The Indian public sector giant Coal India Ltd (CIL) has announced that it will host a global tender by the end of this month to invite expressions of interest (EOIs) for the development of abandoned underground coal mines.
There are 121 mines which have been abandoned since nationalization mainly due to difficult mining conditions. However, due to rising prices for coal, CIL has decided to invite EOIs from steelmakers for the revival of the mines.
So far, CIL has identified 26 mines for revival, each having 10 million mt of reserves. Most of the mines are located in the Bharat Coking Coal and Central Coalfield areas. According to preliminary estimates, the total capacity of these mines is about 1.34 billion mt. Out of the 26 mines, 10 hold reserves of coking coal with a combined total of around 358 million mt.