Ruias-owned Essar Oil and Gas Exploration and Production will invest up to Rs 3,000 crore (EUR 320M) in its flagship coal bed methane (CBM) block in Raniganj, West Bengal to raise gas production.
CBM is natural gas stored or absorbed in coal seams and contains 90–95% methane.
The company will drill new wells and expect that it will increase the production to almost 4 to 5 million standard cubic meters of gas from the current 0.93 million standard cubic meters.
The company has also signed MoUs with the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and the University of Queensland for research and development in enhanced CBM recovery techniques and CO2 sequestration.
The company plans to extract CO2 from the neighbouring industries, like steel plants, sequester it, and put it back into the field’s dead wells for enhanced gas recovery.
Currently, the company accounts for about 65% of India’s CBM production.
