COUGAR PLANS MAJOR POWER STATION DEVELOPMENT IN PAKISTAN USING UNDERGROUND COAL GASIFICATION
Cougar Energy Limited (ASX Code: CXY) today announced plans to develop a 400 megawatt power station in Pakistan to be fuelled by underground coal gasification (UCG), following receipt of a letter of offer from the regional Government of Sindh.
Cougar Energy (UK) Ltd (“Cougar UK”), a 50% subsidiary of Cougar Energy is expected to finalise a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Government of Sindh within a month for an exploration licence over 65 square kilometres of the Thar coal field, located 300 kilometres east of Karachi.
Cougar Managing Director, Dr Len Walker, said the exploration licence would give Cougar UK access to a large coal deposit containing coal seams ranging from 8m to 23m thick. “Over the next 6-12 months, the company will undertake a drilling and testing program, and we aim to have completed a feasibility study for a power station of at least 400MW within 18 months,” Dr Walker said.
“A screening study on the potential for applying the UCG gasification process to the Thar coal deposit was undertaken in 2003 by Cougar Energy’s technology provider, Ergo Exergy Technologies Inc. of Canada.
The study concluded that, although significant additional field test work was required, the deposit was ”likely to support a UCG operation with output to sustain a power station in the range of 120MW to 1200MW”.
The UCG process enables deep coal deposits (more than100 metres underground) to be converted in situ into a synthetic gas which is recovered via production wells for use as a fuel for power generation and/or the production of petro-chemical products.
Cougar UK is in the process of setting up a Pakistan operating company. The company will be headed by Mr Ashraf Khan, who was largely responsible for negotiating access to the Thar coal deposit, and has extensive experience in banking and finance in Pakistan and the Middle East.
Technical staff and consultants will be appointed by the new Company as required by the development of the project.
The resource sought by Cougar UK is only a fraction of the total resource in the Thar Coal Field, which is estimated by the Government of Sindh to exceed 100 billion tonnes.
A number of studies on parts of the coal deposit have been undertaken for large scale open pit mining projects to provide coal as the fuel for conventional coal-fired power stations, but project developments have been hindered by the high cost and technical difficulty of conventional mining methods at the depths required, factors that are not applicable to the UCG process.
The focus of the Thar UCG project on power generation reflects the need for Pakistan to increase its generating output to meet escalating demand. At present load shedding is necessary to match demand and supply, with supply to homes in Karachi being cut for up to six hours per day.
As a result of the shortage of supply, prices received by power generators in Pakistan are more than double average Australian prices.
Both Cougar Energy Ltd and Cougar UK will continue to seek out further opportunities for developing significant projects using the UCG process as part of their strategy of creating a significant long-term international business.
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