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Following is from a report in Telegraph.

The Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) for setting up the Rs 2.7 lakh crore petroleum, chemicals and petrochemicals investment region (PCPIR) near Paradip was signed between the state and the Centre today.

The PCPIR will come up over 284.15sqkm in Jagatsinghpur and Kendrapara districts with a proposed investment of Rs 2,77,734 crore.

While Orissa Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) chairman-cum managing director Priyabrata Patnaik represented the state, additional secretary of the department of chemical and petrochemicals Geeta Menon signed on behalf of the Union government. Patnaik said, “The MoA was signed and the project has got legal sanction. All the work for the project will now proceed according to the plan.”

… Sources said the state government has requested the Centre to take up the project work in the 12th five year plan. Under the plan, an airport will come up at Paradip and two direct roads from Bhubaneswar to Puri Paradeep will be built. One of these will begin from Uttara Square on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar.

Idco will act as a nodal department to help the government develop the PCPIR. “A meeting chaired by CM Naveen Patnaik is likely to be held this week to finalise the detailed project report.”

An apex body under the chairmanship of the chief minister has already been constituted to look into the implementation of the project. Under the proposed plan, a regional development authority (RDA) will be set up. The RDA will have autonomous power and other authorities will not be able to intervene in the work of the RDA.

… Officials hope that land acquisition for the project would not be a problem. “Instead of taking lands directly from people, we will go for swapping of land. If the government takes one acre of land, the same area of land will be allotted to the owner in another place,” said an official associated with the project.

Sources said the government had asked the Centre to build a coastal corridor that would connect Paradip to Chennai. “Andhra Pradesh has also supported Orissa. The Centre has taken the demand seriously,” said the official.

The Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL) will be the anchor tenant for the project. The PCPIR will also include the IOCL’s refinery at Paradip, which in the first phase, will have an investment of Rs 29,777 crore. The refinery will have a crude and vacuum distillation unit, a hydro-cracking unit and a delayed coker unit. It will also have an integrated gasification combined cycle plant for production of steam, power and hydrogen from petroleum coke for captive use in the refinery.

Another leading player, Deepak Fertilizers, will set up a greenfield ammonium nitrate plant in the PCPIR. Tata Steel and the South Africa-based Sasol have expressed interest in setting up a coal to liquid project under the PCPIR. The project is likely to come up by 2018 in an area of 3,000 acres. The plant will produce 80,000 barrels of liquid fuel from coal per day.

According to the plan, Rs 13,634 crore will be invested for infrastructure development in the PCPIR. Of this, the Centre will provide Rs 716 crore under Viability Gap Funding (VGF) to ensure infrastructure linkages such as rail, road (national highways), ports, airports and telecom through public-private partnership. The state’s share will be Rs 1,796 crore while the remaining Rs 11,122 crore will be generated through private participation.

Following is an excerpt from a report in Business Standard.

Mining major Coal India (CIL), Gas Authority of India (GAIL) and Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers (RCF) will come together to establish a project for producing urea and ammonium nitrate at Tachler, Orissa.

CIL has earmarked about 5.5 million tonnes of raw coal for the scheme, which once washed will come down to approximately 3.7 million tonnes of coal with less than 30 per cent ash content. Subsequently, GAIL is to gasify the fuel to produce urea and ammonium nitrate.

“The exact investment figures have not been fixed as the technology that will be utilised to produce urea and ammonium nitrate is still being studied. But an estimated few thousand crores are likely to be spent,” CIL chairman Partha S. Bhattacharyya said.

…“The joint venture (JV) has been mandated to produce a sizable amount of urea as well as 20-30 per cent of the annual ammonium nitrate requirement of CIL,” he added.

…  Moreover, the JV is expected to revive the Talcher unit of the Fertilizer Corporation of India (FCI), as the project is expected to undertaken there.

Apart from easy access to coal, the Talcher unit has other infrastructural advantages including a coal-gasification plant, a heavy water plant and an urea plant already in place.

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.

Following is an excerpt from a report in Telegraph.

The Centre had accorded provisional approval to five, proposed petroleum, chemical and petrochemical investment regions including the one being planned in Orissa and had asked if the state government would be investing in the project infrastructure.

The authority consented to invest Rs 2,700 crore on the infrastructure development, while the Centre and central public sector undertakings, including the Indian Oil Corporation, have already agreed to spend Rs 5,800 crore on this score.

In all, Rs 15,273 crore would be spent on the infrastructure development at the project site and on the periphery, official sources said.

According to the vision plan, the proposed region would be developed in an area spread over 250sqkm without any displacement. The areas concerned would be developed into modern “city villages”. The annual project turnover has been estimated at Rs 423,500 crore.

There would be a value addition of the petroleum-related products to the tune of Rs 43,000 crore and an equal amount in shape of export earnings. The total tax income has been estimated at Rs 42,000 crore, of which Rs 32,100 crore is expected to go to the state exchequer.

Following are extracted from a report in the Pioneer.

• the State Commerce and Transport Department, in its sanction order-29753, dated May 30, 1970, had allotted 3, 793.21 acres in the first phase and 2285.23 acres in the second phase to the Paradip Port Project. Most of the lands were obtained from Sandhakuda, Bijayachandrapur, Balijhari and Bhitaragara villages, under Kujang Tehsil. According to the official sources, about 6,889 acres of land were supplied to the Paradip Port Trust.
• The State Government had provided 62.19 acres of land to the Paradeep Phosphate Ltd, which is a fertiliser plant that started its project in 1982. The PPL had acquired 405 acres of private lands from Bhitaragada village on its own.
• … in Paradeep-Cuttack railway line 137 acres of land were acquired from the Bhitaragada village.
• Kujang Tehsil had about 1,500 acres of Government land in the Musadiha area that was provided to the Oswal Fertiliser Plant in the year 1995-96. The plant had also purchased about 500 acres of private land from the local people.
• … in 2000 Indian Oil Corporation had purchased 3,300 acres of private land from the local people of 17 villages for its refinery project, which was to be set up on the outskirts of Paradip but the project is yet to come.
• for much-hyped Haridaspur-Paradip Railway Project, widening of the NH-5 and recent expansion of Cuttack-Paradip State Highway, thousands of acres of both Government and private lands have been acquired from Kujang Tehsil.
• Essar, the 6 million tonnes steel plant project, moves for the land acquisition in Paradip and the project needs about 1,950 acres of land. The State Government has already given 350 acres of land to the plant. It will procure the remaining required land from private land.
• Posco has shown a demand of about 4,004 acres of land in Dhinkia, Gadakujang and Nuagaon villages for its steel plant and port project. The State Government has given assurance and has provided Posco most of the encroached Government and forestlands. The rest of the required land would be purchased from private landowners.

Following is an excerpt on this from a report in Business Standard.

GAIL India, the country’s largest transporter and marketer of gas, will diversify from its core business to invest in a fertiliser and chemical plant at Talcher in Orissa. The gas utility will form a joint venture with government-owned Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers (RCF) to set up the Rs 2,400 crore plant which will have a capacity to produce 2,940 tonne per year of urea, GAIL, CMD, UD Choubey said.

An agreement between GAIL and RCF will be signed soon, Choubey said.

“The equity structure is yet to be worked out. RCF will carry out a feasibility study on the integrated fertiliser and chemical plant,” Choubey said.

The plant will be fed with 7 million cubic metres a day (mcmd) of gas produced through the surface coal gasification process for which Coal India (CIL) will supply around 5,000 tonne of coal.

“We are in constant touch with CIL. They have in-principle agreed to supply the coal,” Choubey said.

Explaining the rationale behind diversifying into fertilisers, Choubey said that the trigger for the move was that the company wanted to increase its presence in the gas business in east India. “We have always been supplying gas to fertiliser plants. This is just a move forward,” Choubey explained.

Deepika Global reports on Paradeep Phosphates’ record production this year. Following are some excerpts.

The Paradeep Phosphate Limited (PPL) has registered a record of 13.18 lakh tonnes production in last fiscal and earned a net profit of Rs 109 crores while raising its income to Rs 2067.2 crore. … of the total production the DAP alone accounted for 8.2 lakh tonnes.

Among the intermediary products, Phosphoric Acid, he said was 2,80,300 tonnes, registering an increase of 8.6 per cent over the previous year.

Similarly, Sulphuric Acid registered an increase of 3.4 per cent in comparison to last year with 7,60,610 tonnes.

He said in addition to 13.10 lakh tonnes production, the PPL also sold 1,42,152 tonnes of imported Mauriate of Potash (MOP), 3,13,470 tonne of Gypsum and exported 31,000 tonne of fertiliser to Nepal.

Mr Nandrudikar claimed that the Navaratna Krushi Vikas Yojana implemented in Orissa and Chhatishgarh had been very successful in increasing the yield with the use of improve techniques of agriculture.

Besides improving the agricultural productivity, the PPL had also undertaken mushroom cultivation and tissue culture of bananas in four districts, two each in Orissa and Chhatisgarh, he added. …

He said the company had already invested Rs 140 crores in first year and another Rs 142 crores last year further adding that it had decided to invest another Rs 140 crore during the current fiscal.

Money control reports on this about Deepak Fertilisers And Petrochemicals Corporation Ltd. (DFPCL). Following is an excerpt.

Land acquisition process for the Company’s 300,000 MT Ammonium Nitrate project at Paradip in Orissa is in progress and, in the meanwhile, the Company has completed the process of acquiring key equipment and placed orders for long lead items in addition to commencing the detail engineering process for the new plant.

Livemint reports that RCF (Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers) plans to revive the FCI plant in Talcher. Following are excerpts from that report.

Public sector enterprise Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers (RCF) has planned a capital expenditure of Rs 10,000 crore for the next five years and will consider tapping the capital market for raising funds.

The company is talking to the government on its initial public offer and the process would take six to eight months, …

Of the Rs 10,000 crore capex planned, the debt-equity ratio would be 2:1 and hence the company could borrow up to Rs 7,000 crore while the rest could come from its IPO, he said.

“The company expects to finance its projects largely through internal generation and debt, apart from other modes of generating funds as may be appropriate,” it said in its annual general report.

With the capex money, RCF wants to revive two units–Hindustan Fertilizer Corporation’s unit in Durgapur, West Bengal, and Fertilizer Corporation of India unit in Talcher, Orissa.

Both the units would absorb about Rs 6,500 crore, Jha said.