NCL aims coal production of 115MT by FY'24, to stop road

The Northern Coalfields Ltd (NCL) on Friday projected a production target of 115 million tonnes by 2023-24, while planning to focus on offtake by railways, instead of roads, to meet environmental obligations.

The CIL subsidiary with the highest growth of 9 per cent transports 17 million tonnes of coal per annum by trucks.

"We will do away with road movement of coal to meet the green regulations toward sustainability. We are looking at 106 million tonnes of coal production for FY'20 and 115 million tonnes for 2023-24, as per the current projections," NCL chairman and managing director P K Sinha said.

He was speaking on the sidelines of the 2nd International Conference on Opencast Mining Technology and Sustainability (ICOMS-2019) in association with IIT (BHU), Varanasi, organised on the eve of the World Energy Conservation Day on December 14.

"Raising production is not a major issue for the NCL, once we get more rakes and railway tracks those are under construction," Sinha said.

The coal ministry has advanced the one billion million tonnes production target of Coal India Limited by two years to 2023-24 which will force the mining behemoth to revisit its production plan.

The NCL has also lined up Rs 2,485 crores in capex by FY'21 which is 15 months away from now in the procurement of production equipment and land acquisition and resettlement.

With the completion of 39 kilometres of railway tracks between Karela and Shaktinagar under the East Central Railway, availability of rakes can go up to by 50 per cent from the existing 18.

Two more lines - 64 km long Chopan-Singrauli and 262 km long Singrauli-Katni - coming up in the next two years will help the NCL to replace road evacuation with railways.

Meanwhile, the two-day ICOMS-2019 beginning on Friday aims at providing a forum for the peers and blossoms of the academicians, scientific community & industry professionals to interact and exchange their knowledge in the field of opencast mines and energy.

Several dignitaries of the PSU majors were present at the event in order to achieve the goal of higher domestic production to prevent outflow of forex from imports of minerals.