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Mongla Port will receive the first consignment of coal from India for a thermal power plant in the next 2-3 days, an Indian official said on Thursday, according to reports published by The Hindu and The Hindu Business Line of India.
The 1,320-MW Rampal Power Plant is being built by Bangladesh India Friendship Power Company Ltd (BIFPC), the joint venture between India's NTPC Limited and Bangladesh Power Development Board.
The consignment of 4,000 tonnes left the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port or SMP of Kolkata for Bangladesh on Friday.
Sourced from Dhanbad, the coal is expected to be unloaded at Kidderpore Dock and dispatched to the captive jetty of the power plant, set up by BIFPC.
The exporter of coal is Godavari Commodities and it is handled end to end by ZS logistics, the company said in a statement
It expects 20,000 tonnes of Indian coal to be sourced from SMP Kolkata to Bangladesh every month.
The Bangladesh government has recently cancelled 10 planned coal-based power plants after taking their environmental impact into consideration.
The power plants were part of the 2010-2011 electricity master plan but were not implemented in time. There was a discussion about scrapping the projects at the time.
In addition, Bangladesh's signing of the Paris Agreement and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's role as the chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum have made it "essential for us to generate electricity through more environmentally friendly means", said State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid Bipu.
Since 2008, Bangladesh had approved the construction of 18 coal-based power plants, including the 10 scrapped now.
The coal-fired unit of Bangladesh India Friendship Power Company was supposed to be completed by December 2020, but the work got delayed, sources said.
The time for completion of Bangladesh's largest power plant, also known as Maitree Super Thermal Power Project, has been extended by a year, they said.
Spread over 1,834 acres of land, the power plant is situated 14km north of Bangladesh part of Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and an ecologically sensitive area.
Environmentalists had raised voice against the development of the Rampal Power Plant close to Sundarbans, which is also a UNESCO world heritage site.