India's Ministry of Coal Receives 22 Coal-to-Liquid Applications for Three Coal Blocks

BANGALORE, INDIA--August 5, 2008--Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--India's Ministry of Coal has received 22 applications in response to the bidding process it commenced early last month for the allocation of captive coal blocks for coal-to-liquid (CTL) projects. Industry majors hopeful of securing captive coal mines include the Tata Group (Mumbai), Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) (BOM:500325) (Mumbai) and Reliance Power Limited (BOM:532939) (Mumbai). RIL had sent in an $8 billion investment proposal to set up a CTL project with a capacity of 80,000 barrels per day (BBL/d) of oil and requiring 1.5 billion tons of coal reserves. Sasol Limited (NYSE:SSL) (Johannesburg, South Africa) had also expressed interest in partnering with the Tata Group for setting up a similar CTL project with a capacity of 80,000 BBL/d and investments of around $8 billion.