by a lease of 25 more years of operational life.

After extracting coal from ground mines, there is still coal left inside those mines. In the recent past, this leftover coal was also extracted by securing permissions for open-cast mines. Kothagudem Gautam Khani opencast mine, Manuguru open cast mine, and Kothagudem VK coal mine are just some of such open cast mines.

In a similar way, the plan under the current project is to extract 56.79 million tonnes of coal from Ramagundam-1 area’s GDK 10 incline open cast mine, and 28.99 million tonnes of coal from Ramagundam-2 area Vakilpally mine.

In addition to this, it has been decided to extract under this very project the 25.98 million tonne coal left unmined for safety purposes within the boundary zone situated between the Ramagundam Open Cast-1 Expansion Project (Phase-2); 3.90 million tonne of coal reserves located adjacent to these mines, as well as the coal remaining at the boundary interfaces of the Ramagundam Open Cast-2 expansion project and the Adriyala shaft underground expansion mines, are also to be extracted under this project.

Under this initiative, 182.28 million tonnes of coal are projected to be produced from open-cast mining areas, and 132.70 million tonnes from underground mining areas. The average coal grade in this region has been identified as G-10.

With the objective of extracting the coal reserves spanning these five mines—and necessitating the acquisition of additional permits beyond those already in place—this undertaking has taken shape as a new project titled the “Ramagundam Coal Mine.”

Initially, the previously closed GDK-10 Incline underground mine will be converted into an open-cast mine. This operation will proceed as an extension of the Open Cast-1 mine, utilising the shovel-dumper method for excavation. The overburden generated during this process will be deposited into the void spaces created by coal extraction at the current RG OC-1 Extension Phase-2 site. The entire coal mining operation within the GDK-10 Incline area is expected to take eight years to complete.

Subsequently, the Vakilpalli mine will be converted into an open-cast mine. In this process, the overburden generated from the Vakilpalli open-cast mining area will be deposited into the void created within the GDK-10 Incline quarry, where mining operations have already been completed. Thus, even though two underground mines are being transformed into open-cast mines, the resulting quarries will effectively be backfilled using the very overburden generated from those sites.

Additionally, coal mining operations will continue in other open-cast mines that form part of the Ramagundam Coal Mine complex. These entire coal mining operations will be conducted using methods such as Longwall, Continuous Miner, Board and Pillar, and Road Headers, as well as through the Shovel-Dumper process.

This entire project requires a land area spanning 4,326.08 hectares. A total of 5,403 Singareni employees and another 600 contract personnel are set to work on this project. The project is being launched with a total capital investment of Rs 2,194.05 crore.

Given that several old mines across three areas within the Ramagundam region are being shut down, the RG Coal Mine can be described as a boon, as it will enable the Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) to provide alternative employment to the employees from those mines, while simultaneously addressing the deficit in coal production.

In light of the closure of older mines, a situation could have arisen where Singareni was unable to supply adequate coal to NTPC. However, thanks to the approval granted for the Ramagundam coal mine, Singareni’s commercial relationship with NTPC will continue without any interruptions. Thus, this new project can truly be described as a boon for Singareni.