ASSESSMENT OF THE COAL RESOURCES OF THE KYRGYZ REPUBLIC:

COAL CHARACTER AND DISTRIBUTION, GEOLOGY, MINING, AND IMPORTANCE TO THE NATION'S FUTURE

USGS Open File Report 97-137A (English)

C. RESOURCES AND RESERVES

1. Classification

There is no standard coal resource and reserve classification system that is applied worldwide. Two of the most widely used are the system adopted by the U.S. Geological Survey for use in the United States (Wood and others, 1983), and the system used in the former Soviet Union (Bybochkin and others, 1983; Modelevsky and others, 1979). In the USA system, resources are deposits of coal in such forms and amounts (thickness and depth) that economic extraction is currently or potentially feasible and identified resources are those resources whose location, rank, quality and quantity are known or estimated from specific geologic evidence. Reserve base is those parts of identified resources that meet specified minimum physical and chemical criteria related to current mining and production practices, including criteria for quality, depth, thickness, rank, and distance from points of measurement. Reserves are the parts of a coal reserve base which could be economically extracted or produced at the time of determination considering environmental, legal, and technologic constraints, and include only recoverable coal. An important point is that reserves are time-dependent -- today's resources may be tomorrow's reserves, and some of today's reserves may fail to be qualified for future economic conditions. In contrast, estimates of resources are relatively stable and are not necessarily responsive to changing technology, economics or politics.

In the former Soviet Union (FSU) system, the term "resources" is rarely used, and only in the sense of total geological resources. Usually, the term "reserves" is used, with modifiers, throughout the classification system, and "(total) geological reserves" is roughly resources in the USA system. Reserves in the western sense are dependent on the price of coal. In contrast, in the FSU classification system, the concepts of coal "price" and "value" are not as important and the term "reserves" may not imply economic recoverability today. The FSU term "reserves" (zapasy) does not necessarily mean that the market price of the coal equals or exceeds the cost of mining it, though "balance reserves" has somewhat that meaning.

In the FSU system "total geological reserves" are divided into "identified reserves" and "undiscovered reserves". "Identified reserves" are divided into "balance reserves" and "out-of-balance reserves". "Balance reserves" (commercial), are potentially recoverable and may be roughly equivalent to the economic portion of the identified resource category in the USA system. "Out-of-balance reserves" (noncommercial) are probably roughly equivalent to the subeconomic portion of the identified resource category of the USA system (fig.5).

Balance (commercial) reserves are further subdivided into categories A, B, C₁ and C₂ according to reliability of reserve estimation, and coal quality, and of mining conditions."(Kamenov and Zheleznova, 1984; Modelevsky and others, 1979).

Resources

In 1983, Dzhamanbayev reported the total energy resources of Kyrgyzstan, in percent, as follows:

Coal-----------------------52.97 percent

Shale----------------------- 0.25 percent

Peat ------------------------0.06 percent

Water Resources ----------45.21 percent

Other -----------------------1.51 percent

"Other" may be mostly oil and gas (See section II.E., Other Fossil Fuels.). Dzhamanbayev further states that the general geological reserves (resources) of Kyrgyz coals in 1982 amounted to 31, 415 million metric tonnes, of which the balance reserve is 2,429 million tonnes. Kopylov (1977) presented an estimate of 28,352 million tonnes of total geological reserves with 2,236 million tonnes in the balance reserve group. Other available estimates do not differ significantly.

The relationship of the estimated total geological reserves of an area to the portion of the total that can be reliably categorized as balance reserves varies according to the amount and distribution of accurate information that is available. Matveev (1976) recognized large differences in the degree of coal exploration that has been conducted in various parts of the world and stated that the coal resources of the former Soviet Union and of the United States were both relatively poorly explored compared to the coal areas of Europe. For comparison, only about 8 percent of the total geological reserves of Kyrgyzstan are in the balance reserve category, about the same as the former Soviet Union, and about 11 percent of the total estimated coal resources of the United States are categorized as demonstrated reserve base (reserves that may be economically recoverable). Perhaps areas such as the FSU and USA, each with more than 400,000 million tonnes of well-defined reserves, can afford to be poorly explored. If coal is to continue to contribute a major portion of the energy budget of Kyrgyzstan, the country must evaluate its resources and actively explore for exploitable coal.

2. Coal availability

The numbers cited in the preceding paragraph indicate, at first glance, that there are ample available coal resources in the areas discussed. However, it has long been recognized in the United States and elsewhere that if the effects of mined-out prime coal reserves, and environmental, industrial, economic, and social considerations are "priced" and the value of the coal is considered, the amount of coal that would be available and economically recoverable would be far less than the amount classed as "demonstrated reserve base" [or as "balance reserves"] (Rohrbacher and others, 1993).

The U.S. Geological Survey, Kentucky Geological Survey and the U.S. Bureau of Mines have jointly addressed the problems of coal availability and recoverability in pilot programs designed to produce results of wide-ranging applicability. To date, eleven areas in the Central Appalachian Coal Field, each area a quadrangle about 150 square kilometers in size, have been studied. Results of the studies show that 1.6 to 36.4 percent of the original coal resources have been mined and lost-in-mining, but that only 13 to 35 percent remains as a recoverable resource, and that only 1.6 to 23.1 percent of the original resource can be classed as economically recoverable reserves (Rohrbacher and others, 1994 and Scott, D.C., 1995) (fig.6).

The above cited sources conclude that:, "These results suggest that there may be several orders of magnitude of difference between coal resources and the amount of coal that can be economically recovered. If similar results are found in subsequent investigations, a strong argument can be made that traditional coal producing regions may experience resource depletion problems far greater and much sooner than previously thought. This will affect not only the coal industry, but the entire social and economic infrastructure of large areas." Availability and recoverability studies of the coal areas in Kyrgyzstzan could be equally as enlightening and provide reliable data for energy and social planning for the future.

3. Area and Region Reserve Estimates

Estimates of the quantities of coal that are present in the known deposits in the former Soviet Union (FSU) have long been conducted under a uniform methodology designed to provide quantified understanding of the available coal resources according to physical and chemical categories. Other similar classification systems are used elsewhere in the world. The system used by the USGS (Wood and others, 1983) is widely accepted in concept and practice in various countries around the world.

The FSU estimation system and the USGS system are philosophically similar but methodologically different. The FSU system is somewhat more rigid and tends to deprecate extrapolation of data from known to unknown areas. The USGS system allows and encourages extrapolation. No comparative estimates were made for this study but examination of maps showing resource and reserve areas indicates that the two systems produce somewhat comparable results, especially for areas where there are more data. The FSU categories A plus B are approximately equivalent to the USA category "measured". The FSU category C₁ is approximately equivalent to the USA category "indicated". The FSU category C₂ is approximately equivalent to the USA category "inferred". The FSU categories P₁, P₂, and P₃ are approximately equivalent to the USA categories "hypothetical" and "speculative" (fig.5).

A very recent estimate of the amount of balance (commercial) and non-balance (noncommercial) reserves of Kyrgyzstan is as follows, in million tonnes:

The above estimate may reflect recent production and unspecified engineering parameters. All of the estimates indicate that the balance reserves of Kyrgyzstan may be dangerously small.

Table 1 is one of many attempts to summarize various bodies of information regarding the estimated reserves of the better-known coal areas in Kyrgyzstan. Some of the estimates have been updated periodically and reflect increased knowledge as exploration and development is conducted and mining proceeds. How closely they represent remaining economically recoverable reserves in a western context is unknown.

Table 2 is an attempt to separate total estimated balance reserves into the portion that has been or is now closely involved in mining operations (and therefore may not be available for future use) and into the portion that has been explored but not exploited (and therefore may still be available for future use). The table shows some interesting relationships: 1) 62 percent of the total balance reserves are in the A+B+C₁ category; 2) In the inactive sectors alone the ratio between reserves in the A+B+C₁ category and in the C₂ category is about 1:1 ( In other parts of the world the ratio would probably be 1:3 or more). 3) 65 percent of the A+B+C₁ category reserves are in "explored only" sectors; and 4) 80 percent are reserves for underground mining.

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