North Karanpura Coalfield is located in Hazaribagh

Hazaribagh District

Hazaribagh district is one of the twenty-four districts of Jharkhand state, India, and Hazaribagh town is the district headquarters. It is currently a part of the Red Corridor.-Etymology:The district is named after its headquarters, the town of Hazaribagh...

, Ramgarh

Ramgarh district

Ramgarh district is one of the 24 districts in the Indian state of Jharkhand.-Ramgarh Raj:Ramgarh was the seat of a major Zamindari in the era of the British Raj....

 and Chatra

Chatra District

Chatra district is one of the twenty-four districts of Jharkhand state, India, and Chatra is the administrative headquarters of this district. The district covers an area of 3706 km². It has a population of 790,680 .-History:...

 districts in the India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n state

States and territories of India

India is a federal union of states comprising twenty-eight states and seven union territories. The states and territories are further subdivided into districts and so on.-List of states and territories:...

 of Jharkhand

Jharkhand

Jharkhand is a state in eastern India. It was carved out of the southern part of Bihar on 15 November 2000. Jharkhand shares its border with the states of Bihar to the north, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to the west, Orissa to the south, and West Bengal to the east...

. The coalfield spreads over to Palamu district

Palamu District

Palamau is one of the twenty-four districts of Jharkhand state, India. The district is currently a part of the Red Corridor.-Geography:The district lies between 23°50′ and 24°8′ north latitude and between 83°55′ and 84°30′ east longitude...

.

Overview

In 1917, L.S.S.O’Malley described the coalfields in the upper reaches of the Damodar

Damodar River

Damodar River originates near Chandwa village, Palamau district, on the Chota Nagpur Plateau in the Jharkhand state in eastern India, and flows eastward for about 592 km through the states of Jharkhand and West Bengal to the estaury of the River Hooghly...

 as follows: "Near the western boundary of Jharia field is that of Bokaro, covering" 220 square miles (569.8 km²), "with an estimated content of 1,500 million tons; close by… is the Ramgarh field (40 square miles), in which, however, coal is believed to be of inferior quality. A still larger field in the same district is that called Karanpura, which extends over" 544 square miles (1,409 km²) "and has an estimated capacity of 9,000 million tons."

The Coalfield

There are large numbers of seams in the North Karanpura Coalfield, some with thicknes over 72 feet.

North Karnpura Coalfield covers an area of 1230 square kilometres (474.9 sq mi) and has total coal reserves of 13,110.84 million tonnes.

Transport

In 1927, Bengal Nagpur Railway opened the 72 miles (115.9 km) Chandil-Barkakana section to traffic. In the same year the Central India Coalfields Railway opened the Gomoh-Barkakana line. It was extended to Daltonganj in 1929. Later these lines were amalgamated with East India Railway.Once the Koderma-Hazaribagh-Barkakana line is completed (expected in 2014), it will mean a new outlet for coal from the area.

Coal-bed methne

ONGC’s preliminary assessment of coal-bed methane

Coalbed methane

Coalbed methane or Coal Bed Methane, coalbed gas or coal mine methane is a form of natural gas extracted from coal beds. In recent decades it has become an important source of energy in United States, Canada, and other countries...

indicates that four Damodar Valley coalfields – Jharia, Bokaro, North Karanpura and Raniganj – to be the most prospective.