Uzbekistan plans to break into world's leaders list in coal mining
By Kamila Aliyeva
Uzbekistan Railways JSC (Uzbekistan Temir Yollari) published a plan for financial recovery of coal industry enterprises and their transformation into the world leaders.
Uzbekugol and Shargunkumir companies were transferred to the balance of Uzbekistan Railways in November last year by presidential decree. The purpose of this transfer was bringing the coal industry to a new level.
In particular, within the framework of the investment project “Modernization of Shargunkumir JSC” it is planned to increase the designed production capacity of the enterprise to 900,000 tons of coal per year.
The Chinese company, China Railway Tunnel Group (CRTG), launched the project, undertaking the task of cleaning 10 old buried mines with a total length of 1500 meters, as well as drilling 2,227 meters of the tunnel to produce additional volumes of coal.
The total cost of the project is $105.5 million. Completion of preparatory work, as well as the start of production is planned for the first quarter of 2020. A new 20-kilometer-long railway will be laid in order to deliver finished products from the Shargunkumir.
According to the forecasts, the coal reserves in the Shargun field are more than 33 million tons. It is the richest deposit in Uzbekistan. The company intends to increase the output to 700,000 tons per year in 2019 and to 900,000 tons per year in 2020.
It is expected that this field will contribute greatly to the country's ambition to take a new position in the rating of the coal-mining world leaders. China, the U.S., India, Germany, Russia, Ukraine are currently among largest producers of coal.
Uzbekistan’s explored reserves amount to 1.853 million tons of brown coal and 47 million tons of black coal. Total coal resources make over 5.7 billion tons.
Two coal fields are presently being developed - the Angren brown coal field in the Tashkent region and the Shargun anthracite deposit in the Surkhandarya region. Some bituminous coal is produced from the Baysun field, also in the southern region of Surkhandarya. Reflecting a modernization program at Angren, Uzbekistan’s lignite production has increased in recent years to more than 3 million tons per year. Over 85 percent of lignite production is consumed by the electric power sector, some after being processed by underground gasification. Bituminous output remains on a very small scale (around 70 000 t/year).
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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva
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