CIL's 3 projects recommended for green clearance

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 yesterday, 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 tonne 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 200 million tonne.

"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 NC 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.

A total of 114 projects of the public sector firm are awaiting stage one clearance (in-principle approval), of which 92 projects are waiting for the green signal at the State level, while the remaining await the nod from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF).

As far as stage two clearance (final approval) is concerned, 54 proposals are stuck, including 31 at the State level.

CIL produced 431 million tonne coal last fiscal. The company's output target for the ongoing fiscal was recently scaled down to 440 million tonne from 452 million tonne set earlier.