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| Nalco's Rs 16,000cr investment plan under cloud |
| Dillip Satapathy / Kolkata/ Bhubaneswar Apr 06, 2009, 00:45 IST |
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The proposed Rs 16,345 crore second aluminium and captive power complex of National Aluminium Company (Nalco) in Orissa has been pushed into uncertainty with the Orissa government asking the company to shift the venue of the project from Jharsuguda in western Orissa to Gopalpur in southern parts of the state.
Gopalpur is not a suitable location for the project, says C.R Pradhan, chairman cum managing director of the company.
The project envisaged setting up of a 0.5 million tonnes per annum aluminium smelter along with a 1260 Mw captive power plant (CPP).
Jharsuguda was chosen as the possible site for the plant as it is in the vicinity of the IB valley coalfields. This apart, given the backdrop of problems in land acquisition for industrial units in Orissa, the land required for the project was expected to be trouble-free as most part of the identified patch was government and barren land.
However, the company fears, moving the project to Gopalpur will mean going farther from the coal mines which will push up the cost of transportation of coal, a key raw material. Besides, going by the present railway infrastructure in the state, it is more convenient to carry alumina from the company’s refinery at Damanjodi in Koraput district for conversion into aluminium at Jharsuguda compared to carrying it from Damanjodi to Gopalpur.
Sources said, the state government has suggested shifting of the location of the project as it feels, Jharsuguda is saturated with a number of mega industries, particularly in sectors like power, aluminium and steel, in the pipeline. In fact, the State Pollution Control Board has recently initiated steps to conduct a study on carrying capacity of industries in Sambalpur-Jharsuguda belt.
It invited technical offers from 5 IITs of the country namely (Kanpur, Kharagpur, Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai), the Nagpur based National Environment Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) and Delhi based Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) for conducting the study.
The study is expected to consider the existing level of emission, level of water and air pollution at present and quantify the level of pollution in future among other things. Based on the study, it will recommend about the maximum number of industries which can come up in the area. Since the seasonal data for a period of one year will be required for making the recommendations, the study is likely to take more than a year.
Under the circumstances, if the government insists on shifting the location of the project to Gopalpur, the company will be forced to shelve its plan for a second aluminium and power complex, after its existing smelter and power complex at Angul, in the state, the company sources said.
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