Live Mint: Govt roadblock to pilot coal-to-gas project

Six years after it was conceived, India’s first underground coal gasification project has remained a non-starter for lack of approval from the coal ministry for its pilot run at Vastan, near Surat in Gujarat, officials familiar with the situation said.

The project was to be jointly developed by Oil and Natural Gas Corp and Gujarat Industries Power Corp.

Underground coal gasification is a method of converting coal still in the ground into a combustible gas that can be used for industrial heating, power generation or the manufacture of hydrogen, synthetic natural gas or diesel fuel. The process allows the utilization of otherwise unrecoverable coal deposits in an “economically viable and environmentally safe way”, according to the World Coal Association website. MORE