The Centre aims to revive the closed fertilizer unit of Fertiliser Corporation of India (FCI) at Talcher near within two years, according to Union minister for chemical and fertilizers, Srikanta Jena.
Addressing reporters here, Jena said, “The revival plan of the fertilizer plant at Talcher will be made public after the Union Cabinet approves the revival package prepared by a consultant. The consultant is likely to submit its final report within two months.”
Jena said the revival of the unit would cost around Rs 10,000 crore and the plant would have a capacity twice its previous capacity.
Similar revival plans for the other closed fertilizer units are also on the cards, the minister informed. Earlier, the Union Cabinet had decided to revive all the closed fertilizer plants under the erstwhile Fertilizer Corporation of India.
He said, the government has two options to meet the fuel requirement of the fertilizer plant which is one of the most important aspects of the plant revival.
The first option is gas which can be brought from the Godavari-Haldia pipeline and the other from the coal gasification plant of Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL) which would be cheaper.
The fertilizer ministry and Gas Authority of India Limited are working on bringing gas from the pipeline, Jena stated.
The minster said, he held discussions with the MCL authorities today for 5.7 million tonne coal linkage. MCL has agreed to provide the coal and further course of action would be taken at the government level, he added.
The minister visited the site of the closed fertilizer plant on Thursday. He was accompanied by KP Singdeo, president of the Orissa Pradesh Congress Committee and Amar Pradhan, Member of Parliament.
Apart from revival of the Talcher fertilizer plant, the Centre is going to invest Rs five lakh crore on the upcoming petrochemical complex at Paradeep.
The state government is understood to have submitted the land proposal for the petrochemical complex to the Centre two days back.
