Coal news and updates

CIL, govt adopt measures to increase coal production

July 15: Coal India Limited (CIL), the largest coal miner in the world, has undertaken several measures to augment production, including capacity addition, from new projects and use of mass production technologies, said an official release.

Piyush Goyal, Minister of State for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy (Independent Charge) said the government too has taken various steps to ensure time- bound production, including efforts to expedite environment and forest clearances, pursuing with state governments for help in expediting land acquisition and coordinated effort with railways for movement of coal.

Piyush Goyal said the production target of Coal India Limited for 2014-15 is 507 million tons (mt). The coal resource available in the existing CIL blocks is about 88.42 billion tons as assessed by CMPDI. In addition, MoC has assigned 119 blocks to CIL which have about 42.90 billion tons of coal resources, the minister added.

In the first quarter of 2014-15, coal production by CIL stood at 108.34 mt against a target of 113.01 mt which means production was 4.67 mt short or 95.86% of the target. Of the total production, a total of 7.04 mt coal was supplied to the private sector power generation companies under linkage in the first two months of 2014-15.

The main reasons for the shortfall are law and order problems in Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL) and Central Coalfields Limited, delay in forest and environmental clearances, frequent breakdown of draglines at Northern Coalfields Limited and Western Coalfields Limited.

Details of monthly targets of coal production of CIL vis-a-vis actual production during the last four months:

* Provisional
Source: Ministry of Coal