China fuel, coal stocks at normal levels in late May

Wed Jun 1, 2011 9:42am GMT

* To encourage coal imports, urge more domestic production
* Coal stocks in major power plants enough for 16 days generation
* Fuel stocks held by major oil firms at reasonable levels (Adds details, background)

BEIJING, June 1 (Reuters) - China will encourage coal imports and urge domestic coal miners to boost output to increase supplies to power plants, as power shortages are expected to expand along with rising industrial production and as peak summer demand approaches.

The National Development and Reform Commission said on Wednesday that it would take comprehensive measures to increase energy supplies and curb unreasonable demand.

The commission raised the prices of power coal-fired generators sell to grid firms by an average of about 5 percent in three central Chinese provinces from Wednesday after hiking the rates in 12 other provinces on April 10, as it tackles the worst summer power shortage in seven years.

It also jacked up the price power grid firms charge industrial users by an average of some 3 percent in these provinces from Wednesday, passing on most of the hike in grid feed-in tariffs to end-users.

Eleven out of China's 31 provinces and regions have introduced power use restrictions since May, the commission said in a report on its website (www.ndrc.gov.cn).

The commission, China's top economic planning and pricing ministry, also ordered grid firms to ensure power supplies to households and other important power users.

Refined oil products stocks held by state-owned Sinopec group and CNPC were at a reasonable level of more than 13 million tonnes in late May, according to the commission.

Coal stocks at major Chinese power plants were at nearly 60 million tonnes in late May, enough for 16 days' power generation, it said.

(Reported by Jim Bai, Judy Hua and Tom Miles; Editing by Jacqueline Wong, sourced Reuters)