Coal news and updates

Supply of coking coal from BCCL to SAIL severely disrupted

April 1: Supply of washed coking coal from the mines of Bharat Coking Coal Ltd (BCCL) has been severely disrupted over the past few months on account of lower production and lower performance by washeries, an official from Steel Authority of India Ltd's (SAIL) Bokaro Steel Plant (BSL) told ICMW.

"We are supposed to get the entire quantity of washed coal produced by BCCL, but there has been considerably lower supplies from the company in recent months due to reasons unknown to BCCL. Because of this, our production schedule has gone haywire," the official said.

"Ideally, we should be getting around 2.80 million tons (mt) of washed coal from BCCL, but the actual supply is less than even 1.50 mt. Our production is suffering because we had planned to mix 25% of domestic coking coal with 75% of imported coal but, because of lower supplies from BCCL, we are being forced to use higher quantities of imported coking coal," the official added.

The BSL official further said that BCCL is now planning to completely stop supply of washed coking coal on the plea that the responsibility of washing should be that of the user. "But we cannot use run of mine coal in our coke oven plants unless it is washed to remove impurities and increase the coking properties," the official added.