The Sohagpur Coalfield Project - A collaborative study of potential coking coal resources by the Geological Survey of India and the U.S. Geological Survey

The Geological Survey of India (GSI), Coal Wing, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Energy Resources Team, conducted a collaborative study of the potential for coking coal resources within the Sohagpur coalfield, Madhya Pradesh, India from 1995 to 2001. The coalfield is located within an extensional basin that contains Permian- and Triassic-age strata of the Gondwana Supergroup (Figs. 1 and 2). The purposes of the study were to perform a synthesis of previous work and. an integrated analysis of the basin of deposition with particular emphasis on the regional stratigraphy and depositional environments of the coal-bearing strata, the geologic structure of the basin, and the geochemistry of the coal in order to understand the geologic controls on the distribution of coking coals within the basin. The results of this study have been published previously (Mukhopadhyay and others, 2001a, b), and this paper provides a general overview of our findings.