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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 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.

Myiris reports on this. Following is an excerpt.

Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers (RCF) may be forced to go ahead with a Rs 35 billion coal-to-gas project at Talcher in Orissa to feed its plants, …

RCF has tied up with Reliance Industries and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) for supplying gas. There may be delays due to the Reliance gas pricing issue yet to receive an approval from the centre.

The company is also in talks with Gail India for fuel supply. If the availability of gas become an issue, then it might think of setting up the Talcher project.

Talcher is the most viable site in terms of infrastructure, facilities and proximity to coal mines. The latest coal gassification technology will be utilised to allow the use of coal with high ash content of up to 30-35%.

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.