Indian iron ore miner NMDC Limited will seek permission from state and national highway authorities to lay a 400 km iron ore slurry pipelines connecting its mines in Bacheli in Chhattisgarh state to the southern Indian port town of Vishakhapatnam, a company source said on Friday, October 27.
The source said that the slurry pipeline to be constructed will have a capacity to transport 15 million mt per year of raw material to consumers in the Vishakhapatnam region and facility for partial withdrawal en-route at Nagarmar where the miner is constructing a 3 million mt greenfield steel mill.
Permission and fees will be needed to be negotiated with the concerned authorities to lay the pipeline alongside provincial and national highways, avoiding countryside and forested regions between the point of origin and the final landing destination, he said.
The slurry pipeline has been planned to run alongside state and national highways for better security for the project and to reduce risks from ultra-left wing extremists present in several forested parts of the region. It may be recalled that NMDC’s older slurry pipeline was blown up in 2009 by explosives placed by ultra-left wing extremists active in several forest belts of Chhattisgarh.