Coal news and updates

Coal stocks at India’s power plants cross 37 mt

Coal stocks at about 100 thermal power plants (TPS) monitored by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) crossed 37.087 million tons (mt) as of March 9, 2016, up week-on-week (w-o-w), month-on-month (m-o-m) and year-on-year (y-o-y).

There has been a continuous improvement in the coal stocks positions at power plants since the beginning of January 2015 and the situation is such that since December 2015, not a single plant has been facing a super-critical coal stocks scenario of less than 7 days or critical coal stocks position of less than 4 days.

According to the CEA report, coal stocks at 100 TPS stood at 37.087 mt as of March 9, 2016, up 2.09% w-o-w from 36.328 mt as of March 2, 2016 and up 4.64% m-o-m from 35.441 mt as of February 9, 2016.

The inventory as on March 9, 2016 was up 67.10% y-o-y from 22.195 mt as of March 9, 2015.

Similarly, domestic coal stocks at the TPS stood at 34.474 mt as of March 9, 2016, up 1.93% w-o-w from 33.822 mt as of March 2, 2016, up 4.46% m-o-m from 33.003 mt as of February 9, 2016 and up 77.41% y-o-y from 19.432 mt as of March 9, 2015.

Likewise, imported coal stocks at the TPS stood at 2.614 mt as of March 9, 2016, up 4.35% w-o-w from 2.505 mt as of March 2, 2016 and up 7.18% m-o-m from 2.439 mt as of February 9, 2016. However, these were down 5.43% y-o-y from 2.764 mt as of March 9, 2015.

A year back, as of March 9, 2015, the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than seven days was 13 and the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than four days was 2.

In terms of days, stocks of coal on March 9, 2016, March 2, 2016, February 9, 2016 and on March 9, 2015 were sufficient to run all the plants for 26, 26, 23 and 16 days respectively.

Following table shows coal stocks position at power plants on various days: