Coal news and updates

Govt receives 176 technical bids for 23 coal blocks

The tender process for the Scheduled II 23 coal mines was started on 27 December, 2014 with the release of tender documents. As a part of auction process, technical bids are completed. These 23 coal mines have geological reserves of over 1500 million tons and many firms have given multiple bids for one coal block.

As many as 176 bids have been received by the government for these 23 mines under Schedule II category (under production) in the first tranche of the auction process after the Supreme Court in September 2014 cancelled allotment of 204 mines since 1993 terming the allotment as "arbitrary and illegal".

Vedanta Group has bid for the most number of coal mines, 14 out of 23 on offer in the first round of auction. The auction also has aggressive bids by Aditya Birla Group, Adani and JSPL.

Vedanta Group put 25 bids through several group firms, with some mines getting multiple bids. Aditya Birla Group put in 15 bids for 8 blocks while JSPL put in 13 bids for 6 blocks and Adani bid for six.

The Gare Palma IV/7 block in Chhattisgarh with extractable reserves of 56.62 million tonnes (MT) was the most sought-after block attracting as many as 16 bids from firms like Balco, Hindalco, JSPL, Monnet Ispat, Sesa Sterlite and Sarda Energy & Mineral.

Parbatpur Central in Jharkhand attracted just one bid from JSW Steel.

Source: www.energysector.in