The Centre has assured the State-owned Singareni Collieries Co Ltd (SCCL) of allocation of additional coal blocks to fuel its growth and expansion plans.
On the sidelines of 39th Meeting of the Standing Committee on safety in Coal Mines held in New Delhi on Friday, Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal has assured that the Centre would extend necessary support and allocate coal blocks to SCCL in efforts to achieve a higher production target by 2019-20, according to a SCCL statement.
The Union Minister outlined the CIL Grand Plan of enhancing coal production from 500MT to 1000 MT by 2019-20.
During the meeting, N.Sridhar, Chairman & Managing Director, SCCL, briefed about the SCCL’s current year performance likely to surpass 52MT. The SCCL informed it has revised upward its production projections to 75.6 MT by 2019-20 (against Ministry of Coal Working Group earlier projection of 60.60 MT). He also mentioned about the limitations such as deep seated reserves, higher stripping ratio and poor quality concerns in further enhancing output.
Sridhar further informed that SCCL has applied for six coal blocks recently which includes Parsa East–Kanta Basan, Talaipalli, Parsa, Gare Palma Sector-II and Mahanadi–Machchhakata and Naini.
The Coal Ministry has identified 43 coal blocks (merged into 30) for allocation to Government companies as provided in the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Ordinance, 2014.