December 04, 2008

CESC wants 1,000 acre land for Jharkhand power plant

It is reported that CESC will shortly kick off talks with the Jharkhand government to acquire 1,000 acres in the Dumka district to set up a Greenfield 1,000 MW pithead thermal station. The decision comes after it was officially allocated the Mohuagarhi coal block in the state by the coal ministry earlier this week.

Mr Sumantra Banerjee MD of CESC said that “Since the coal block has been allocated, we can now approach the Jharkhand government for land in a specific location. And since it will be a pithead thermal station, all freight and railway logistics issues would be automatically obviated. We are yet to finalize the configuration of the 1,000 MW power stations, but the annual coal requirement would be roughly 4 million tonnes.”

CESC officials have pegged the project cost at a shade over INR 4,000 crore at roughly INR 4 crore per megawatt. Mr Banerjee said that “We will shortly start discussions with equipment suppliers, although we are yet to take a call on financing options.”

Once the project receives in principle nod from the Jharkhand government, CESC will in parallel kick off the process of securing the statutory forest and environment clearances. The Mohuagarhi block allocated by the coal ministry has total mine able reserves of 110 million tonnes over a 30 year lifespan.