The Hindu Business Line : Power Ministry seeks 150 mt captive coal reserve for DVC

THE Union Power Ministry has asked the Ministry of Mines and Minerals to allocate 150 million tonnes captive coal reserve in three mining blocks to Damodar Valley Corporation. The Power Ministry feels that the corporation's capacity expansion plan is being affected by a shortage of coal.

The three reserves identified for captive mining by DVC are under Eastern Coalfields Ltd and Central Coalfields Ltd and are close to the corporation's Mejia and Durgapur thermal power stations. The corporation currently has an old captive block in Bermo (allocated in the fifties) producing around 3.5 lakh tonnes of coal against an annual requirement of 6 million tonnes.

While the reserves at Bermo are getting exhausted, the corporation's coal requirement will increase by roughly four million tonneS once it adds 1210 MW additional capacity during the residual years of Tenth Plan.

According to sources, the corporation's biggest thermal power plant at Mejia, which has undergone a 210 MW capacity expansion this year, and the Durgapur Thermal Power Station are facing an acute raw material crisis with stocks barely enough to cover operations for a week. During the last monsoon, a coal crisis had forced DVC partially to shut down the Mejia plant.

The sources said that the captive linkage was intended to support the newly set up 210 MW unit IV at Mejia Thermal Power Station (MTPS) and the proposed capacity addition programme of 2 X 210 MW at MTPS as also the proposed greenfield venture of 2 X 500 MW at Durgapur during the Eleventh Plan period.

"Both the projects together would be requiring coal to the tune of seven million tonne per annum taking to the total requirement to the range of 15-16 million tonne", sources said.

"Being located in the coal belt and being promoted jointly by the two major coal producing States of West Bengal and (erstwhile) Bihar, we have never apprehended a coal shortage. Neither did we take this aspect into consideration while planning 1210 MW capacity addition during the Tenth plan and over 4000 MW capacity addition in the Eleventh Plan", sources said. "Right now we have hardly four days' stock at Durgapur, they added".