GAIL will offer tech partner equity for Talcher urea plant.

GAIL (India) Ltd. is willing to offer equity to a foreign technology provider in its proposed joint venture with Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers, Coal India, and Fertiliser Corporation of India, for the revival of the Talcher fertiliser unit in Odisha.

A senior GAIL official said there will be two joint ventures between the public sector entities for the revival of the project, which is estimated to cost Rs. 8,200 crore and will be the country's first coal-gasification-based unit. It will have the capacity to produce 1.2 million tonnes of urea and ammonium nitrate annually.

In the first joint venture, essentially for coal gasification, GAIL is expected to hold 70 per cent equity. In the second, for production of urea and ammonium nitrate, Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers and Fertiliser Corporation of India will hold a larger stake.

The joint ventures are likely to be in place by September. The project is expected to be commissioned by 2017.

HBL