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Following is from Samaja:

Following is from a report in Economic Times:

Union minister of state for chemicals and fertilizer, Srikant Jena on Sunday said the fertilizer plant at Talcher, 126 km from here would be revived with an investment

of Rs 12,000 crore. It provided direct and indirect employment to 30000 people in the area.

“The government will appoint consultants to suggest the modalities to raise finance, identify appropriate technology to revive the closed fertiliser unit at Talcher”, Mr Jena told ET.

The union government already had decided to revive Talcher plant. In fact, last October the Cabinet had set up an Empowered Committee of Secretaries under the chairmanship of Fertiliser Secretary Atul Chaturvedi to come up with possible financial models for the revival of the closed plants at Talcher, Barauni, Haldia, Ramagundam, Durgapur, Gorakhpur, Korba and Sindri.

The Talcher plant had liabilities of over Rs 4000 crore and assets worth of Rs 225 crore. “The liabilities comprise of mostly loans from the government of India and interest on loans. This can be waived once all the modalities of revival are worked out. We propose to expand its capacity to 12 million ton per annum [TPA].

Commercial production of Ammonia and Urea at the Talcher unit commenced in November 1980. Urea and Ammonia plants have been designed with a capacity to produce 4.95 lakh and 2.97 lakh tpa respectively.

However production of Urea and Ammonia was first suspended from April 1, 1999 due to its economic non-viability. In 2002, it came to grinding halt after the NDA government decided to close the unit following BIFR sanction.

Last year, the union government decided to renew Talcher unit and consulted with the companies like the Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers and National Fertilisers. It even decided to put in an investment of Rs 5,000 crore in the project in view of the ambitious target of production of 40 million tpa of urea by 2012.

… RCF is the only profit making public sector fertilizer company which has evinced interest to take over Talcher and Durgapur (West Bengal) Fertilizer plant for revival. In fact, the feasibility report on Talcher had already been submitted to RCF.

The revival plan included proposal to convert Talcher plant from a coal based urea plant to a gas-based urea unit with capacity to produce 2000 ton of ammonia per day. There is no problem of water in Talcher, non-availabilty of gas remains the biggest hurdle in the way of reviving the plant. There is no source of gas nearby.

The proposed gas pipe line to be laid by Reliance Industries carrying gas from Krishna-Godavari basin to West Bengal via Bhadrak in Orissa could be the solution, sources said. However, the ministry will take a final view after the consultants submit detailed report on the financial model and technological options available for the revival of the Talcher unit.

Following is from a report in Pioneer:

Union Minister of State for Chemicals and Fertilisers Srikant Jena has to push a few major projects for Orissa, feel industry watchers. One of the largest projects waiting for clearance is the Petroleum, Chemical and Petrochemical Investment Region (PCPIR) project at Paradip.

The State Government has proposed a PCPIR expecting an investment of Rs 2.75 lakh crore.

While PCPIRs have been approved for Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, the fate of Orissa’s proposal for it is still hanging. The PCPIR policy, notified in April 2007, seeks to ensure adoption of a holistic approach to the development of global scale industrial clusters in the petroleum, chemical and petrochemical sectors in an integrated and environment-friendly manner.

The Government of Orissa has taken the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) as the anchor investor. The IOCL is investing nearly Rs 30,000 crore for a greenfield refinery project at Paradip. The PCPIR proposal is, however, gathering dust in the files of the Ministry. So, it is high time Jena pushed the project to the Union Cabinet for approval by convincing the Cabinet-rank Minister MK Ajhagiri.

With this single clearance, Paradip will be in a position to attract huge investments in the petroleum, petrochemicals, fertilisers and other related areas. Similarly, Jena can push for the establishment of a NIPER (National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research) in Orissa.