The Hindu Business Line : Coal for non-power sectors: Panel to discuss allocations

New Delhi, Oct 1 The Screening Committee of the Coal Ministry will be meeting soon to decide on the allocation of coal blocks to the steel, cement and iron sectors.

“The meeting of the Screening Committee was originally scheduled to have been held in the first week of October but it has now been postponed and we will be meeting in the second week to decide on the allocation of 23 blocks for the non-power sectors,” an official in the Coal Ministry told Business Line.

The Committee had met earlier this month to decide on the allocation of 15 blocks meant for the power sector out of the total 38 blocks.

The Committee is headed by the Coal Secretary, Mr H.C. Gupta, and has representatives from the Power, Steel and Environment and Forests Ministries. It also has representations from the State Governments of Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, and Maharashtra.

Share ratio

“The steel sector will be allocated six blocks while nine blocks are meant for the cement sector. The other blocks will be shared between the sponge iron and aluminium units,” the official said.

Meanwhile, the Ministry expects to get the green signal from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) on the allocation of the blocks to the power sector soon.

“After the last meeting, the Committee has recommended that 31 companies be allocated the blocks and the file has been sent to the PMO for final clearance. We expect this to happen in the next one or two weeks,” the official said.

Around eight out of the fifteen blocks have been allotted on a sharing basis, while the remaining seven blocks have been given on a stand-alone basis.

Reserves

It is estimated that the blocks which have been identified have reserves of around 3.5 billion tonnes, which could increase once companies start mining, and is capable of generating 18,000 MW power.

Some of the companies who have been selected are DB Power Ltd, Prakash Industries, Green Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, RPG Group’s CESC Ltd, Essar Power Ltd, Adani Power Ltd, Tata Power Ltd, GMR Energy Ltd, AES Chhattisgarh Energy Pvt Ltd, Malaxmi Group’s Navabharat Power Pvt Ltd, Reliance Energy Ltd’s Rosa Power Supply Co Ltd, Lanco Infratech Ltd, and Mittal Steel India Ltd.

Before the Committee met, the Ministry had asked the various State Governments to first do an exhaustive due diligence of companies whose names were forwarded to separate.

June allocation

In June this year, the Ministry approved allocation of 39 blocks to various sectors. Of the total coal blocks, 10 blocks having reserves worth 6,075 million tonnes (mt) were given to power companies, while 12 blocks having reserves of 800 mt were allocated to public and private companies under the captive mining dispensation.

Besides, another 17 blocks having reserves of 190 mt were allocated to Central and State PSUs for commercial mining, taking the total number of blocks allocated to 163.