Coal India's 3 projects recommended for green clearance/news05012012

An Environment Ministry's panel has recommended Coal India's three projects, including one for capacity augmentation, for green clearance.

'Three coal projects of Coal India - Samleshwari OCP, Dakra OCP and Gose OCP - which came up for discussion during the day-long meeting of Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) held, were recommended for environment clearance,' a source in the Coal Ministry said.

Samleshwari open cast project (OCP) at IB valley coalfields in Orissa envisages expanding production capacity to 11 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) from five MTPA.

The 11-MTPA greenfield Gose OCP of CIL subsidiary Central Coalfields in Hazaribagh, Jharkhand, had been awaiting go-ahead for past one month.

The third one MTPA Dakra OCP had been awaiting clearances for renewal of mining lease, the source said.

Earlier, CIL had said that inordinate delays in the receipt of green clearances for mining proposals have stalled the investment decisions on 67 new projects and also affected the expansion work in ongoing projects, translating into an annual production loss of 200MT.

'Our 168 projects are pending environment and forest clearances at the Centre and State levels. Sixty-seven of these projects are greenfield and we are unable to make any investment in these. Remaining are ongoing expansion schemes, which too have been stalled,' CIL chairman N C Jha had said.

As per the stipulated procedure, forest clearances should be granted within 300 days. However, as per an assessment by the company, the process is taking as long as six years in some cases.

Apart from in-principle approval, which gets delayed by up to six years, final clearance takes an equally long time, he said.

At 9.56 am, Coal India was trading at Rs325.50, down by 0.40%, with a volume of 0.49 lakh shares on the BSE.

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