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State-owned Coal India Ltd (CIL) aims to increase the allocation of coal to power plants by nearly 9 per cent to around 530 million tonne (mt) during 2019-2020.
Coal supply by CIL to power sector was 488 mt during 2018-19 almost 7.5 per cent higher than the 454 mt registered during 2017-18.
Supply share
During 2018-19, CIL’s share of despatch to power sector increased to 80 per cent from 78 per cent during the previous two years.
“Boosting despatch to power sector remained the focal area of CIL throughout 2018-19, as a result of which coal stocks with the power plants had increased from the low of 9.424 mt (equivalent to 6 days consumption level) to 30.947 mt (equivalent to 18 days consumption level) at the close of March 31, 2019,” said a press statement issued by CIL.
Critical stock list
The State-owned miner also succeeded in bringing down the number of power stations in critical stock list from 34 as on May 5, 2018 to ‘nil’ as on March 31, 2019.
The window of special forward e-auction for power utilities was introduced mainly to cater to the needs of the power plants whose coal blocks had been deallocated and as the result of which tapering linkages were done away with. However, the introduction of ‘Shakti’ policy by the Central government in 2017-18, paved the way for such utilities to secure linkages from CIL.
Coal linkages
Coal linkages worth close to 27 mt per annum had been allocated in the first round of linkage auction conducted in 2017-18. Further, CIL signed Fuel Supply Agreements (FSA) for a capacity of 5,230 MW with power plants who were earlier issued LoA (Letter of Assurance), but whose commissioning was delayed beyond the stipulated timelines.
This apart, CIL also issued linkages to 13 power plants with total capacity of 13,980 MW under various stages of commissioning. As many as 15 power plants which were allocated coal blocks for their captive use, but could not start coal production from the blocks, were also allocated bridge linkages to meet their coal requirement or shortfall of production during 2018-19.
“All these plants were otherwise dependent on special forward e-auction window of CIL for sourcing domestic coal requirements. With the grant of regular and bridge linkages, dependency of large numbers of power plants had shifted from the special window of e-auction to institutional mechanism of supplies from CIL through FSAs and MoUs,” the release said.
In the wake of thrust to the power sector, the share of coal allocated under e-auction segment has come down to 12.6 per cent of production from 16.9 per cent in 2017-18 and 20.5 per cent in 2016-17.
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