Junior Minister for Coal Santosh Bagrodia said in a statement CIL entered into a memorandum of understanding with ONGC to jointly pursue a pilot-scale study for underground coal gasification.

He said ONGC, in turn, signed an agreement with Russia's Skochinsky Institute of Mining for technical consultancy in this field.

"CIL and Coal Mines Planning and Design Institute have identified 5 coal blocks and data packages were prepared for those blocks based on the formats supplied by ONGC and Skochinsky Institute of Mining," Bagrodia said.

He said the data supplied was examined by the Russian experts, and only one block named Kasta in Raniganj coalfield was selected for generation of additional data.