Anil Agarwal is in a piquant position. The refinery’s construction has already begun. While Sterlite Industries declines to disclose precisely how much money has been spent separately on the bauxite and refinery projects, Agarwal has spent at least 45 per cent of the project’s cost, according to the environmentalists ? and confronts the prospect of the Supreme Court nixing the project. Secondly, the project’s alumina, an intermediate product used to make aluminium, will feed Balco’s expansion (half the alumina will go to the group’s captive aluminium plants and about half would be sold to third parties, Agarwal recently told Vedanta shareholders).