State-run miner Coal India Ltd has initiated a process to rationalise coal linkages for various power generation companies in southern States, while also seeking to work out some minor coal swap arrangements within its fold.

At a meeting held in Hyderabad, where CIL Chairman Sutirtha Bhattacharya and its Director-Marketing BK Saxena interacted with officials of State-owned generation companies such as TS Genco, AP Genco, Tangedco, TNEB, KPCL as well as the Railways, the focus was on improving supplies and providing better logistics for supplies.

One of the decisions taken was to ease the pressure on supplies from Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd, a CIL subsidiary, through some swap arrangements. There’s growing demand for coal from Mahanadi Coalfields, but lack of logistics facilities hampers supply to power plants. If TS Genco, which currently gets about 2 million tonnes of coal from MCL, could source the fuel from Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (a coal miner jointly owned by the Telangana and Union governments), the coal produced by MCL could be supplied to other power makers in South India.

During the meeting, CIL has assured generation companies of improving supplies once the necessary arrangements to evacuate and transport coal are made. This could be by providing supplies from some of the other CIL group companies.

TS Genco, which is planning to increase the power generation capacity by 6,000 MW, and AP Genco have sought additional coal supplies from CIL.

A number of power companies in the South are dependant on MCL for fuel. CIL’s effort is to ease some pressure on its subsidiary till there’s a mechanism to evacuate and transport coal generated at its mines. One of the problems faced by coal miners is that they are unable to push additional coal even after production as there is limitation in terms of availability of rakes to transport. The Railways, too, is working out ways to making necessary arrangements.

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