By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: The Naveen Jindal led Jindal Steel and Power on Saturday won the Gare Palma IV/6 coal block in Chhattisgarh by offering 85.25%, Union Coal Ministry said after declarations of results of 5 blocks, that were put for auction. Earlier, JSP had won the Gare Palma IV/1 coal mine at 25% bid premium of the representative price in the same State.
Gare Palma IV/6 coal block has a Geological Reserves 166.98 (MT). JSP had also won Utkal-C , Utkal-B1 and Utkal B2 in Odisha. In the latest auction of 5 Coal blocks, JSP won 3 blocks including 2 in Odisha , Utkal B1 and Utkal B 2 and 1 in Chhattisgarh’s Gare Palma IV/6. In total, JSP has bagged as many as 5 Coal Blocks in the on-going auction.
The Ministry of Coal had launched the Notice Inviting Tender (NIT) for the auction of coal mines for commercial mining under the 14th Tranche of CM(SP) Act, 2015, and 4th Tranche of MMDR Act, 1957 on December 16, 2021. During the e-auction conducted on the MSTC platform on March 31st and April 01st, 2022, cumulatively five CMSP coal mines were put up for auction. A summary of these coal mines is as under:
All five coal mines are fully explored coal mines.The total geological reserves for these five coal mines are 665.08 Million Ton(MT).The cumulative PRC for these coal mines is 14.756 MT per annum. Under the commercial coal mining auction process a total of 47 coal mines, including the above five coal mines auctioned in Tranche-4, have been successfully auctioned so far with a total cumulative PRC of 101.440 million ton per annum.
It may be noted here that JSP has secured sufficient reserves of Coal to enable the mega steel company to enhance its capacity for green steel making.JSP is the first steelmaker in the world to build Coal Gasification/DRI to produce Steel using clean coal technologies.
The High-Level Clearance Authority of Odisha, headed by Chief Minister Shri Naveen Patnaik, had approved JSP’s proposal to expand the capacity of its steel plant to 25.2 MTPA at Angul by 2030. This would be the world’s largest and greenest single-location steel plant, thus pitching Odisha’s USP on the global steel map.
The capacity expansion is expected to increase JSP’s investment in Odisha to more than ₹1,25,000 crores from ₹ 45,000 crores at present. This is also expected to generate enormous economic activity and employment opportunities in the State.
The coal gasification route, also known as an environment-friendly technology, would be helpful in producing steel using indigenous coal, leading towards Atma Nirbhar Bharat. This would reduce dependency on imported cooking coal and save huge foreign reserves. The coal gasification technology can also help India to overcome the perennial shortage of Oil, Gas, Methanol, Ammonia, and Urea.
