March 20, 2002

    The Minister for Power, Shri Suresh Prabhu will inaugurate the International Conference and Business Meet on Fossil Fuel Power Generation here tomorrow. The Minister of State for Power, Smt.Jayawanti Mehta will deliver the keynote address. The three day Conference is being jointly organised by the National Thermal Power Corporation Limited (NTPC) and the Confederation of Indian Industry.

    The Conference aims at bringing international investors, power majors and institutions to discuss and deliberate cost effective options for capacity addition based on fossil fuels. It is being organised along with a Business Meet, which would focus on projecting business opportunities in the country. The Business Meet would comprise of Road Shows projecting opportunities, tender announcements at the state and central level etc.

    The three day meet will discuss issues relating to current availability of fossil fuel and power scenario, fuel resources such as coal vis-à-vis naphtha, refinery residue, coal bed methane, techno-economic viability of various fuel options, coal mining and coal preparation technologies.

    Policy makers, Ministers and energy secretaries from various State Governments, engineers and consultants, projects developers, top level executives from the power utilities across the globe in private and public sector, state electricity boards, funding agencies, equipment manufacturers, regulatory bodies, government and other stakeholders/ organisations are expected to participate.

    The international event is being viewed as an important step towards generating an all round awareness towards the mega growth of fossil fuel based power generation.

    India has total potential reserves of over 211 billion tonnes of coal, of which about 82.4 billion tonnes are the proven reserves. This is equivalent to roughly 7 percent of the total world reserves.