CIL ramps up production to improve coal supply to power stations

Says it has stepped up deliveries to power sector in the first eight days of September, clocking 20% growth at an average of 1.39 million tonne a day

National miner Coal India Ltd (CIL), which is caught in the throes of a coal supply crisis at thermal power stations, said it has stepped up deliveries to the power sector in the first eight days of September, clocking about 20 per cent growth at an average of 1.39 million tonne (MT) a day. Till the same date last September, the average daily supply was 1.16 MT.

CIL’s total supply also logged 1.71 MT a day during the first eight days of the ongoing month compared to 1.49 MT last year, achieving a growth of nearly 15 per cent, said the company in a public statement.

“We are aiming to augment total supply further to a level of 1.8 MT per day consistently and 1.45 MT per day to power sector,” said a senior official of the company.

Over the last two weeks, the coal stock levels at the thermal units has dwindled. Currently, 15 Gw of power generation capacity has less than two days of coal stock and 11 Gw has less than six days of coal.

As several states defaulted on their payments during the peak summer months, CIL regulated the coal supply to their thermal power units. With a delayed and scattered monsoon, coal production was also impacted at CIL’s mines, July onwards. This led to a situation when close to 90 Gw of power generation capacity stared at coal stock of less than eight days, during the last week of August.

CIL last week said it offered coal on ‘as is where’ basis through rail cum road mode from 23 such mines with 40.3 million tonne of stock.

CIL said it has also logged 42 per cent growth in the e-auction bookings logged during April-August’21

This it said is on the back of a demand spike in coal based power generation and soaring international coal prices, compared to similar period year ago.

"The booked volume during the ongoing fiscal, till August, is also more than a two-fold increase compared to nearly 20 MTs over the pre pandemic April-August’19," said the company

CIL booked 53.3 MT of coal in the first five months of FY22, under the five auction categories. This is nearly 16 MT higher than 37.5 MTs of corresponding period FY21. The add-on fetched was 30 per cent over notified prices.

Amid the spiraling international prices, non-power sector customers, under their exclusive auction window, opted for domestic coal accounting for 37 per cent of the total auction bookings during April-August 2021.

With the upsurge in coal-based power generation the quantity booked by power sector customers under special forward auction more than doubled to 17.3 MT during the referred period against 8 MT booked in the same period a year ago.

"As international prices soar, generation from 14 imported coal-based power plants of the country, which source their requirements from overseas, dropped by 20 per cent during April-August 2021 to 23.63 Mw from that of 29.67 Mw same period year ago," CIL said in a public statement, adding this resulted in additional demand for domestic coal.