Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister, Orissa, India.
TALCHER, INDIA: Naveen Patnaik, Chief Minister, Orissa, India has urged Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister, India to take expeditious steps for revival of the closed plant of Fertilizer Corporation of India (FCI) at Talcher, Orissa that delayed inordinately. Stating that the matter relating to the plant revival has been pending for a long time, Patnaik has stressed that the fertiliser unit on being revived can build synergy with the proposed Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemicals Investment Region (PCPIR) coming up in the state.
A consortium of three central PSU majors, Coal India Limited (CIL), GAIL India Limited and Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers (RCF) will revive the fertiliser plant. Each of the three companies will have an equal stake in the project. CIL had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Oil & Natural Gas Corporation for the coal gasification project while GAIL had inked MoU with RCF for setting up the fertilizer plant as a 50-50 joint venture. The total investment for revival is $1.58 billion (Rs 8,000-crore).
A coal block at Talcher Coalfields have been identified for this surface-based coal gasification project. This coal block has a capacity of 5.5 million tonne per annum and once washed, it will yield 3.7 million tonne. The gas so generated would be used for making urea and ammonium nitrate, one of the important explosives used by CIL. The fertiliser plant is expected to meet around 30 per cent of CIL’s requirement of ammonium nitrate.
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