Adani commences coal production in Chhattisgarh block

Adani Enterprises, the flagship company of the Adani Group, commenced its integrated coal mine developer cum operator (MDO) operations with the start of coal production at the Parsa East-Kante Basin mine in Chhattisgarh, owned Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Ltd (RRVUNL), a state-run power generation utility of Rajasthan.
 
This is the first amongst the four MDO contracts bagged by Adani Enterprises. The company has outlined a phased capital outlay of Rs 3,000 crore for the entire block.
 
“With this development, Adani Enterprises is set to emerge as the largest private coal miner with access to produce coal of up to 90 million tonnes and reserves of over 3 billion tonnes over next 30 years, enough to produce about 18,000 megawatts of electricity by state electricity boards,” a company statement said.
 
Relatively new in India, MDO is a concept where in a coal block owner contracts entire operations to a third party, which takes the responsibility of land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation, mining, developing and operating the particular mine by investing in it and then supplying the coal at a tender determined price to the power plants of the mine owning state electricity boards.
 
The other three MDO blocks contracted to Adani Enterprises are – Parsa block in Chhattisgarh, owned by Chhattisgarh State Power Generation Co Ltd with reserves of 150 million tonnes, Machakatta block in Odisha owned by MahaGuj Collieries Ltd with reserves of 1.2 billion tonnes and Chendipada coal block, also in Odisha, owned by UCM Coal Company Ltd with reserves of 1.5 billion tonnes.
 
The Adani Group aims to produce 200 million tonnes of coal across its mining assets globally by 2020. The group has a producing mine in Indonesia and has recently flagged off a coal exploration programme in the Carmichael mine, the biggest coal mine tenement in the world in the Galilee Basin of Queensland Australia. The group plans to commence production of coal from its Australian operations by 2016.

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