Coal news and updates

Govt frames draft policy on surplus coal from captive blocks

December 11: The government has formulated a draft policy on usage of surplus coal, including middlings, rejects etc from captive coal blocks, according to Minister of State for Coal Pratik Prakash Bapu Patil.

In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, the minister said the draft policy has been circulated among various ministries and departments for obtaining their comments.

As per the conditions in the allocation letter issued to various allocatees of coal blocks, usable middling/rejects generated during beneficiation shall be used "captively" by the allocatee(s) in their end-use plants specified in the allocation letter, he said.

The modalities of disposal of surplus coal/middlings/rejects, if any, would be as per the prevailing policy/instruction of the government at the relevant point in time and could also include handing over such surplus coal/middlings/rejects to the local Coal India (CIL) subsidiary or to any person designated by it at a transfer price to be determined by the government.

As per the understanding of ICMW, the policy, if approved, will only allow transfer of middlings and rejects to a select set of consumers like power plants or to CIL.

Incidentally, a policy already exists wherein surplus coal, in case a block is operational but its end-use plant is not ready, is allowed to be transferred to CIL subsidiaries at the prices prevailing at CIL.

The understanding comes from the fact that recently a meeting of an Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC) was held to formulate a policy on coal/rejects allocation for washery rejects-based power plants.

A nine-member committee, headed by Additional Secretary (Coal), was formed in July this year with representatives from Coal India Ltd, the power minister and Planning Commission.

The committee was to assess the actual coal demand of washery rejects-based power plants and formulate suitable guidelines for issue of long-term coal linkages to these power plants, keeping in view the overall availability position.