Last Updated : 18 February 2013 at 13:55 IST
With the total resources of over 28.52 billion tonnes of hematite and magnetite, India is among the leading producers as well as exporters of iron ore in the world. However a few years from here, one may have to write the India's export part of Iron Ore in past tense.
Despite the advent of the Great Recession, the country has been able to grow at a modest pace of around 5-6%. This is when compared to negative rate of growth in many Western nations.
To sustain the GDP momentum at 8%, which is a magic mark for development oriented growth and which has been successful in lifting millions of Indian from poverty, the nation amongst innumerable nitty-gritty things, is also supposed to produce 452 million tons of iron ore in 2025-26 from 215.4 million tons in 2016-17.
In the year ended March 2010, the nation produced 218.6 million metric tons of ore and last fiscal saw 169.7 million tons in production; the lowest in six years. The downfall in production may be attributed to a ban of production in iron ore imposed by the Supreme Court in India's major Ore producing states of Karnataka and Goa citing corruption.
While the Court may take time to decide on these issues, India has become one of the importers of the commodity that it once used to ship. Now, experts hope that as and when the Court cases are sorted out, India may regain the market share that it has currently lost to competition from Australia and other nations when it comes to iron ore exports.
This presupposes that India, once it disentangle the legal knots, may have surplus ore to export. But will India have enough of ore deposits to export in the future?
“Strict enforcement of environmental and forest‐ related laws and difficulties in acquisition of land imply that iron ore supply may not be able to keep pace with projected domestic demand if production targets are to be realized.
Exploitation of magnetite resources will be a challenging task as most of these resources lie in environmentally sensitive Western Ghats and adjoining areas.
The current judicial position and the declaration of the Western Ghats as a world heritage site will restrain full exploitation of the resources there. The iron ore resources will be exhausted even faster if exports are maintained at high levels similar those witnessed in the past few years.” says the DRAFT policy on India's steel sector prepared by Steel Ministry.
It has a solution in that “a detailed study will be undertaken involving domestic and foreign expert agencies to explore the potential of mining iron ore in the ecologically fragile areas in the country. One of the technologies that may need attention for support is underground mining which has been engaged successfully in several parts of the world.”
But how viable is this underground mining if it is some way or other carried out in Western Ghats? Way back in March, a high level govt panel recommended that underground mining be carried out in Western Ghats “notwithstanding relentless opposition from environmentalists who consider mining a preposterous proposition in the region.”, The Deccan Herald said.
The report said “since around 10 billion tonnes of Magnetite or natural iron ore (with greater than 60 per cent iron content) reserves were available in Western Ghats, it could be explored if it would meet the demand from steel making companies.”
Now, given that these deposits are huge, it is still unclear if this could all be available for exploitation.
“Western Ghats region lack sufficient overburden to promote mining of this scale.” said Mr.Varghese, a retired mineral economist from Indian Bureau of Mines. He was referring to the kind of thicket of land that is necessary above the mine to carry out underground operations safely and without harm to the ecology. “If the overburden is less, that calls for additional support to be provided. But that can prove to be expensive.” he said.
“Iron ore deposits, unlike gold and others do not exist as veins, but as bedded deposits. They are generally exploited in a process of open-pit mining. But it is not feasible in an ecologically sensitive region and may not be profitable unless the deposits are so huge.” he said.
It is in Kiruna mines in Sweden that underground iron ore mining is being carried out in a huge scale.
“With an ore body 4km long, 80m thick and reaching a depth of 2km, LKAB's Kiruna is the world's largest, most modern underground iron ore mine. Since mining began at the site over 100 years ago, LKAB has produced over 950Mt of ore, yet only one third of the original ore body has been extracted.” said Mining Technology in a report.
A process that has been perfected over 100 years in an ambience of near-fetish adherence to law, can the same be replicated in India?
The answer is important as it can make or mar the exports and prospects of iron ore and steel industries in India.
No comments:
Post a Comment