Coal news and updates

Utilities’ coal stocks slip for second consecutive week

As the mercury continued to surge northward amidst the summer heat wave and consequent rise in demand for electricity, coal stocks at about 100 thermal power plants (TPS) monitored by the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) declined for the second consecutive week ended April 20, 2016, according to provisional data from CEA.

It may be noted that, for the second consecutive time since the week ended October 23, 2015 coal stocks at the power plants have dipped on a week-on-week basis and for the first time since the week ended November 9, 2015 these have dipped on a month-on-month basis.

According to a CEA report, coal stocks at 100 TPS stood at 37.173 million tons (mt) as of April 20, 2016, down 3.46% w-o-w from 38.506 mt as of April 12, 2016 and down 2.47% m-o-m from 38.117 mt as of March 20, 2016.

The inventory as on April 20, 2016 was up 26.25% y-o-y from 29.443 mt as of April 20, 2015.

There had been a continuous improvement in the coal stocks positions at power plants since the beginning of January 2015 and the situation is such that since December 2015, not a single plant had been facing a super-critical coal stocks scenario of less than 7 days or critical coal stocks position of less than 4 days.

Of the total, domestic coal stocks at the TPS stood at 34.852 mt as of April 20, 2016, down 3.02% w-o-w from 35.936 mt as of April 12, 2016, down 2.33% m-o-m from 35.682 mt as of March 20, 2016 and up 34.11% y-o-y from 25.988 mt as of April 20, 2015.

On the other hand, imported coal stocks at the TPS stood at 2.321 mt as of April 20, 2016, down 9.65% w-o-w from 2.569 mt as of April 12, 2016, down 4.68% m-o-m from 2.435 mt as of March 20, 2016 and down 32.82% y-o-y from 3.455 mt as of April 20, 2015.

A year back, as of April 20, 2015, the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than seven days was 8 and the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than four days was 3.

In terms of days, stocks of coal on April 20, 2016, April 12, 2016, March 20, 2016 and on April 20, 2015 were sufficient to run all the plants for 25, 26, 27 and 20 days respectively.

Following table shows coal stocks position at power plants on various days: