Welcome to Barapukuria Coal Mining Company Limited (BCMCL)

The Barapukuria coal deposit was discovered in 1985 when the geological Survey of Bangladesh drilled a wild-cat borehole to investigate a negative gravity anomaly in the area. Since that time, a total of 35 deep boreholes have been drilled, delimiting the area of coal resources and determining the structure, and the coal seam characteristics in terms of thickness and quality.

The surface geology over the entire project area comprises the Tertiary Dupi Tila formation, which unconformably overlays the Gondwana (Permian) coal-bearing sediments. These are folded into an asymmetric syncline or basin, whose axis strikes approximately north-south. A major fault forms the eastern limit of the deposit, beyond which, Archaean basement rocks (Pre-Cambrian) are present immediately below the Dupi Tila. Several lesser faults have been identified within the coal basin by geophysical seismic surveying.

The Gondwana sequence comprises predominantly sandstones, with subordinate siltstones and mudstones, which contain up to six coal seams in the centre of the basin. The lowest of these, Seam VI is the principal target seam of the mine project, and has an average thickness of 36m. It consists of a weakly-caking bituminous coal with average sulphur content of about 0.53% making it an ideal fuel for power generation, which is the primary identified market for the coal. In-seam inclusions of dirt (non-coal material) are variable, but mainly restricted to the uppermost and lowermost sections of the seam.