The coal ministry on Thursday decided to de-allocate 11 captive coal blocks including three mines of Jindal Steel and Power, besides forfeiting the bank guarantees of six firms and asking five to e

The Talabira mines have now hit the green hurdle. The mines were at the centre of controversy through October over whether the Prime Minister was right in jointly allocating them to Aditya Birla group firm, Hindalco.

But now the empowered panel of the environment ministry has sent the joint venture company a series of queries before it is willing to consider giving a license to Talabira II to operate.

Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh has hit out at state-run miner NMDC for allegedly “ignoring” the needs of the tribals in the state’s naxal-hit Bastar district by denying them promised emplo

Coal India (CIL) is planning to move court against the Madhya Pradesh government decision defining coal as a biological resource and warning of imposing a benefit-sharing levy on state-run coal com

Coal India (CIL) faces an unprecedented task. The miner may now have to act as a bank for storing surplus coal produced from the captive mines of private power companies. The coal so banked, would be returned to the companies once their power projects are commissioned.

On the recommendation of the Planning Commission, the government has formed a high-level committee to explore the possibility of introducing a “coal banking system”.

A Group of Ministers (GoM) has restricted the environment ministry from executing the system of 'inviolate' mining areas, which would have rendered several acres of coal-bearing areas unmineable leading to a shortage of the fuel for power plants.

This is seen as a setback for environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan's efforts to secure her ministry's control on implementing stricter green norms.
The GoM headed by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar in its recent meeting has restrained the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) from executing its proposed system of inviolate areas saying the six parameters and scoring patterns identified in the draft report on such areas "appeared to be too restrictive and may lead to further curtailment of mining activities".

The steel ministry has asked the environment ministry to expressly revalidate the green clearance to Posco’s stranded steel project in Orissa “to avoid unnecessary noises raised by NGOs and anti-project entities.”

The ministry would also begin fresh talks with the Naveen Patnaik government to stress the need to hand over the land required for the proposed plant.
The South Korean steel company had inked a MoU with Orissa in June 2005 to set up a 12 million tonne integrated steel project in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district at an estimated expenditure of Rs 53,000 crore, but the project has been dogged with land acquisition issues.

Seeking to bring around Bangladesh to support the construction of two dams in Meghalaya, India is considering offering a stake in the two projects.

The steel ministry has called for the auctioning of all unused coking coal mines in the country to steel makers in view of the paucity of the fuel, triggering sharp reactions from Coal India Ltd.

In its revised draft National Steel Policy 2012, the steel ministry has proposed that Bharat Coking Coal Ltd, which is the custodian and operator of coking coal mines, should be de-merged from parent firm CIL and its idle mines should be offered to home-grown integrated steel plants for commercial exploitation, with suitable terms and conditions.

The coal ministry, accepting the demands of the power ministry, has agreed to re-draft the Bill for a regulator for the coal sector by seeking to empower the watchdog to fix prices of coal and including a member from the power sector as a member in the regulatory mechanism.

The Coal Regulatory Authority Bill, 2012 being re-drafted will now be equipped to fix prices of various grades of coal apart from determining the methodologies and policies for finalising prices of both raw and washed coal in line with their calorific values.