Coal news and updates

Coal stocks at India’s power plants at 36.328 mt

Coal stocks at about 100 thermal power plants (TPS) monitored by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) sustained the ascending trend and touched a further high of 36.328 million tons (mt) as of March 2, 2016, up week-on-week (w-o-w), month-on-month (m-o-m) and year-on-year (y-o-y).

There has been a continuous improvement in the coal stocks positions at power plants since the beginning of January 2015 and the situation is such that since December 2015, not a single plant has been facing a super-critical coal stocks scenario of less than 7 days or critical coal stocks position of less than 4 days.

According to the CEA report, coal stocks at 100 TPS stood at 36.328 mt as of March 2, 2016, up 0.41% w-o-w from 36.181 mt as of February 24, 2016 and up 4.93% m-o-m from 34.620 mt as of February 2, 2016.

The inventory as on March 2, 2016 was up 74.50% y-o-y from 20.818 mt as of March 2, 2015.

Similarly, domestic coal stocks at the TPS stood at 33.822 mt as of March 2, 2016, up 0.47% w-o-w from 33.665 mt as of February 24, 2016, up 3.57% m-o-m from 32.655 mt as of February 2, 2016 and up 85.48% y-o-y from 18.235 mt as of March 2, 2015.

However, imported coal stocks at the TPS stood at 2.505 mt as of March 2, 2016, down 0.40% w-o-w from 2.515 mt as of February 24, 2016, while up 27.55% m-o-m from 1.964 mt as of February 2, 2016 and down 3.02% y-o-y from 2.583 mt as of March 2, 2015.

A year back, as of March 2, 2015, the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than seven days was 17 and the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than four days was 4.

In terms of days, stocks of coal on March 2, 2016, February 24, 2016, February 2, 2016 and on March 2, 2015 were sufficient to run all the plants for 26, 24, 24 and 15 days respectively.

Following table shows coal stocks position at power plants on various days: