The US energy giant Peabody Energy, which produced and marketed 246 million tonnes of coal globally during last year, has shown interests to invest in coal sector here.
A two member high profiled delegation, led by Jack Rogayski, director of the Peabody Energy, visited the country’s lone Barapukuria coal mining field last week and showed interests to invest here, a senior official said.
“Officials of Peabody came here on Tuesday last and showed their interests to invest at Barapukura coal mining in Dinajpur,” Engr Md Quamruzzaman, managing director of Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Limited (BCMCL) told daily sun yesterday.
Barapukuria coal mining company offered them to procure a bid document for underground mining as the contract period with the existing China company expired at the year end, BCMCL official said.
In December last year, the BCMCL invited eligible international companies for collecting bid documents within March 22 this year for extracting coal through underground method here, according to him.
A Chinese company has already collected bid document while several other companies from India, Australia and USA expressed interests to invest here, Quamruzzaman said.
Barapukuria mine has a reserve of around 389 million tonnes of coal and the company will extract 10 to 20 per cent of the total reserves through underground mining within next 30 years.
The government has so far extracted less than four million tonnes of coal from the Barapukuria coal field after resuming its production.
The US Peabody Energy is the world's largest private-sector coal company, which sold 246 million tonnes of coal in 2010 and earned nearly US$7 billion revenues, the company said.
Its coal contributes to 10 percent electricity generation in the USA and 2 percent worldwide, the company added.
Peabody Energy's operations are geographically diverse within the United States, UK, Australia, Mongolia, China, Singapore, Indonesia and some other countries around the world.
In 2010, we shipped 246 million tonnes of coal from nearly 9 billion tonnes of proven and probable coal reserves worldwide, the company added.
News Source: The Daily Sun