Government approves Rs169-crore additional investment in Bina coal fields

Mumbai: The government has approved additional investment of Rs168.97 crore for the Bina Extension Opencast Project of Northern Coalfields Limited to augment supply to six million tonnes of non-coking coal annually.

The coal output from Bina Extension is linked to Anpara (1630 MW) and Obra TPS (1550 MW) in Uttar Pradesh and Indraprasth Thermal Power Station in New Delhi. The addition coal production would help meet the requirements of these power projects, finance minister P Chidambaram said after a meeting of the cabinet committee on economic affairs.

Bina Extension block falls in the southern part of Northeastern region of Moher sub-basin of Singrauli coalfields in the dip side of existing Bina block, Chidambaram said.

Nothern Coalfields has drawn up the coal production programmer up to the terminal year of 11th Plan on the basis of assessed demand of coal. To meet the demand and also to compensate loss of production due to exhaustion of some of the existing mines, NCL has planned six new projects.

Three new projects namely, Krishnashilla OCP (4.00 MTPA), Amlohri Expansion (10.00MTPA ) and Block-B OCP (3.50 MTPA) already received government approval. Other three projects, namely Bina Extension (6.00 MTPA), Khadia Expansion (10.00 MTPA) and Nigahi Expansion (15.00 MTPA) are at under different stages of approval.