Coal news and updates

Utilities’ coal stocks slip for third consecutive week

As the mercury continued to surge northward amidst the summer heat wave, along with a 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 third consecutive week ended April 26, 2016, according to provisional data from CEA.

It may be noted that, for the third 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 second consecutive week 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 36.337 million tons (mt) as of April 26, 2016, down 2.25% w-o-w from 37.173 mt as of April 20, 2016 and down 6.24% m-o-m from 38.756 mt as of March 27, 2016.

The inventory as on April 26, 2016 was up 22.72% y-o-y from 29.443 mt as of April 26, 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 33.909 mt as of April 26, 2016, down 2.71% w-o-w from 34.852 mt as of April 20, 2016, down 6.47% m-o-m from 36.256 mt as of March 27, 2016 and up 29.85% y-o-y from 26.114 mt as of April 26, 2015.

On the other hand, imported coal stocks at the TPS stood at 2.428 mt as of April 26, 2016, up 4.61% w-o-w from 2.321 mt as of April 20, 2016, down 2.88% m-o-m from 2.500 mt as of March 27, 2016 and down 30.57% y-o-y from 3.497 mt as of April 26, 2015.

A year back, as of April 26, 2015, the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than seven days was 6 and the number of plants facing critical coal stocks position of less than four days was 4.

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

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