Bid to lower dependency on imported coal: CIL chief

Ranchi: Coal India Limited (CIL) chairman Pramod Agarwal on Friday said the PSU’s move to bring in MDO (mine developer and operator) projects in the coal sector will reduce India’s dependency on imported coal in power and steel sectors in the coming years.
“India currently imports around 160 million tons (MT) of coking coal annually. Through the MDO, our target is to reduce the dependencies on imported coal nationally. Another objective of the MDO is to also extract coking coal in the country so that it can be consumed by the steel producers,” Agarwal said in his virtual address on the opening session of a two-day workshop being hosted by the Central Coalfields Limited on MDO at its headquarters here on Friday.
CIL has already handed over six of its coal mines (both underground and opencast) across the country for being operated by private players under the MDO mode, while nine more are in the pipeline. Three of the six coal mines are in Jharkhand. Private players will be involved with the coal production from scratch under contract for a limited time frame. While CIL subsidiaries will help them with land acquisition, environment and forest clearances, private firms will mine for CIL in exchange of money.
Ranchi-based CCL has been the pioneer in CIL for implementation of MDO at its Kotre Basantpur (5 MT), Chandragupta (15 MT) and Piparwar (0.87 MT) mines between June 2021 and August this year.
Its chairman-cum-MD P M Prasad said the MDO mode would prove to be a game changer in coming years.