Coal secretary denies shortage of stock at some power plants

Of the 101 power plants under daily review of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) as on October 31, about 40 plants are found to have coal stock for less than 15 days. What more, six plants have stock for less than seven days and 12 plants with less than five-day stock. Power sector players believe that after surplus coal stock reported for a year, there is a scarcity in stock largely due to reduction in coal supply, issues relating to operation of mines and evacuation.

Of these, one pithead-based plant is with critical coal stock of less than five days and one plant is with super critical coal stock of less than three days .

In case of non-pithead plants, only three plants have critical coal stock of less than seven days and one plant is with super critical coal stock of less than four days.

Union coal secretary Anil Swarup told Business Standard, ”There is no coal shortage. Stock at two plants was at super-critical stage for different reasons. One such plant at Harduaganj is at this stage because coal was diverted to a more efficient plant at the request of the state government.” He said the Korba plant became super critical because the user agency could not arrange for its own wagon. However, both the issues are being addressed. ”Hence it may not be correct to say that there is coal shortage,” he noted.

As far as 40 plants with less than 15 days of stock are concerned, Swarup said it was on account of excessive rain but the stock was not critical and is being made up regularly. Besides, he informed that there are a number of plants that do not want coal.

Debashish Mishra, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India’s Partner (consulting), said in the core sector data that came out last week, coal production was down by 5.8% in September while the electricity generation went up by 2.2% – this is compared to September 2015. ”Even April to October cumulative production of data of Coal India shows a production of 273.57 MT vis-à-vis a target of 307 MT. This shortfall in production must be causing shortage of coal at the power stations,” he added.

Association of Power Producers’ director general Ashok Khurana said these shortages do not reflect general coal shortage position. ”These are project specific and there would be case specific reasons,” he said.