Coal news and updates

Indian thermal coal imports surged 18%; coking coal 6.31% during April-October

Indian thermal coal imports surged 18% at the country's top 12 major ports to 55.90 million tonnes (MT) in the first seven months of the current fiscal Year.

According to business-standard, these ports had handled 47.23 MT of coal during the April-October period of the last fiscal, 2014-15 and Imports of coking coal, used mainly for steel-making, also jumped by 6.31% to 19.38 MT, as per the latest data with the Indian Ports Authority.

The centre-owned ports had handled 18.23 MT of coking coal in April-October period of 2014-15. Together, these ports handled 75.28 MT coal during the April-October period of the current fiscal as against 65.46 MT in the same period of the previous fiscal, the paper reported.

India is the third-largest producer of coal after China and the US with 299 billion tonnes of resources and 123 billion tonnes of proven reserves, which may last for over 100 years.

India has 12 major ports -- Kandla, Mumbai, JNPT, Marmugao, New Mangalore, Cochin, Chennai, Ennore, V O Chidambarnar, Visakhapatnam, Paradip and Kolkata (including Haldia) -- which handle approximately 61 per cent of the country's total cargo traffic.

The business-standard noted that, thermal coal is used in power generation and with the world's largest miner Coal India, which accounts for over 80% of the domestic requirement, consistently failing to meet its target as well as demand of the firms, the power plants resort to imports.

The business-standard, further reported that, less production coupled with increased demand from power firms is further widening the demand-supply gap in the country, which is likely to widen to 185.5 MT in 2016-17.
 
The Coal India's  coal production rose 9.15% to 273.91 MT during the April-October quarter this year compared to 250.94 MT in the year-ago period. For the current fiscal, CIL's production target has been fixed at 550 MT.
 
CIL missed the production target for 2014-15 by 3 per cent recording an output of 494.23 MT. The company's output target was 507 MT for the fiscal. In 2013-14, the company had clocked production of 462.53 MT against a target of 482 MT.
 
The Centre has announced plans to boost Coal India's annual production to the level of 1 billion tonnes by 2019 to meet growing fuel demand.
 
Goyal had recently said that CIL will invest $20 billion to increase production to one billion tonnes over the next five years.

source:  http://coalspot.com