Coal India’s exploration arm has added 7.8 billion tonnes of coal to India’s proven reserves base in 2019-20, the largest addition in a year so far, it said in a report.

It also added 9.75 billion tonnes of reserves to new resource category, which is a rough estimate based on preliminary exploration. These involved detailed exploration on 128 blocks and regional exploration of 17 blocks for coal and lignite. India’s proven coal reserve, based on detailed exploration, is estimated to be 155.6 billion tonnes while indicated reserves were around 326 billion tonnes as of April 2019.

In 2019-20, the exploration arm, Central Mine Planning & Design Institute Ltd, carried out 1.294 million metre of drilling under detailed exploration against its target of 1.4 million metre. It also carried out 116,000 metre of drilling under promotional and regional exploration against its target of 153,000 metre.

The exploration arm explores coal and lignite on behalf of the government and Coal India. It has also explored blocks offered by the Centre for commercial mining. The Centre has offered 41 blocks with a total reserve of 17 billion tonnes that can produce 225 million tonnes of coal a year.

CMPDIL has also prepared 32 project reports with production capacity addition of about 178 million tonnes per year. These projects would be taken up in the near future by Coal India and would aid the company in achieving its one billion tonnes production target by 2024.