Tata's steel plant proposal

The question of using natural gas for melting iron ore or sponge iron for steel making is not in Tata's proposal which uses the reaction process followed by electric furnace melting. The electric power for melting will come from Tata's proposed coal fired power plant. The lacuna of Tata's proposal is the finished product mix. Bangladesh needs more longs (billets) rather than flats (sheets).Only sheet production is proposed by Tata which is to be exported. It has no scope to produce longs. I had earlier suggested in one of my letters on the subject that Tata should revise the proposal changing their product mix and use coal gas as the reducing medium, instead of natural gas.

Regarding the CSM proposal, in those days I was the Chief Executive of CSM and I strongly opposed the (MECON) Indian proposal to produce sponge iron using our natural gas and export most of it to India, and melt a small quantity in CSM in electric furnace using our scarce local power resources! It was a way of value addition for India using our natural gas resource at a cheap price. The proposal as it then stood did not benefit Bangladesh at all. Thankfully, it was stopped, though certain authorities were very upset with my strong opposition to the proposal.