The New Nation - Internet Edition

Mashiur Rahaman

The nation has continued to suffer from energy crisis mainly due to over emphasising on and frequent change in national coal (draft) policy by the successive Governments instead of extracting the mineral resource, which should have given the nation's economy a great leap forward.

Experts said this, while talking to The New Nation and recalled the history of the coal mining, which began at least 150 years back in Africa, North America and Asian countries to meet the need of the human being without bothering for any official policy guidelines.

Adding to that the 'policy mania' of the politicians and bureaucrats, for reasons well known to them, coal mining was only neglected. As a result it impeded development and industralisation of a energy-hungry country like Bangladesh -a nation having great potentials of advancement and progress according to westerner.

In the present circumstances, mining coal reserves is a timely demand, which demands extraction without delay. Let the geography of the mining area determine the method of extraction, said experts.

"Policy has very little to do in developing coal sector in a country like Bangladesh. The lack of a definite policy has crippled our potential power sector," said Mullah Amzad Hussain, power sector expert and editor of a national magazine on energy.

Every time, controversy slowed down the coal sector development process over the extraction methods, said Mullah Amzad.

"Our policymakers try to specify this aspect in their draft policies that actually gives birth to controversies. But the international practice is, geographical and social scenario at a particular mining area suggests the best method of extraction. That could be underground or opencast mining," he added.

According to him, leaving the coal underground is same as having no coal at all.

Dr M Tamim, Chief Adviser's Special Assistant for Power and Energy Ministry informed that the Government was going to form a fresh review committee to evaluate the draft coal policy, comprising a group of high-level experts. But an official source said formation of such a committee was not possible in such short time.

However, if the government had formed the committee, it would have been the seventh one to review a draft coal policy within last two years.

According to former PDB Chairman Engineer Quamrul Islam Siddiqui, a coal policy should only deal with Governments' determination and direction from where coal should be extracted, ensuring minimum environmental and social damages if any.

"Our optimum target should be to obtain maximum coal. And if there is any damage, which is obvious, the mining authority should compensate. Role of a policy is to ensure that," said Quamrul. He was addressing a round table in the city.

In case of opencast mining, which the country should adopt for its optimum benefit, there are available modern technologies in the world to deal with the environmental issues, followed by a proper rehabilitation plan.

In this case, opencast mining is more preferable, as it gives optimum production, he added.

What ever the method of extraction may be, Bangladesh is not in the condition to let the coal remain underground any more, experts opined.

Our natural gas-based power sector could no longer sustain after 2011. In this present scenario, coal is the most and might be the only alternative power generation source for Bangladesh, said energy experts.

According to the last Draft of the Coal Policy in 2007, Bangladesh has a total 2,221 million tons of proven coal reserve, equivalent to about 70 TCF natural gas. These discovered coal from four existing coal sites were of high quality as they have a very low Sulphre content.

If present gas exploration does not come up with an exciting result, Bangladesh has no other source, other than coal, said experts.

According to Mollah Amzad, the residents of the mining areas would grow in number with the passage of time, mounting social and financial difficulties. Beside that, pressure would also mount further from international NGOs like the Green Peace and other environmental and social groups. It would be more difficult to manage them later, than it is now, he added.