Energy situation
in Tamil Nadu will look up with the commissioning of 1320 Mega Power plant by the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation
(TANGEDCO) in the next nine months while work on the much delayed Second Oil
refinery project at Nagapatinam is all set to commence in July this year
according to official sources.
The long pending second refinery project of Nine million ton capacity of
the Chennai Petroleum Corporation has been at the proposal stage for the past
ten years. A vast state like Tamil Nadu manages its petroleum product requirement
through a refinery at Manali in North Chennai set up way back in 1965.
Seven hundred acres of land required for the refinery project has been
acquired by the Tamil Nadu government and work on construction of the refinery
is expected to start in July this year. The project is
likely to be commissioned in three years. Work on setting up the Mooring berth near the
refinery site has commenced. The berth will have a deep draft of 28 meters
where Very Large Crude Carriers VLCCs can berth and unload the required crude
for the refinery.
Meanwhile nearly Seventy
per cent of the work on the TANGEDCO’s Mega thermal plant at Udangudi in
Southern Tamil Nadu has been completed. The 1320 MW plant conceived way back in
2008 is expected to be commissioned by December this year. Coal requirement for
the plant is five million tons per annum. Since
it is a state project the entire generation will go to the Tamil Nadu grid.
An all weather
port is getting commissioned near the thermal plant where the coal handling
equipment will be set up. The port will have a draft of 16 meters where ships
from Paradip carrying domestic coal or the imported ones from Indonesia to
Australia can berth.
Coal unloaded at the port will move to thermal
plant through conveyor belts.