Coal India, BHEL Joint Venture Starts Work on ₹25,000-Crore Odisha Project

23 Oct 2026, 07:38 by Vinay Kakkad · KalingaTV

Odisha: Major engineering contracts valued at approximately ₹15,000 crore have been finalized as ground-level construction begins on a ₹25,000-crore coal gasification plant in Odisha.

Bharat Coal Gasification and Chemicals Ltd (BCGCL)—a partnership where Coal India Ltd holds a 51 percent majority stake alongside Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd with 49 percent—is executing the venture to convert local coal reserves into industrial chemicals.

The project distribution places roughly ₹10,000 crore in contracts with BHEL, while engineering firm Larsen & Toubro has picked up packages totaling around ₹5,000 crore. Beyond these major contract awards, the cumulative ₹25,000-crore outlay accounts for land acquisition, financing depreciation, and debt servicing interest.

Peeyush Kumar, managing director of BCGCL, shared the status update during the Mission Energy Foundation’s 17th Gasification India 2026 summit.He noted that site-level building operations are officially moving forward after assigning the bulk of project tenders, with procurement decisions for the remaining peripheral packages still pending.

The industrial complex is engineered to manufacture approximately 0.66 million tonnes per annum of technical-grade ammonium nitrate. Operationally, it stands as an early commercial deployment of homegrown pressurized fluidized bed gasification technology adapted for chemical synthesis.

To manage technical execution, BCGCL structured the plant into four core packages:

Gasification and purification: BHEL oversees the front-end processing that transforms domestic coal into raw synthesis gas (syngas) and subsequent gas-cleaning stages.
Downstream synthesis: Larsen & Toubro handles downstream ammonia synthesis and the production units that process ammonia into nitric acid, concluding with finished ammonium nitrate.

State-level statutory processing cleared a key hurdle after the Odisha government’s High-Level Clearance Authority granted the site single-window approval.

The complex feeds directly into New Delhi’s National Coal Gasification Mission, which has set a nationwide benchmark to reach 100 million tonnes of gasification capacity by 2030. By manufacturing domestic ammonium nitrate from coal feedstocks, the facility seeks to curtail high import bills across liquefied natural gas, urea, methanol, and ammonia while broadening India’s domestic industrial base.