Minister seeks action on poor coal output

Friday,Dec2, 2011

RANCHI: Expressing dissatisfaction with the performance of government-run Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL) and Bharat Coking Coal Ltd (BCCL), Union coal minister Sri Prakash Jaiswal on Thursday warned of taking action against the officials of these companies, including those serving in the coal ministry found responsible for poor performance.

Talking to newsmen after a review meeting at the CCL headquarters, he said, "It was only because of the poor performance of CCL in terms of coal off-take and production that he is reviewing it on a regular basis. We are concerned because of the increasing demand of coal from all over the country in the wake of the rising demand for power. The demand of existing power plants is growing each day and there is a long queue of new power sector units waiting for our commitment to fulfill their requirement of coal."

According to him, "Though we have asked the upcoming power production units to fulfill their demands by importing coal, we also have to augment our production to meet the demands," he said.

He admitted that while some projects are pending

because of forest clearance, environmental clearance and many other issues, a large number of allotted coal blocks have been cancelled because they failed to become operational within the given timeframe.

When asked about the cancellation of coal block allotted to Jharkhand, Jaiswal said chief minister Arjun Munda met him in New Delhi over the issue and his ministry is looking into the matter.

"As far as the cancellation of the coal blocks allotted to the state government and the state-owned enterprises are concerned, a review committee has been constituted under the coal ministry to look into the matter," said Jaiswal. He also admitted that along with the state government even officials of National Thermal Power Corporation ( NTPC) approached the ministry to apprise them of some practical difficulties because of which mining could not be started in the allotted coal blocks.

Answering yet another question on companies obtaining coal linkage and illegally selling it to non-coal traders at the higher market rate as unearthed by CBI recently, Jaiswal initially expressed ignorance about such incident and prompted CCL CMD R K Saha to chip in and clarify this. Saha said the company is trying to figure out such companies and is canceling supply to them. "A certificate is provided by the state government to a non-coal company for coal linkage, following which we verify at our own end but owing to lack of manpower, the process has been partially affected," he said.

Jaiswal admitted that the coal sector has been hit by

corruption for the last 15 years and the ministry is trying to tighten its noose around people, including officials of the companies.

(sourced TimesofIndia)

Indian coal output in October falls 9pct YoY - Report

Friday, 02 Dec 2011

Bloomberg, citing India Coal Market Watch, reported that India’s coal production fell by 9% in October from a year earlier and the country may miss output targets for a second year.

Output totaled 39.59 million tonnes in October from 43.51 million tonnes a year earlier and a state set target of 47.1 million tonnes.

However, production rose 33.5% from September when rains disrupted output.

Production during the first seven months of the year ending March 2012 was about 11% lower than a state set target of 259.37 million tonnes and 5.5% lower than a year earlier.

The target for the 2012 fiscal year is 554 million tonnes. Last year, India’s coal production was 533 million tonnes compared with a targeted 573 million tonnes.

(Sourced from Bloomberg)

CIL output growth seen almost nil this fiscal: official

March 06, 2011, 15:20 IST By PTI

New Delhi :Coal India's (CIL) production growth is likely to nosedive to less than 1% in the current financial year compared to the projected growth of about 7%, as a number of its projects have been hit by environmental concerns, a top Coal India official has said.

State-owned CIL has set a production target of about 460 million tonne for this fiscal.

"Due to 'no-go' classification by the Environment Ministry, several CIL projects are lying stranded. The production growth, as compared to the last fiscal is likely to be almost nil this fiscal," a Coal India official told PTI.

In the year 2010-11, CIL's coal output, which accounts for over 80% of the domestic production, is expected to be almost the same as 2009-10 fiscal years' 431.26 million tonne.

CIL's 2009-10 coal output was 7% more than the previous fiscal.

In 2008-09 CIL's production stood at 403 million tonne.

Talking about the decline in production, CIL's former Chairman Partha S Bhattacharyya, who retired on Feb 28, said: "Coal production has taken a dip due to non clearance of projects and no go classification, which has affected many a projects of the company."

Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal last month had said that the growth rate has already declined to less than 2% on account of environmental concerns.

"We are trying our best that we restore it to 7% again in the next fiscal," he had said.

Ministry of Forest and Environment (MoEF) has put 203 coal blocks with a potential output of 660 million tonne per annum in nine coalfields under the 'no go' mining zone.

Besides, as many as 154 projects of CIL are stalled due to delay in environmental and forest clearances at the Centre and state level.

The government has already constituted a 12-member ministerial panel, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to address the issues hurting coal production. The Group of Ministers which has already met once is likely to meet again this month.

The Coal Ministry, meanwhile, has said that 23 CIL projects, falling under areas categorised as 'critically polluted' under Comprehensive Environment Pollution Index (CEPI) by the MoEF, were likely to get the green signal.

CEPI captures the various health dimensions of the environment and acts as a warning tool to facilitate early intervention.(sourced:Business standard)