The Madhya Pradesh government will allocate its 728.75-hectare Amelia (North) Coal Mining Project in the state’s northeast to two private partners: DB Power Limited and Essar Power.
The Dainik Bhaskar Group-promoted DB Power and Mumbai-based Essar are setting up their power plants of 1200-Mw capacity near the mines that fall in the main basin of Singrauli Coalfield of Sidhi district. It is also a part of Mohanban Reserved forest.
Today, the state cabinet decided to recommend Amelia north coal block, according to minister Narottam Mishra, also a government spokesperson.
“Of this, 60 per cent will go to its own company — MP Power generation Co Limited, and 20 per cent each will go to DB Power and Essar Power,” he said.
Madhya Pradesh State Mining Corporation Ltd (MPSMCL) will incur a project cost of Rs 330 crore. The mine will have maximum production through opencast process — at 2.8 million tonne per annum.
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At a later stage, underground mining will take place at 0.6 million tonne per annum. Amelia Coal Block has estimated Geological reserves of about 119.54 million tonnes of coal and extractable coal reserves of 83.94 million tonnes.
As a government official said, Amelia has 2.88 million tonnes per annum of coal by adopting opencast cum underground mining for the supply to power plants to be located in 50 km radius of coal block.
“(The state-owned) Sanjay Gandhi thermal power station will be supplied 60 per cent coal from the block,” he added.
MPSMCL proposes to produce 70.28 million tonnes under opencast mining. The balance 13.66 million tonnes will be produced by underground mining.
The corporation proposes to mine about 2.8 million tonnes of coal from Amelia by adopting opencast mining for the first 18 years, while from the 19th year it will go for underground mining.
The production of coal will be restricted to 2.2 million tonnes per annum. The balance 0.6 MTPA will be produced by underground mines till the 29th year, by which time opencast mining would cease. From the 30th year onwards, the production will only be through underground mining — till the exhaust of the deposit by 41st year.