Coal news and updates

Sharp CIL output hike hinges on logistics facilities

November 17: Coal India Ltd (CIL) is, at present, in a position to significantly increase its coal production by at least 100 million tons per annum (mtpa) provided linked evacuation facilities, such as rail lines, are in place, a senior official from the company said.

“Production can be easily increased from the existing projects itself, but we will not be in a position to evacuate that coal because there is no railway link available,” the official said.

The company’s two major projects – Magadh (20 mtpa) and Amrapali (12 mtpa) –recently came to production stage but currently there are severe limitations in terms of  transportation because railway connectivity is lacking and coal is being evacuated from mines to loading points through a road network, covering a distance of around 30 kilometres.

“This is not a feasible proposition (transporting coal by road for a distance of 30 km). Unless rail lines are in place, these mines cannot reach their full rated capacity,” the official said.

Asked about the government’s plan to increase India’s coal production to 1 billion tons per annum by 2016-17, the official said, “Nothing is impossible. But it will take some time. Who would have expected CIL to report 7 percent growth in production till very recently?”

“Even today we have capacity to increase coal production to a great extent but we are, to some extent, restricted by lack of evacuation facilities. If only production is the criteria, then we can easily increase the same to 1 billion tons. But there are other aspects that need to be taken care of, mainly the evacuation facilities,” the official added.

“We can increase production by 32 mtpa at present from only Magadh and Amrapali at CCL which recently came to production. In fact, production from these two projects itself can easily be increased by another about 15 mtpa (8 mtpa from Magadh and about 8 mtpa from Amrapali). However, the problem is evacuation. There are right now no railway lines for evacuation of coal from Magadh and Amrapali,” the official said.

“Similarly, we have three-four other projects, which can contribute towards increasing production by another 50-60 mtpa but there too evacuation facilities are lacking. So what are we going to do after mining the coal? Under present circumstances, we cannot mine to only build up stocks,” the official reasoned.