South Korean Posco interested in coal projects in Uzbekistan

The South Korean Posco is interested in the realization of coal projects in Uzbekistan, a source close to the company reported on Monday.

The source specified, on September 19th-21st,the Uzbek President, Islam Karimov visited South Korea and discussed the possible joint projects with President of Posco, Chung Joon Yang.

“The corporation is interested in joint development of coal deposits as well as in the projects aimed at development of road infrastructure”, the source said.

Particularly, Posco is planning to consider the proposal of the Uzbek party about participation in the modernization of brown coal open-pit mine Apartak in the Tashkent Region. The project amounting to about $100 million presupposes purchase of all necessary equipment as well as building of the technological complex dealing with sorting and loading of coal to railroad vans.

As calculated by the specialists of Uzbekugol Plc., during the modernization coal mining at the open-pit mine will increase 7.3 times – to 1.82 million tons by 2016.

Coal mining at Apartak will be increased in order to create the raw materials base for the plant producing synthetic liquid fuel out of coal (CTL process), which will be built by 2018.

Currently Uzbekugol Plc. started preparing the feasibility study of the CTL-plant with the design capacity of 700 thousand tons of coal per year. The project is assessed in $640 million. It will be financed due to the loans of foreign financial institutions,a credit of Uzbek Reconstruction and Development Fund and the funds of the participants of the project. As specified by the representative of the department, the project is being worked out with South African Clean Coal Technology and German Alphakat Avermann GmbH and Takraf.

Previously it was reported, Uzbekugol was going to draw South African Sasol to building of the CTL-plant at the rate of about $700 million  on the basis of the Angren brown coal deposit in the Tashkent Region. Later the parties have withdrawn from the project considering it technically unreasonable. Specialists of Sasol believe, the volumes of coal mining at the deposit (about 3 million tons per year) were not able to make the project profitable.

Some oil and gas experts believe, within the last 5 years Uzbekistan has activated its research in the sphere of obtaining fuel from additional sources due to the steady reduction of extraction of hydrocarbons.

 

Source: http://www.mineral.ru/News/50226.html

Translated by Alexandra Utyasheva

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