Coal news and updates

The power ministry has sent a note to the Cabinet seeking its approval for the new bidding document for domestic coal¬based ultra mega power projects (UMPPs), a government official told ET. The new bidding document will replace the old standard bidding document for the 4,000 MW power projects."We expect the Cabinet to clear the document in a month.After that we will go ahead with the bidding process and issue tenders," the official said.

The new bidding document looks at forming two special purpose vehicles (SPVs) for a UMPP instead of one as mentioned in the earlier document.

In his 2015 Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had proposed to set up five new UMPPs of 4,000 MW each in the `plug¬andplay' mode. At present, the government is eyeing UMPPs at Bedabahal in Odisha, Banka in Bihar and Cheyyur in Tamil Nadu.While the first two are based on domestic coal, the third will operate on imported coal. "The document for imported coal¬based UMPPs will take some more time to get completed. Then we will send it for Cabinet approval, too," the official said. However, differences between the coal and law ministries over allocation of mines might delay the award process of the projects, the official added. The law ministry has said that coal blocks for UMPPs can be given only through competitive bidding and cannot be allotted to a project which could be set up by a non¬government company, according to official sources. This comes after the power mini stry wrote to the law ministry , seeking faster re-allocation of coal blocks for an Odisha UMPP . The blocks were de¬allocated for transfer to a new special purpose vehicle (SPV) formed for the project. Previously, a ministry official had said that the power ministry was unhappy with involving the law ministry into the matter. The Meenakshi, Meenakshi¬B and Dipside of Meenakshi coal blocks given to the Bedabahal UMPP in Odisha were de¬allocated in August and their re¬allocation was to be made under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act of 1957.

Source: ET