Strategic thinking of simultaneous exploitation of coal and gas in deep mining

China is one of the countries which are mostly affected by gas disasters. The coal exploitation rapidly trans- fers to deep part at the speed of 10-25 m a year for China’s coal resources endowment and long-term demand. Deep coal mining faces more serious gas problem. From the safety,energy,environmental considerations,the research on deep coal mining has been strengthened. This paper analyzes the current situations and problems of simultaneous ex- ploitation of coal and gas in China. The direction of simultaneous exploitation of coal and gas is pointed out. China’ s coal bed methane (CBM) development should stick to the ground and underground combined mode of “ walking on two legs”,and improve the overall level of deep coal seam simultaneous exploitation of coal and gas technologies from the basic theory research,key technology and equipment development,demonstration project construction,policy sup- port,etc.