By Our Correspondent
BHUBANESWAR/ANGUL: The Singareni Collieries Company , a Joint venture of Telangana Government and Union Coal Ministry is expected to resume its mining activities at Naini Coal block in Odisha’s Angul to produce 10 lakh tonnes of coal production during 2021-22. A public hearing was completed at Angul in Odisha and N Sridhar, Chairman and Managing Director of the CPSU, hoped that the company would resume mining activities in next fiscal.
The Naini coal block, spread across 912 acres and 783 hectares is in forest area, would be a boon for Singareni. From estimated total coal reserves of 340 million tonnes, it is likely to mine about 10 million tonnes of coal per year coal for the next 38 years.
Presently in the opencast mines 6 to 7 cubic meters of overburden has to be removed per ton of coal but at Naini block open cast mine only 2.58 cubic meters of over burden needs to be removed. The coal is high grade (G-10). A washery with a capacity of 80 lakh tonnes per year is also being planned to be set up.
The mining company has planned a target of 10 lakh tonnes of coal production during 2021-22 and all arrangements are being made for mining. Additional District Magistrate Santosh Kumar Pradhan headed the Naini coal block people’s opinion survey program at Angul in Odisha District. People’s opinion was sought under the supervision of officials.
The Singareni Collieries Company Limited or SCCL is a government-owned coal mining company in India. One of the public sector undertakings, the company is jointly owned by the Telangana government and the Union Government. The Union Government’s administration of the company is through the Ministry of Coal.
Few days back, the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation (Tangedco) had invited bids to appoint a mine developer and operator for the Chandrabila Coal Mine of Angul district in Odisha for its captive use.The State utility plans to mine 10 million tonnes of coal per annum from the coal block located at Talcher Coalfield for three ongoing thermal power plants with a total capacity of 3,300 MW.
The Chandrabila coal block is spread across 9.32 square kilometres with a total geographical reserve of 896.16 million tonnes. Tamil Nadu has been allowed to mine 10 million tonnes per annum for 35 years, including a development period of 42 months. The block was allocated in 2015.
“The coal mined from this block shall be put to captive use in Tangedco’s end-use power projects of 1X660MW Ennore Expansion Thermal Power Station, 2X660 MW Ennore SEZ Thermal Power Station and 2X660 MW Udangudi Stage-I Thermal Power Project in Tuticorin,” the tender document said.
As per the coal linkage approved by the Ministry of Coal, the Ennore Expansion project would get 1.885 MTPA, while Ennore SEZ and Udangudi projects would be supplied 3.682 MTPA and 3.647 MTPA respectively. The domestic coal would be supplied for the 50 per cent of plant load factor of the three thermal power projects and the rest would be met through imported coal.
