Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), which had recently announced its plans to undertake uranium exploration and mining projects, said on Friday that it may eventually venture into nuclear power generation.
Asked to elaborate, chairman and managing director, ONGC, RS Sharma said ONGC will shortly enter into a MoU with Uranium Corporation of India Limited to jointly explore and mine uranium deposits in the wells drilled so far by ONGC.
?ONGC has drilled some 9,800 wells so far. The logs available for the wells drilled have shown good traces of uranium and thorium. Specialised teams in ONGC have been studying these logs for the last 3-4 months. We along with UCIL will be extracting uranium,? Sharma said.
ONGC, Sharma said, has already ventured into power generation and holds equity in the Tripura Power Company. ONGC is also the fuel (gas) supplier for the Tripura power project. ?As we have plans for commercial exploitation of uranium, we may also at a later stage look at getting into nuclear power generation,? he added.
ONGC officials said the uranium mining operations will be handled by a new JV company. The shareholding pattern of this JV has been decided at 74:26 for ONGC and UCIL respectively and UCIL will have the option to increase its equity to 49%,
Besides exploration and mining of uranium, ONGC and UCIL will also take up milling and processing of uranium ore and associated minerals besides storage, packaging and transportation of yellowcake and products trading.