India witnesses constraints in domestic coal stocks: Coal Ministry

According to the Ministry of Coal, India is witnessing some constraints in the domestic coal availability, and the rest of the dry fuel demand must meet with imports.

The ministry highlighted that captive and commercial coal block holders play a key role in mitigating the coal shortfall.

The Coal Secretary said that the domestic coal production is about 800 million tonnes (mt).

The inter-ministerial panel met to consider the requests for coal linkages to the central and state sector power plants and to review the status of existing coal linkages.

Coal Secretary, A K Jain, had earlier attributed the low coal stocks at thermal power plants to several factors, including heightened power demand due to the boom in the economy post-Covid-19 pandemic, the early arrival of summer, rising price of gas and imported coal and a sharp decline in electricity generation by coastal thermal power plants.

He said that a slew of measures is already underway to enhance the total power supply in India.

The gas-based power generation, which declined drastically in India, has worsened the crisis.

The coastal thermal power plants are generating power at around half of their capacities because of the price surge of imported coal, which resulted in a gap between the demand and supply of electricity.

Jain said that the South and West states have been dependent on imported coal, so when domestic coal is dispatched through wagons or rakes to the domestic thermal power plants in such Indian states to make up for the loss in imported coal generation. The turnaround time of rakes is over ten days, creating the issue of the availability of rakes in other plants.

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