The government has awarded a contract for coal gasification plant for producing urea at the erstwhile Talcher unit of FCIL in Angul.
The Minister for Petroleum, Shri Dharmendra Pradhan and the Minister of Chemicals and Fertilizers, Shri Sadananda Gowda presided over the contract award ceremony in New Delhi.
Both the leaders were glad about the step that has been taken and were hopeful for its success.
Gowda said that agriculture is an indispensable part of the Indian economy.
The population of India is 1.3 billion and to feed such a huge population is a big challenge and the farmers are doing a commendable job in doing so for the past 70 years.
This makes the role of fertilizers especially urea so significant. At present India relies heavily on import of urea. About 50 to 70 lakh tons of urea gets imported every year.The government is making all efforts to boost the availability of domestic production of urea. To achieve this work has been started to revive closed FCIL and HFCL units at Sindri, Barauni, Ramagundam, Gorakhpur and Talcher.
At present urea is produced in the country with the help of pooled natural gas which consists of domestic NG and imported LNG. Importing LNG is extravagant which takes a toll on the foreign reserve. Hence, urea should be produced in the country with the help of indigenous raw material.
In Talcher Fertilizer Project indigenous coal and mix petcoke will be used to produce urea. Coal for this project will be sourced from North Arkhapal mine in Talcher region, while Petcoke will be obtained from Paradip refinery.
The project will augment India’s self-sufficiency as far as urea is concerned and will also increase the reliability of urea availability to farmers across India. Not only this project will make India self-reliant in urea but as it is an environment-friendly, it will help India in fulfilling its commitments made during Cop-21 Paris Agreement.
This project will result in the production of 2.38 MMSCMD of Natural Gas equivalent Syngas resulting in a reduction in LPG import bill.
Magazine
.jpg "Government awards contract for coal gasification plant for urea production in the state of Odisha at erstwhile Talcher unit of FCIL in Angul")
