Indian court to rule on Vedanta's alumina expansion project July 4

India's Orissa High Court is expected to decide on July 4 whether Vedanta Resources may be allowed to resume work on an alumina expansion project that has been suspended since last October, a Vedanta executive said Tuesday.

Vedanta was in the process of expanding its 1 million mt/year alumina refinery at Lanjigarh, in the state of Orissa, to 6 million mt/year, when the ministry of environment and forests charged the company with launching the project without environmental permits.

The existing alumina production capacity has been allowed to continue operations, along with Vedanta's two aluminium smelters at Jharsuguda in Orissa and Korba in Chhattisgarh. Vedanta has been supplementing its alumina production with imports from Australia. Vedanta has also put on hold work on a nearly completed smelter at Jharsuguda that will be able to turn out 1.25 million mt/year of primary aluminium.

The high court had asked the environment office in January to justify its stop work order to Vedanta. The Vedanta source said the company had submitted to the ministry two months ago data to support its case in the dispute.

Before the run in with the ministry, Vedanta had hoped to complete the expansion by September 2011. Its two existing smelters can produce 575,000 mt/year of primary aluminium.