NEW DELHI: The government is looking to douse a century-old fire that has blocked the extraction of high-quality coal worth an estimated Rs 60,000 crore from the underground mine, with plans to relocate people settled in the area.The plan is to convert the mine at Dhanbad in Jharkand into an opencast one to extract reserves of 195 billion tonnes by extinguishing the fire that has been burning at least since 1916, when it was detected, officials said.Power, coal and renewable energy minister Piyush Goyal last week met Damodar Valley Corporation chairman AWK Langstieh Jharkhand chief minister Raghubar Das , secretaries of the power and coal ministries and various other officials to devise a way of extinguishing the fire.“Right now there is no technology available in India or anywhere in the world to douse fire in an underground mine, that too in a mine of this size. The only doable solution is to turn it into an opencast mine and then try and extinguish it,” an official said.Goyal has sought land from DVC and Jharkhand to relocate more than 1 lakh families living in an area of about 500 sq km. “The coal seam in Jharia is about 200 metres deep and it will be very dangerous to douse the fire with the families residing over the land. But before we relocate them, we need land,” the official said.The field is owned by Coal India Ltd subsidiary Bharat Coking Coal Ltd, which is primarily engaged in the mining of coking coal. It meets more than half the coking coal requirement of India’s steel sector. India imports most of its coking coal requirement of around $4 billion. Putting out the fire would mean saving on some of this amount.The government has an ambitious production target of 1 billion tonnes of coal by 2019-20. According to coal secretary Anil Swarup, the government has already identified mines with assets of more than 908 million tonnnes.In 1975, a Russian team had tried and failed to put out the fire. Later, the World Bank suggested turning it into an opencast mine. However, previous governments haven’t been able to do this following disputes with residents, small businessmen and the local mafia who have been mining small quantities of coking coal.