CIL to divert e-auction fuel to power plants in Oct

With power plants in many parts of the country facing acute coal shortage, state-run Coal India (CIL) today said it would offer four million tonnes of additional coal, earmarked for e-auction, to the power sector in October.

"The diversion of e-auction coal to power stations will be done only for this month," a release issued by the CIL headquarters here said.

"CIL has stepped up coal supplies to power stations across the country during the last two days. Coal supply to thermal power plants on October 11 and 12 was more than the average daily quantity as per the fuel supply agreement between the company and power utilities," it said.

The company was striving hard to ramp up coal production as well as supply to power plants on a daily basis, it said.

CIL as a whole supplied 99.79 million tonnes of raw coal to power utilities between April and July this year, which was about 4.5 million tonne more compared to the corresponding period last fiscal, it said.

While noting that excessive rainfall in six of the seven coal producing companies -- ECL, BCCL, CCL, MCL, NCL and SECL -- badly affected coal production, it said that steps have been taken to recover the mines and unclogging operations were being carried out on a war footing.

Coal production, which hovered around 0.7 million tonne during the first week of October, has increased to over 1.10 million tonne from October 11, it said, adding that within a week power stations would be adequately replenished with coal stocks.

Apart from this, some power plants in Andhra Pradesh did not receive requisite quantities of coal due to Telengana agitation as coal supplies from Singareni collieries were affected.

CIL has stepped in and diverted a number of rakes to supplement coal to those power plants in Andhra Pradesh, which were meant for power stations in northern India, it said.