Tajik coal mining companies plan to expand underground coal mining. To-date, Tajikistan has used mostly a surface mining technique of extracting coal (open-pit, open-cast or open cut mining).
This year, Fon-Yaghnob Mine, Dion Angishti Tojikiston, Qudrat-2010 and the Cola Production Department of the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies (MoINT) have purchased 43.2 million somoni (TJS) worth of quarrying equipment and three mine drilling rigs.
This year, underground mining has accounted for 5.5 percent of a total volume of production of this type of fossil fuel, an official source at a MoINT told Asia-Plus in an interview.
This year, extraction of coal has been carried out at nine deposits, and over the first eleven months of this year, Tajik coal producing companies have extracted more than 1.9 million tons of coal.
The Fon-Yaghnob Mine, which is owned by the Tajik Aluminum Company (TALCO), has reportedly accounted for nearly 50 percent of coal produced in the country over the report period.
More than 1.8 million tons of the extracted coal has been supplied to the coal-powered Dushanbe-2 combined heat and power (CHP) plant.
Over the same eleven-month period, Tajikistan has exported some 13,000 tons of coal to Pakistan and little more than 3,000 tons of coal to Uzbekistan.
Over the past four years, cola production in Tajikistan has increased more than twice – from 870,000 tons in 2014 to 1.9 million tons in 2018.
Since 2007, more than 160 industrial enterprises in Tajikistan have been shifted to coal and 230 coal-fired enterprises now operate in the country.
Exploration and development of coal fields has been intensified in Tajikistan since 2012 when Uzbekistan stopped gas shipments to Tajikistan.
Coal deposits of Tajikistan are reportedly concentrated in two coal basins: Tajik (Gissar-Darvaz) and Fergana. The first of them covers the absolute majority of deposits and occurrences concentrated in central and southern Tajikistan. Deposits and occurrences of northern Tajikistan belong to the South Fergana coal basin.
The coal deposits of the Tajik coal basin in the vast majority of cases are exposed in the mountain ranges of the Tien Shan and Pamir-Alay, framing the Afghan-Tajik basin.
The industrial potential of the Tajik coal basin is significant. According to experts from the Eurasian Development Bank (EDB), Tajikistan’s possible coal reserves are estimated at least 4.3 billion tons.
On the territory of Tajikistan there are four regions of development of carbonaceous deposits, each one has a number of characteristic features according to geological zoning: 1) Zarafshan-Gissar; 2) South Gissar; 3) the Pamir Darvaz; and 4) south-Fergana.
The biggest region, largest in acreage coal-bearing area that has the maximum number of coal veins, is Zarafshan-Gissar. The coal-bearing strata extend in almost uninterrupted strip from Panjakent to the river head of the Zarafshan River.
