GVK Power and Infrastructure has got environmental clearance for its $10 billion Alpha coal and rail project in the Australian state of Queensland, attached albeit, with a string of 19 conditions.

New Delhi At a time when power projects are facing problems of fuel linkage, financing and CAG scrutiny, Reliance Power, the flagship company of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, is planning to incr

GVK Power and Infrastructure Ltd has got environmental clearance from the Australian government for the $10-billion (Rs 55,280-crore) Alpha coal project and railway line in Queensland.

Australian Federal Enviro-nment Minister Tony Burke has accorded approval to construct and operate the Alpha coal mine and the railway line connecting the mine to the port at Abbot Point, near Bowen in Queensland, the GVK said today in a statement.

A four-member expert team of the Union ministry of environment & forests (MoEF), which visited the Posco project site near Paradip on Tuesday, will submit its report to the ministry on environmental implications of the $12 billion steel plant by October.

“We have collected information on the Posco project after our field visit. By October, we will be able to submit our report to the concerned ministry,”,K Ray Paul, leader of the expert panel told newsmen after emerging out of a meeting with state chief secretary B K Patnaik.

Alpha coal, rail projects in Queensland worth 10 bn Australian dollars comes as Oz declares end of its resources boom

GVK Power and Infrastructure won environmental approval for its A$10 billion Alpha coal and rail project in Australia's Queensland state on Thursday, with 19 conditions to protect the environment. The approval came as Australia declared the end of the resources boom that cushioned the country from the global financial crisis, a day after the world's biggest miner, BHP Billito shelved two major expansion plans worth at least $40 billion.

New Delhi Problems with land acquisition and environmental clearances have delayed 58 ongoing national highways projects, including 18 in Assam, seven in Jammu and Kashmir and five each in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, said the ministry of road transport and highways in response to a written question.

The projects which are facing delay due to land issues are in Rajasthan (4) and two each in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, it said.

High cost, dull market and strict green norms add to mining industry's woes

Slow growth pace in the mining sector is hurting mineral processing units in Gujarat. At least 500 small and medium mineral processing units have curtailed their operations by half over the past three months and some more are likely to follow suit as high cost of operations and dull market conditions add to industry woes.

MoEF team skips meeting people at project site

The Odisha government has decided to review the status of the Posco steel project towards the end of this week, even as an expert team of the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) visited the proposed plant site on Tuesday. “We will review all mega steel investment projects on August 25 including the Posco plant. We have acquired all litigation free land in the area and will discuss about acquiring more land from disputed site,” said Rajnikant Singh, minister of state for steel and mines.

Chandigarh: With the Punjab and Haryana High Court banning sand mining in 241 quarries of less than five hectares across the state, the prices of minor minerals have rocketed.

A panel of the Union environment ministry has recommended re-validation of the green clearance accorded to South Korean steel giant Posco by five more years till 2017.