Coal India secures 96% booking for auction for CPPs

Coal India Ltd (CIL) secured a booking of 18.07 million tonnes (mt) of coal against the offer of 18.86 mt in the recently-concluded coal linkage e-auction for captive power plants (CPPs), a company official said on Friday.

The auction that began on July 26 ended on Wednesday.

"At the closure of coal linkage e-auction for CPPs, we have secured 96 percent booking. We offered 18.86 million tonnes of coal while the booking was 18.07 mt, yielding a good premium over the notified price," a company official told IANS.

The company earlier said that barring Amrapali of CCL (Central Coalfields Limited), where logistic constraints witnessed less booking coupled with the fact that haulage distance is more due to no CPPs in proximity, the response to the auction has been encouraging.

According to an official of Coal Consumers' Association of India, captive power producers are taking interest in the linkage auction because of high demand for power for captive use along with surging prices of imported coal.

The miner had already conducted linkage auctions for coal to be used for sponge iron manufacturing and for the cement sector.

CIL's production in the first four months of the current fiscal stood at 162.38 million tonne, up 6.20 mt compared with the same period last year.

Coal off-take during April-July period was 174.66 mt, an increase of 4.36 mt on a year-on-year basis.

Coal stocks at pitheads as of July 31 stood at 45.37 mt while the same was 57.64 mt at the beginning of the fiscal.

Coal stocks at coal-fired power utilities of the country continue to be high at around 31 mt as of July 28, with a comfort of 23-day stock with no station at critical or super-critical levels.

The power utilities have been able to reduce their stock by 8.09 mt at their end since the beginning of the fiscal.

--IANS

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