India to secure coal assets in South Africa and Mozambique
PTI reported that Mr Sriprakash Jaiswal coal minister of India will talk with his counterparts in South Africa and Mozambique during his visit from January 5th 2011 to secure coal assets, aimed at bridging the growing domestic demand supply gap.
Mr Jaiswal told PTI that "We will ask for more coal blocks as our requirement is increasing continuously. We will discuss the issue with both the governments of South Africa and Mozambique."
South Africa and Mozambique are two major destinations for coal hungry firms across the globe, since, the resource used for steel making and power generation are scarce.
India, which largely depends upon state owned Coal India Limited for meeting its domestic need, is likely to see as much as 83 million tonnes of short supply in the current fiscal. All deficits are met through imports.
Mr Jaiswal said that "Acquiring assets abroad will be one of our main priorities this year."
The minister will be accompanied by coal secretary Mr C Balakrishnan and CIL chairman Mr PS Bhattacharya among other officials for the government to government level talks.
At present, CIL has two coal blocks in Mozambique, where it plans to begin its exploration in the next fiscal, while the production is expected to begin from 2014-15.
Mr Bhattacharya had earlier said that both the blocks are estimated to have combined coal reserves of about 1 billion tonnes.
Mr Jaiswal said that however, connectivity between the coal blocks and nearest port is a big transportation hurdle and the issue will be figured prominently with the talks with Mozambique government.
He added that "We are going to request them to build a bridge on the Dcondezi River, which falls between the coal blocks and port and reduces the time to five months in a year for carrying out geological prospecting and exploration."
Mr Jaiswal added his delegation will also hold discussions on transferring of coal to oil and underground Coal Gasification technologies with its South African counterpart and petro chemical giant Sasol.
Sasol is the world leader in coal to liquid and gas to liquid technologies, which converts natural gas and coal into petro products like diesel, naphtha etc. Its Secunda plant in South Africa with 160,000 barrels per day capacity is the worlds largest facility of its kind. It has also announced to set up a JV with the TATA group to build a CTL plant, worth USD 10 billion, in Orissa with a capacity of 80,000 barrels oil per day. The plant is expected to be operational by 2018.
(Soured from Press Trust of India)
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