Tatas seek coal blocks for generating crude
8 Dec 2007, 0114 hrs IST,Sanjay Dutta,TNN
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
NEW DELHI: The Tata Group has sought access to 30 million tonnes of black diamond a year for producing three million barrels of oil and 1,500 mw of power from a CTL (coal-to-liquid) project it proposes to set up in joint venture with South African oil firm Sasol, a pioneer in the field.
Tata Group has an understanding with Sasol, the world’s largest producer of oil from coal. The latter is reported to be willing to pump in up to $6 billion in the project that will be the first of its kind in India.
At a meeting with executives handling the project on Tuesday, the coal ministry sought more clarity on the project and asked the companies to establish the economics. The Planning Commission too had earlier raised some points over the economics of the project. Government officials told the company executives that the demand for access to coal acreages needs to be studied further to see from where allocations can be made, if at all.
The Tata Group and Sasol have an understanding on the project and the combine wants the government to make the CTL unit eligible for captive mining. This can be done by notifying the proposed CTL unit as an end-user. The combine has also sought allocation of coal acreages with a total of 1.5-2 billion tonnes of reserves that are to be dedicated to the project.
Executives related to the CTL plan project an annual saving of over $25 billion to the exchequer in crude import substitution if it is allowed to be set up. They also say the technology is suitable for India which has the fourth-largest coal reserves in the world. Most of the reserves, however, have high ash content and need to be processed for use in power and steel plants.
Initially, the firms had talked about a CTL plant with a capacity of producing 80,000 barrels a day from coal. A plant of such a capacity is estimated to consume about 60,000 tonnes of coal per day. |
