JSPL to sign MoU with Orissa for Rs 45,000 cr

Jindal Steel & Power Limited (JSPL) hopes to sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Orissa government for its Rs 45,000-crore coal to liquid (CTL) project next month.

The CTL project, which will produce 80,000 barrels of oil per day, would require 5541 acres of land and generate direct as well as indirect employment for 32,000 people. The Government of India has allocated the Ramchandi coal block in Orissa under the command area of Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL) for the project. The CTL project needs around 30 million tonnes of washed coal every day.

“We hope to sign the MoU with the Orissa government for the CTL project next month. The project is being taken up at an investment of Rs 45,000 crore and it will produce 80,000 barrels of oil per day”, Naveen Jindal, executive vice chairman and managing director of JSPL told reporters after emerging out of a meeting with the state Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.The location for the CTL project is yet to be finalized but Angul has been identified as one of the possible locations, he indicated. Under this project, the locally available coal will be used to produce diesel and other useful byproducts.Jindal stated that the company's cumulative investments in Orissa would reach around Rs one lakh crore over the next ten years. Besides the CTL project, JSPL is setting up a 12.5 million tonne per annum (mtpa) steel plant at a cost of Rs52,000 crore, a 1320 MW independent power plant at an investment of Rs 6600 crore and a downstream industrial park at Parang near Angul, entailing a cost of Rs 500 crore.

Together, all these projects would generate direct and indirect employment for 82,050 people. Asked on the progress of the steel plant, Jindal said, “The production from our steel plant is expected to begin from next year. The steel plant will make use of coal gasification technology and this is the first time that any steel plant would be making use of such a technology.”

He said that 200 families affected by the steel project have already been shifted to the company's rehabilitation colony, claiming that the families living in the colony were a happy lot.