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Badal Sanyal

Kolkata , June 11

IN line with the direction from the Union Coal Ministry, Coal India Ltd (CIL) has recast its production plan in order to meet the country's non-coking coal requirement by 2010-11. Under the revised plan, CIL will augment production to a minimum of 20 million tonnes (mt) every year beginning from 2005-06. This means production will increase to 363 mt by 2006-07 from 323 mt in 2004-05. The production increase schedule is expected to continue at least till 2011-12.

Almost the entire additional production will come from opencast mines. In this situation, the coal companies under CIL hardly have any option but to conduct aggressive opencast mining. One reason behind the plan to raise output is the production shortfall arising from the failure to develop virgin coal blocks allotted to various SEBs and private companies for captive mining purposes.

Over 60 virgin blocks with combined reserves of about 5.5 billion tonnes (bt) of non-coking coal have so far been allotted during the last 10 years. The Director (Technical) of CIL, Mr Lakshman Jha, said only a few blocks had been developed, thereby resulting in an imbalance between demand and supply of coal. However, Mr Jha said the demand-supply mismatch may not exist beyond the terminal year of the Eleventh Plan (2011-12) following CIL's plan to raise production.

He said long distance, bulk non-coking coal consumers should not have faced any shortage as there was abundant mining capacity available at the giant coalfields such Gevra and Korba in South Eastern Coalfields Ltd (SECL) and at Ib Valley coalfields in Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd. He asked the consumers to arrange for logistics facilities, particularly rail rakes, to get adequate quantity of non-coking coal from these coalfields.

Mr Jha said additional production would come mostly from new as well as expansion projects, while a part of the additional output would be generated from existing mines.

A total 102 coal projects have been identified for implementation in the Tenth Plan. As per the Government's investment norms, 28 projects have been sent to the Union Government for its approval since capital investment in these projects is over Rs 100 crore. The Government has so far approved four opencast projects, namely, Basundhara, Bhubaneswari, Kaniha and Kulda.

Meanwhile, the CIL board has approved a total 18 projects and is in the process of clearing another 13 projects. As the capital investment in each of the project under CIL's consideration is below Rs 100 crore, no Government approval is required. Similarly, CIL subsidiaries have approved about 40 projects.

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