MINERALS AND OIL
REVIEW OF PROGRESS DURING THE FIRST AND SECOND PLAN PERIODS IN the field of industry the First Plan was primarily one of preparation for large-scale development. It did not, therefore, call for any considerable increase in mineral production, but rather focussed attention on the systematic and detailed investigation of the country's resources of important minerals with a view to assessing more accurately both their quantity and quality, and on the adoption of measures to ensure that they would not be recklessly squandered. Although the country had already been surveyed geologically in a general way and the pricipal mineral regions ascertained, the exploration of mineral resources had, in most cases, not been thorough or complete and estimates of reserves were very rough approximations. The establishment of the Indian Bureau of Mines in 1948 and the expansion of the Geological Survey of India, agreed to in January, 1951, paved the way for fuller and more systematic investigations and greater attention to measures of conservation. These began to bear fruits during the Second Plan and in the past few years the output of certain minerals, e.g., coal, iron ore and bauxite has increased substantially.
2. The progress made in different fields during the last ten years is briefly reviewed in the following paragraphs.
COAL 3. Production.-The First Five Year Plan did not contain any specific programme for coal production-the order of increase in demand was such as could be met by the capacity already established. On the basis of the coal, requirements of the industrial and power programmes envisaged in the Second Plan and the traffic expected to be carried by the railways, a production target of 50 million tons was set for coal in the last year of the Second Plan. This meant an increase of 22 million tons over the level of production reached in 1955. The order of increase was such as could not be met merely by expansion of, production from existing collieries; it required also the opening of new mines.
Having regard to the capacity of the existing collieries to increase production and also to the policy of the Government, which reserved the establishment of new units to the public sector, 12 million tons of additional production were allocated to the public sector-2 million tons from existing collieries and 10 million tons from new collieries, to be established in virgin areas-leaving the balance of 10 million tons to be raised by the private sector from their existing collieries, and areas immediately contiguous thereto.
4. While the expansion of the production from existing workings in both the public and private sectors did not present any serious difficulty, the establishment of additional production from new collieries made the task of the public sector a formidable one. New mines bad to be established in practically virgin areas. Legislation had to be passed to enable the public sector to acquire new areas; and these had to be prospected in detail in order to prove the reserves and to select the blocks to be developed. In addition the public sector had to build up an organisation practically from nothing and there was a serious shortage of experienced technical personnel fitted to hold supervisory posts. This combined with initial difficulties in securing foreign exchange for the programme, resulted in rather slow progress during the early years of the Plan. The production achieved during the Second Plan has, therefore, to be viewed in the context of these difficulties. As against a target of 60 million tons, production during 1960-61 has been 54.62 million tons. Though the actual production has fallen short of the target, the public sector, which includes the collieries of the National Coal Development Corporation and the Singareni collieries, has established capacity for achieving a rate of production commensurate with the target set for it. In the last year production from the mines of the National Coal Development Corporation has increased rapidly. It rose from a level equivalent to an annual rate of 5.3 million tons in the first quarter to the equivalent of an annual rate of 13.7 million tons in the last quarter as compared with a production target for the whole year of 13.5 million tons. The corresponding figures for the
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Singareni collieries are 2.4 million tons and 2.6 million tons against a production target of 3 million tons and for the private sector 43.8 million tons and 45.7 million tons against a target of 44 million tons.
5. The progress of coal production during the last ten years and the actual fieldwise production during 1960-61, as compared with what was visualised at the beginning of the, Second Plan are shown in the following Tables :
Table 1 : Coal production
year million tons
1951 34.43
1952 36.30
1953 35.98
1954 36.88
1955 38.23
1956-57 40.30
1957-58 44.10
1958-59 43.94
1959-60 47.82
1960-61 54.62
Table 2 : Fieldwise production in 1960-61
(million tons)
as envisaged actual
fields in the production
Second in
Plan 1960-61
Assam 0.50 0.68
Darjeeling 0.03 0.04
Raniganj 18.16 18.08
Jharia 16.69 16.09
Karanpura 6.00 4.48
Bokaro 2.88 3.75
Giridih 0.26 0.46
Other small fields in Bihar 0.14 0.15
Chhindwara and Chanda 2.25 3.06
Korba 4.00 0.57
Central India coal-fields 5.31 3.67
Sasti 0.07 0.14
Orissa 0.52 0.88
Singareni 2.93 2.52
Bikaner 0.03 0.05
total 59.77 54.62
It will be seen that the actual production in 1960-61 differs from that originally envisaged specially in the Korba. and Central India Coalfields. This was because certain adjustments became necessary as a more clear picture of the factors relevant to the production and distribution of coal emerged. Moreover, the quality of coal from Central India Coalfields was not according to expectations.
6. Conservation.-The following measures have been taken for conserving the limited reserves of coking coal :
(i) Stowing.-with the passing of the Coal Mines (Conservation and Safety) Act, 1952, stowing which was till then compulsory from the point of view of safety was extended to cover conservation.
(ii) Restriction of output.-Ceiling limits were fixed for the production of coking coal, the idea being to reduce output of coking coal to the level of the demand of essential consumers. However, during the Second Plan, owing to the need to increase production to meet the demands of the steel expansion programme, the limits were gradually raised again and now, with the commissioning of the new steel plants and the expansion of the existing ones, the reasons for pegging production have ceased to exist.
(iii) Establishment of washeries.-Washing being one of the measures of conservation, the Second Five-Year Plan provided for additional washing capacity of 6.4 million tons to be achieved by the establishment of four central washeries and the installation of a washing unit as an adjunct to the, Durgapur steel plant. The unit in the Durgapur steel plant (capacity 0.8 million tons) and the washery at Kargali (1.6 million tons) have been set up. The other three will be completed only during the early years of the Third Plan. The experience in the Second Plan has been that the preliminaries to the setting up of washeries take a great deal of time. The washability characteristics of coal from different seams and from different collieries have to be studied in order (a) to determine the method of washing and to draw up specifications for the washeries and (b) to select the collieries which should supply each one of the washeries.
(iv) Blending.-The blending of weakly coking or non-coking coal with strongly coking coal will serve to extend the life of the limited reserves of coking coal. The Durgapur steel plant is based on the use of weakly coking or semi-coking coal from the Raniganj coalfield up to 55 per cent blended with coking coal from Jharia.
(v) Substitution of coking coal by non-coking coal.-A phased programme for the substitution of coking coal by non-coking coal on the railways was worked out. However, since the demand for coking coal from essential consumers did not materialise as visualised earlier, the railways continued to use, coking coal to the
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extent that production was surplus to the requirements of essential consumers. The quantum of such surplus, however, decreased from about 5 million tons in 1957 to about 1.5 million tons in 1960.
(vi) Other measures.-Collieries which in the national interest are required to continue in production but which are handicapped by various adverse factors such as gasiness, depth of the workings, etc. are given a special subsidy.
7. Amalgamation of collieries.-Government have accepted in principle the amalgamation of small and uneconomic collieries as recommended by the Committee on Amalgamation of Small Collieries. Pending the passing of legislation for compulsory amalgamation, a Committee to encourage voluntary amalgamation was set up. This Committee has so far approved 31 cases of. voluntary amalgamation out of which upto the end of March, 1961, actual amalgamation has taken place in 17. The Committee is still continuing its work. In order that there may be no danger of slowing down the programme for increasing coal production, the introduction of legislation for compulsory amalgamation has been postponed till about the middle of the Third Plan period.
MINERAL OIL 8. There is at present no production of oil within the country except for a small quantity obtained from the Digboi area in Assam. It is, however, expected that an annual production of 2.75 million tons of crude oil will soon be, obtained from the Nahorkatiya oil field discovered by the Assam Oil Company. The Government of India's share in Oil India, the Company which has been formed to exploit these oil resources, has recently been raised from one-third to one-half. The crude oil is to be piped to two new refineries which are being built in the public sector at Gauhati (Nunmati) in Assam and Barauni in Bihar with a capacity of 0.57 million ton and 2 million tons respectively. Besides oil, the Nahorkatiya area also contains natural gas. The total quantity likely to be available is not yet known, but arrangements have already been made to utilise some of it for the generation of power, the production of fertilisers and other purposes.
9. The Indo-Stanvac Petroleum Project marked the first major effort at exploring for oil outside the known oil bearing regions of Assam. The Government of India contributed one-fourth of the expenditure incurred on the Standard Vacuum Oil Company's exploration in the West Bengal basin. Several exploratory wells were drilled, but since no oil or gas was located, the company, abandoned the project. Government's share of the expenditure was Rs. 1.67 crores.
10. in view of the great need to establish indigenous sources of oil, the nucleus of an organisation for oil exploration was set up by Government towards the end of the First Plan period. With the limited equipment and technical personnel available, investigations were star- ted in the Jaisalmer area of Rajasthan. The Second Plan provided for an intensification of the effort and enlargement of the organisation therefor. The Oil and Natural Gas Commission was set up, first as a departmental organisation but converted later into a statutory body. The Commission undertook geological surveys, geophysical investigaions and exploratory drilling for oil in Punjab and later in the region of Cambay and in the Brahmaputra valley in Assam. In Punjab no oil or commercially exploitable gas has been discovered in the areas investigated so far; investigations are being continued in other areas of this State. The exploration in Cambay was more successful in that oil was struck in the very first well. Encouraged by this initial success, a number of wells have been drilled in Cambay and later in the Ankleshwar area. Oil and/or gas has been met with in many of the wells and though more will have to be drilled before the potentialities of this discovery can be firmly assessed, the indications are that there is a sizeable oilfield in this area. Two wells have been drilled in the Brahmaputra vally in Assam outside the area held under lease by Oil India and one of them has Riven indications of oil. Geological and geophysical investigations were also extended to the Ganga valley.
The expenditure incurred on oil exploration by Government in the Second Plan has been about Rs. 26 crores.
MINERAL PRODUCTION 11. During the ten years 1951-60 there has been a general increase in the volume and value of mineral production. The value of production increased from about Rs. 83 crores in 1950 to about Rs. 159 crores in 1960. The most striking increase is in the case of iron ore which rose from about 2.97 million tons in 1950 to about 10.5 million tons in 1960. This rapid increase is due to the expansion of steel production in the country and the development of export to Japan and other countries. There was not, however, the same steadily rising trend in the production of manganese ore, which is mined mainly for export. Production of manganese ore increased from 0.88 million ton in 1950 to 1.9 million tons in 1953-the spurt in production being largely due to the stockpiling programme of the U.S.A.---but subsequently it has been fluctuating with a general tendency to decline. This is due partly to the curtailment of the stockpiling programme and the recession in the steel industry in U.S.A. during 1958 and partly to the emergence of competitors in the markets for manganese ore.
12. The trends in the volume and value of production of some important minerals are shown in Table No. 3.
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MINERAL SURVEYS 13. With the expansion during the first two Plan periods of the Geological Survey of India and the Indian Bureau of Mines, geological mapping on the scale of one inch to a mile was extended to cover new areas and some important mineralised areas were mapped on larger scale maps. At the beginning of the Second Plan period about 24 per cent of the area of the country had been surveyed and mapped on the scale, of one inch to a mile. During the Second Plan period, map coverage on this scale was extended to an additional 40,000 square miles and 5775 square miles of mineralised areas were mapped on larger scale maps. Detailed prospecting in parts of the Karanpura, Bokaro, Korba, Korea, Bisrampur, Jhilimili, Kalakot, Talcher and Dharangiri coalfields blocked out sufficient reserves of coal for establishing new mines in some of these fields during the Second Plan period. These investigations led to the discovery of a 70 to 90 feet thick seam in the Singrauli coalfield and of two seams, one 74 feet and the other 12 feet and 8 inches thick in the Ramgarh coalfield, the latter being of coking quality. Besides, the existence of the Dishergarh seam at an easily mineable depth, the coking Laikdih seam 20 feet thick in an unleased area in the Raniganj coalfield, the coking Barakar seam under the Barren Measures in the Jharia coalfield and the eastward extension under alluvium of the coal Measures of the Raniganj coalfield have also been established. Proving of iron ores in the, Rajhara and Barsua areas helped in the establishment of new mines for the supply of iron ore to the Bhilai and Rourkela steel plants and the reserves proved in the Kiriburu area formed the basis of the Kiriburu iron ore project, which is to supply 2 million tons of iron ore annually for export to Japan. Detailed structural maping of the manganese ore deposits in Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra has indicated that the reserves are much larger than estimated hitherto Surveys were carried out with a view to assessing the potentialities of the known and reported occurrences of non-ferrous metals, particularly copper, lead and zinc. Drilling and exploratory mining work done at Khetri (Rajasthan) and in Sikkim have proved the existence of about 28 million tons of copper ore (average copper content 0.8 per cent) in the Khetri area and about 0.35 million ton of ore containing on an average 6.24 per cent of copper, lead and zinc in Sikkim. The availability of substantial quantities of gypsum in Nagaur (Rajasthan), magnesite in the Almora district (Uttar Pradesh), pyrites in Amjor (Bihar) and limestone in the Shahabad district (Bihar) has also been indicated.
14. Table No. 4 gives a broad indication of the more important results of the investigations carried out during the last ten years :
* Provisional figures.
@Includes lignite from Jammu and Kashmir-4647 tons in 1960.
+Figures relate to calendar you 1951.
N.A.-Not available.
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MINERALS AND OIL
Table 4 Estimate of reserves
million tons
mineral as at the beginning of the as revised now remarks
First Plan
coal 37300 50000 in addition there are infe-
rred reserves of 80,000
manganese 20(high grade) 180 million tons. about 40% being
of marketable grade.
copper ore Khetri no estimate 28
with an average copper conte-
Sikkim no estimate 0.35 nt of 0.8 percent.
pyrites Amjor no estimate 384 with an average combined cop-
per lead and zinc content of
6.24 per cent.
of which 8 million tons repr-
esents proved reserves and 68
million tons probable reser-
ves. Average sulphur content
of the proved reserved rese-
rves is 40 per cent.
gypsnm Ingaldal no estimate 2.0
Nagaur no estimate 1000
(Rajasthan).
Ramban (Jammu no estimate
and Kashmir) 50
limestone Shahabad district
no estimate about 44 million
tons of flux grade
and 268 million
tons of furnace
grade
chromite Byrapur(Mysore) no estimate 0.7
iron ore Kiriburu(Orissa) no estimate 173
bauxite Jamnagar Dis- no estimate
trict (Gujarat) 6
magnesite Almora (Uttar no estimate 12
Pradesh)
apatite Singhbhum cop- 0.7 1.8
per belt (Bihar)
lead and zinc Zawar (Rajasthan) no estimate 10.7 with an average combined lead
and zinc content of 3 percent.
bentonite Barmer Rajas- no estimate
than) 10.0