Inergystat- Coal sector- March 2020 in Minutes

Check out the important news of the Coal sector happened during March 2020:

• WCL achieved an output of 57.64 MT in FY20, surpassing the target of 56 MT. WCL also registered highest ever production in a single day on 31st March 2020 of 5.02 lakh tone. The company has a target of 62 MT for the year 2020-21.          
• The government stated that they are working to ensure critical coal supplies during the lockdown on account of coronavirus outbreak. Coal stocks at power plants stand at 41.8 million tonnes (MT) equivalent to 24 days consumption as of March 26, 2020.

Pralhad Joshi has ensured that Coal supplies are declared as an Essential service and directed all the officials of Ministry of Coal to work harder to ensure that critical coal supplies are maintained during the lockdown period due to COVID 19 pandemic so that power and other critical sectors are unaffected due to the current situation.

• Coal India Limited has extended the deadlines for submission of documents by successful bidders for its recently concluded short-term supply contract auctions while state-run e-commerce company MSTC has postponed a long-term coal supply contract auction by more than one month. This will result in delay in the supply of coal supplies to bidders by at least a month.
• The coal ministry is planning to launch a large scale program to utilise Coal Bed Methane (CBM) extracted from coal seams during the mining process for household energy purposes. India has the fifth-largest coal reserves in the world and holds significant prospects for exploration and exploitation of CBM. According to DGH, the potential CBM resources in the country stand at around 92 trillion cubic feet (TCF) across 12 states.
• As per estimate, Coal India must add 22,000 jobs and acquire more land to help achieve the set output target of a billion tonnes of coal by 2024.

The state-owned miner needs to acquire 37,272 hectares of land in the next four years, and the exercise may affect 42,537 families in about 300 villages. Another 45% of the land is under forests, requiring clearances that take a year. Only 2.2% of the land already belongs to the government.

• CBI has booked 25 prominent companies in a case of criminal conspiracy and cheating over the manner in which coal was supplied to the firms between 2013 and 2017 without adhering to the terms of the fuel supply agreement that had been signed which brings a loss of Rs 97 crore to MCL.

The companies named by the investigative agency include several of India’s well-known corporate houses: Jindal Steel, Adani Power, Adani Power Maharashtra, Vedanta, ACC Ltd and Emami Biotech Ltd.

• Coal India's receivables from power companies crossed Rs 13,800 crore in February, increasing almost 71 percent since April 2019.

A set of state-government owned power plants from Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Rajasthan are not paying dues regularly on time which has inflated the overall receivables.

• As per data, India’s coal imports registered a decline of 14.1 percent to 17.01 MT in February in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. As per mjunction analysis, the country’s coal imports in February last year stood at 19.82 MT.

Of the total imports in February 2020, non-coking coal was at 12.25 MT, against 12.38 MT imported in January 2020. Coking coal imports were at 3.15 MT in February 2020, down from 3.95 MT imported a month ago.

• Coal production from captive mines in the first eleven months of the ongoing fiscal have increased by 18.8% year-on-year (y-o-y) to 51.7 MT from the corresponding period in FY2018-19.

About 53% of the output came from coal blocks which were not canceled by the Supreme Court in its September 2014 order.

• As per data, India's thermal coal imports rose 12.6 percent to nearly 197.84 million tonnes in 2019, reflecting the second straight year of growth in shipments of the fuel despite attempts by the government to cut imports.

India imported 51.33 million tonnes of coking coal in 2019, down from 51.63 million tonnes in 2018.

• Lok Sabha on March 06, 2020, cleared the Mines and Mineral Laws (Amendment) Bill. The bill will open up the coal sector for commercial mining and allow domestic as well as global companies to invest.

The bill will pave the way for the central government to go ahead with the auction of coal mines for commercial purposes by even allowing companies, which do not possess any prior coal mining experience in India, but are financially strong and or have mining experience in other minerals or in other countries to participate in auction of coal/lignite blocks.

• Coal India is likely to produce 600-610 million tonnes and sell 590-600 million tonnes this year, about the same as last year. The compounded annual growth rate was 3.1 percent in the past four years, while to meet the target of 1 BT by 2024, company needs to accelerate at 14 percent.

This year till February, it produced 517 million tonnes and sold 528 million tonnes, falling 1.9 percent and 3.7 percent respectively from the previous corresponding period.

As per official, Production was affected by law and order issues at subsidiaries and unseasonal heavy rains at a large number of mining locations. Sales were affected by less than anticipated growth in power demand—a sector that constitutes the bulk of Coal India’s supplies.

• Coal India announced the provisional production and off-take performance for the month of February 2020 and for the period April 2019 to February 2020.

Coal production rose 14.2% to 66.26 MT in February 2020 over 58.05 MT in February 2019.

For the period April 2019 to February 2020, coal production stood lower by 1.9% at 517.78 MT compared to 527.69 MT in the corresponding period of previous year.

Coal off-take rose 6.8% to 54.97 MT in February 2020. For the period April 2019 to February 2020, coal off-take stood lower by 3.7% at 528.27 MT compared.

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