Coal news and updates

Coal stocks at Indian power plants fall to 20.15 mt

September 30: After rising continuously from March-April this year and touching a peak of over 23 million tons (mt) in August, the daily coal stocks at power plants in the country fell by nearly 3 mt and stood at 20.15 mt towards the end of September, according to data available from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA).

Incidentally, daily coal stocks at Indian power plants used to hover at around 7-8 mt levels till 2012, but had started rising from the beginning of 2013  and touched a peak in August due to higher supplies by coal companies on increased production, better rake availabilities and consequent lower generation by utilities on low demand from distribution companies.

Industry sources anticipate that slight improvement in power demand, coupled with low supplies of imported coal to the utilities by traders due to the sharp fluctuation in the Indian rupee against the US dollar had prompted the power plants to use up more coal from their stocks, which resulted in reduction in overall stocks.

Incidentally, the stocks of coals at 99 power plants monitored by the CEA stood at 23.08 mt on August 25, but fell gradually to 22.67 mt on September 2, to 21.94 mt on September 10, to 20.80 mt on September 18 and further to 20.15 mt as on September 25.

The stocks of imported coal on September 25 stood at 0.961 mt and at 1.017 mt on September 18. The same stood at 1.033 mt on August 25.

The decline in the overall coal stocks situation did not affect much in terms of the number of plants facing critical coal stocks situation of less than four days, the CEA data revealed. The number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than seven days stood at 13 on September 25 as compared to 12 plants facing a similar fate on September 18, September 10 as well as September 2.

However, the number of plants facing a super-critical coal stocks situation of less than four days increased slightly to 8 plants as on September 25 compared to 6 facing a similar situation on September 18, 7 plants on September 10, September 5 and on September 2.

ICMW expects that coal stocks at power plants would again start rising from the middle of October as production and loading of rakes increases in domestic mines.