Coal news and updates

Coal stocks at India’s power plants cross 39 mt

Coal stocks at about 100 thermal power plants (TPS) monitored by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) crossed 39 million tons (mt) as of April 6, 2016, consequently, going up week-on-week (w-o-w), month-on-month (m-o-m) and year-on-year (y-o-y).

According to a CEA report, coal stocks at 100 TPS stood at 39.021 mt as of April 6, 2016, up 0.12% w-o-w from 38.975 mt as of March 30, 2016 and up 6.41% m-o-m from 36.670 mt as of March 6, 2016.

The inventory as on April 6, 2016 was up 44.99% y-o-y from 26.913 mt as of April 6, 2015.

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.

Of the total, domestic coal stocks at the TPS stood at 36.433 mt as of April 6, 2016, down 0.22% w-o-w from 36.514 mt as of March 30, 2016, up 7.01% m-o-m from 34.045 mt as of March 6, 2016 and up 51.19% y-o-y from 24.097 mt as of April 6, 2015.

However, imported coal stocks at the TPS stood at 2.588 mt as of April 6, 2016, up 5.16% w-o-w from 2.461 mt as of March 30, 2016, but down 1.41% m-o-m from 2.625 mt as of March 6, 2016 and down 8.10% y-o-y from 2.816 mt as of April 6, 2015.

A year back, as of April 6, 2015, the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than seven days was 11 and the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than four days was 5.

In terms of days, stocks of coal on April 6, 2016, March 30, 2016, March 6, 2016 and on April 6, 2015 were sufficient to run all the plants for 26, 28, 26 and 18 days respectively.

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