Big-ticket bids to hot up Coal-To-Liquid project

Country’s top corporate houses including the Tatas, Mukesh Ambani-controlled Reliance Group, the Jindals along with the Adani Group and others will now have to compete and out bid each other to secure rights for a cluster of coal blocks—with estimated reserves of about 1.5 billion tonne—for their proposed $8 billion coal-to-liquid (CTL) project in India.

With the soaring cost of crude oil, currently close to $130 a barrel, there has been a huge rush of proposals from big corporate houses for coal block for setting up a coal-to-liquid project. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as the minister in-charge of coal, has approved setting up of one coal-to-liquid (CTL) project in the country. Singh has directed the ministry of coal to invite fresh expression of interests (EOIs) for allotment of identified coal blocks for setting up a CTL project.

As per the ministry of coal estimates, coal reserves of about 1 to 1.5 billion tonne are required to produce 3.5 million tonne oil & oil products. The block/cluster of these coal blocks should enable mining operations of 28-31 million tonne run-of-mine coal per annum for 30 years. The estimated investment for setting up such a project is in the range of $6 billion to $8 billion.

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