Coal news and updates

India’s pithead vendible stocks fall for 7th consecutive month

December 19: India’s pithead vendible coal stocks fell seven month running to 36.75 million tons (mt) as on October 31, 2013, according to provisional data available with ICMW.

On a year-on-year basis, too the pithead vendible stocks fell 24.02% compared to 48.37 mt in the last date of the corresponding month last year (October 31, 2012).

The pithead vendible stocks had been falling continuously from a high of 62.825 mt at the end of March to 58.031 mt in end-April, 53.755 mt in May-end, 48.939 mt in end-June, 43.045 mt at the end of July, 39.494 mt in end-August and 37.033 mt at the end of September.

This means that a total of around 26.07 mt of stocks was depleted between March-end to October-end this year.

Much of the depletion was on account of increased despatches from the mines of Coal India Limited’s (CIL’s) subsidiaries, the data revealed.

In fact, CIL’s vendible stocks, which stood at a high of 57.906 mt on the last day of March, fell to 33.453 mt on the last day of October.

This means, of the total depletion of 26.07 mt, 24.45 mt came from the CIL mines alone.

The pit-head vendible coal stocks in the country, at 36.75 mt on the last working day of October 2013, were lower by more than 11.61 mt compared to 48.37 mt recorded on the same day in August, 2012, the data revealed.

The following table provides monthly pithead coal stocks in India and CIL (in mt):

The following table gives detailed break-up of pithead vendible coal stocks with without coal companies as of October 31, September 30, 2013, and October 31, 2012 (in million tons):