Coal shortage may worsen if PLF rises 7%

07 November 2016

The present stock positions of coal could spiral into a national shortage if power plants raised their capacity utilisation even by a small 6-7%, coal secretary Anil Swarup said here on Thursday. Nevertheless, coal imports by all state-owned power generation companies would stop from April 1, 2017, he said.

“At present, the coal stock situation looks like there is surplus coal. However, it is not enough to give coal to everyone and we are not fully comfortable about making coal available to everyone at this level of stock position,” said Swarup.

However, spot and forward e-auctions are an effort to supply as much coal as possible without disrupting supplies. Swarup was speaking to reporters at a seminar on India’s Coal Sector – Vision 2020 organised by the MCC Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Coal imports by state-owned power companies is slated to decline by 15 mt this year from about 40 million tonnes in 2015-16, he said. “We have discussed separately with every public sector power company and have made sure that imports turn zero from April 1, 2017 onwards,” he said.

NTPC is by far the largest public sector coal importer and it has reduced imports drastically from a peak of about 16 million tonnes a few years ago to a couple million tonnes this year. The company has not placed fresh import orders this year and all its coal imports in 2016-17 have been delivery of orders placed in previous years.

While coal stocks at power plants receiving coal from Coal India have an average stock of 15 days, there are some 57,000 mw of thermal units starved for coal since they do not have any supply contract from Coal India.

Source – ET