The Bureau of Mines has developed several techniques for draining methane from coalbeds in advance of mining. Drilling long horizontal holes from an underground location is one of these techniques which has been successfully demonstrated in the Pittsburgh and Sunnyside coalbeds. A similar project was successfully conducted in the Mary Lee coalbed at Jim Walter Resources Inc., No. 4 mine. In a year about 1.13 million m3 (40 MMcf) of methane was recovered from the coalbed.

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