Centre reiterates commitment to revive Talcher fertilizer unit

The Centre has reiterated that it is keen on the revival of the closed fertilizer unit belonging to the Fertilizer Corporation of India (FCI) at Talcher.

“The Government of India is very keen on reviving the closed fertilizer plant at Talcher and we are getting good support from the Orissa government for the revival plan”, Deepak Singhal, joint secretary, Union ministry of fertilizers told reporters here after a review meeting with the state Chief Secretary T K Mishra.

Three public sector units- Coal India Limited (CIL), GAIL India Limited and Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers Limited (RCF) will form a consortium to revive the closed unit of Fertilizer Corporation of India at Talcher at a cost of Rs 10,000 crore.

The fertilizer plant at Talcher which has been closed since 2002, will run on the coal gasification route instead of the natural gas route.

Earlier, the Union minister of state for chemicals and fertilizers Srikant Jena had said that the closed fertilizer unit was likely to be revived within two years.

However, the major challenge to the revival plan was to bring the ailing FCI out of the purview of the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR).

Each of the three companies- CIL, GAIL and RCF which will have an equal stake in the project, have already completed two rounds of talks on the matter

A coal block at Talcher Coalfields under the command area of Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL), a subsidiary of CIL, been identified for this surface-based coal gasification project.

This coal block has a capacity of 5.5 million tonnes per annum and once washed, it will yield 3.7 million tonnes.

The gas so generated would be used for making urea and ammonium nitrate, one of the important explosives used by CIL. The fertilizer plant is expected to meet around 30 per cent of CIL's requirement of ammonium nitrate.