Difficulties and prospects of Coalbed methane in India as compared to North America

Over the past few decades Coalbed methane (CBM) has proved to be a major unconventional resource in the oil and gas industry. Hence luring tremendous amount of research work in this field. Today, though considered unconventional, it accounts for approximately 9.5% of the total gas production and reserves in USA. India is the 3rd largest producer of coal in the world but still there is not any commercial production of CBM started as yet. There are many technological barriers and different challenges in drilling and extraction techniques of CBM which have been overcome in the fields of North America to a great extent. This needs to be repeated in India. The objective of this paper is to discuss the challenges faced by this unconventional resource on technical economic and political grounds in India. And hence a comparison between the Indian and North American scenario in CBM is done. India has CBM potential of around 70 TCF gas which can supplement the declining conventional gas production and also cater to the growing demands of the country. Indian gas production is around 30% short of gas it requires. The economically recoverable CBM in USA is around 100 TCF. Currently USA itself produces approximately 3 TCF of CBM per year. In comparison in India we have successful pilot project at Raniganj which produces 22,000 scm/D. India faces a challenge to delineate its coal blocks and get the appraisal done as soon as possible. CBM field development requires a phased and structured evaluation programme right from fairway identification stage to full scale developmental stage for maximizing ROI. CBM has a very bright future in India if proper steps are taken in this direction by the DGH. Comparison between the two is important as it provides immense learning's on the ways to develop Indian CBM fields.