New Delhi, July 03: Warning industries against any
violation of fuel agreements, the government on Friday closed coal
supply taps for many captive power plants with an aggregate
capacity of close to 1,300 mega watts.
The coal ministry also warned many other producers to come
out with details of their projects within 15 days, else coal
linkages with them will also be scrapped.
"After due consideration, the ministry has now approved
cancellation of linkages of 25 captive power plants (CPPs)
aggregating 1,292 MW, involving coal requirement of 5.844
million tonnes per annum," Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal
told reporters here today.
The minister said a good number of firms have not set up
their CPPs though coal linkages were given to them during
1996-2006.
"...despite considerable lapse of time a large number of
them did not set up the power plants despite having been
accorded the linkages," Jaiswal said
Besides, 19 others have been given 15 days time to
elaborate on the status of the projects failing which the
linkages will be cancelled, the minister said.
Also, seven other CPPs have been asked to sign long-term
fuel supply Agreement (FSA) with Coal India Ltd, the country's
largest coal producer.
He, however, did not reveal the names of any of those
CPPs. Most of plants with whom the government snapped the
coal-supply arrangement are based in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand,
and Maharashtra, Jaiswal said.
The minister maintained that the monitoring is an ongoing
process "for eliminating non-serios developers and supporting
serious developers."
In addition to reviewing the linkages, the government is
also assessing the status of captive coal blocks allocated to
many private and public sector firms and seeing if the coal is
being mined from the reserves or not.
The captive block will be de-allocated if the firm fails
to meet the set milestones and time frame to develop and mine
from the reserves, he said.
"We are reviewing the status of development of blocks
allotted to companies for captive use. We will cancel the
blocks wherever the need be. You will hear something in this
regard in next 10 days or so," he said.
Last month, the ministry held a meeting with private and
public sector companies, including NTPC, SAIL, and NMDC, and
reviewed the progress of work on the captive coal blocks
allotted to them. The Coal Ministry has already served
de-allocation notice on 14 coal properties.
The coal ministry has so far allotted 201 captive coal
blocks with a cumulative reserve of 42 billion tonnes. The
blocks are exclusively meant to cater to captive coal
requirements of the allottees.
Bureau Report