Coal news and updates

Power companies such as Jindal Power, Adani, Sterlite and Essar Power could soon be allowed to divert surplus coal generated from captive mines to their other power projects won by participating in tariff-based bidding. 

 

This means that an earlier facility of this kind extended to Reliance Power’s Sasan ultra mega power project by an empowered group of ministers would now be the norm for others as well. The BK Chaturvedi Committee on surplus coal utilisation has favoured such diversion in national interest to accelerate domestic coal production by private players who are sitting on huge coal reserves of their captive mines. 

 

The committee, which would submit its report by October-end, is also understood to have favoured more remunerative payment for surplus coal sold by private captive miners. Such commercial sales of surplus coal from captive mines would be priced based on an international index of coal prices rather than linked to cheaper notified price of coal in the domestic market. Notified coal prices are roughly 40% cheaper than similar grade of coal abroad. 

 

“The committee is in the final stages of firming its recommendations on ways to encourage surplus coal generation by captive miners. Various suggestions are being considered, but the biggest challenge is to get all stakeholders on board over the pricing mechanism to be developed for such surplus,” committee chairman and Planning Commission member BK Chaturvedi told FE. Chaturvedi, however, did not elaborate on the specifics of the committee’s recommendations, but said that there was a need to incentivise private captive coal miners to generate more coal in overall interest of the nation that is staring at an increasing gap between coal demand and supply, straining the trade and current account deficits. 

 

As per estimates of the Planning Commission, domestic production of coal would grow to 770 million tonnes (mt) by 2017 on the basis of projected annual growth of around 7% but by then the demand would shoot up to 1,000 mt, requiring companies to import of over 200 mt. 

 

It is understood that in its report, the committee may also give captive miners the option to sell

 

Source: www.financialexpress.com