The ministry of coal has decided to allow excess coal produced from captive mines to be used for purposes other than originally intended when such mines were allotted.
To this effect it has recently formed a committee which will decide on the transfer price of such coal and will look into matters connected therewith for disposal of surplus coal from captive blocks.
The committee will have the special secretary or the additional secretary from the coal ministry as its chairman and representatives from Coal India.The decision to allow coal mined from captive mines was originally taken last year.
Alok Perti, additional secretary coal ministry told ET: "The committee will come up with its recommendations in about two months. The idea is make sure excess coal can be put to good use for the benefit of the nation."
At present, no company other than Coal India can undertake commercial mining, which is not being able to ramp up production fast enough due to a number of environment related norms, necessitating ever-increasing imports.
The government had allowed private companies to mine coal for captive consumption, but they are still not allowed to sell any excess production in open market, or what is called merchant sale.
However, the government has already allowed Reliance Power to divert incremental coal production from mines allocated for its Sasan ultra mega power project (UMPP) to the company's 4000 mw power project at Chitrangi in Madhya Pradesh.
No comments:
Post a Comment