PRELIMS REVISION QUIZ (DAY-01)

Commodities in order of their higher to lower share in India's export basket :

Petroleum products (highest share) > Pearls, precious and semi-precious stones > Drug Formulations > Gold and other precious metal jewellery > Iron and Steel

Note: Petroleum products are different from petroleum crude (which has the maximum share in India's import basket).

For e.g., The petroleum products being exported by HPCL are:

● Fuel Oil
● High Sulphur Gas oil
● Naphtha
● Packed Bitumen
● Food grade Hexane
● Lube oil base stock

Lohardaga district of Jharkhand is rich in mineral resources. It is known for producing world-class bauxite and hence known as "Bauxite Town".

There are 16 mining leases of Bauxite Mineral in Lohardaga.

Hindalco Industries Ltd has 07 mining leases out of 9 active mines. The district has approval of mining of approximately 11 lakh tonnes of bauxite mineral in a year.

The bauxite from Lohardaga is being supplied to the Muri and Renukoot Aluminium plant.

➤ In India coal is broadly classified into two types—coking and non-coking.

➤ Coking coal is primarily used in steel production and metallurgical industries whereas non-coking coal is used for power generation.

➤ Coking coal is usually bituminous-rank coal with special qualities that are needed in the blast furnace for steelmaking.

➤ The demand for coking coal is highly coupled to the demand for steel.

India imports most of the coking coal needed for its steel industries from Australia and Indonesia.

The imports are mainly to compensate the lack of good quality coking coal from the mining sources in the country.

Jharkhand is the only state of India which produces coking coal.

Jharia coalfield in Jharkhand has the largest reserves of high quality coking coal in the country.

To strengthen its hydrocarbon resource base, Government of India has identified six basins as areas for shale gas exploration:

1⃣ Cambay basin (Gujarat)

2⃣ Assam-Arakan basin (Assam and Arunachal Pradesh)

3⃣ Gondwana Basin (Damodar Valley in West Bengal)

4⃣ Krishna-Godavari onshore basin (Andhra Pradesh)

5⃣ Cauvery onshore basin (Tamil Nadu)

6⃣ Indo-Gangetic basin (Uttar Pradesh)

Metallic minerals (ores)

Pitchblende - Uranium
Cinnabar - Mercury
Galena - Lead
Cassiterite - Tin

Pitchblende is an amorphous, black form of crystalline uranium oxide mineral. It is one of the primary mineral ores of uranium, containing 50–80% of uranium.