Great Eastern Energy Corporation Ltd. (GEECL) led by Prashant Modi, on Monday, said it had won a 25 per cent stake in Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s (ONGC) Raniganj coal-bed methane (CBM) block in West Bengal.

Confirming the development, Prashant Modi, President and COO of GEECL said: “We are delighted to have been selected as the perfect bidder by ONGC on this key CBM Indian development opportunity. This brings in another exciting area of development into our operations. We have demonstrated our capabilities in this sector through Ranigunj (South) block and we look forward to working with our partners and enhancing the reserve base of the company”

The company said it had accepted ONGC’s offer on May 17, which is subject to execution of farm-in related and joint operatorship agreements with ONGC and the approval from the Government. GEECL’s Raniganj (South) block in Damodar Valley has an estimated in place reserves of 2.40 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas. The block started gas production from below coal seams (called CBM) in 2007. In 2010, GEECL was awarded the Mannargudi block (667 sq km) in Tamil Nadu. The block, as per the DGH, holds 0.98 tcf of in place gas reserves.