KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – On the directive of the Power Ministry, Coal India Limited (CIL) will supply 1.4-million tons a day to all thermal power plants across the country, even as federal and state governments joust over whether the domestic power sector is facing a dry fuel shortage or not.

Soon after taking charge, new CIL chairperson Anil Kumar Jha said that the Power Ministry had set a daily supply level to ensure that every thermal power plant was carrying 22 days consumption of coal – the normative stock as laid down in standard operating procedures.

Owing to past issues, coal stocks had fallen to critical levels. However, CIL’s daily supplies of 1.4-million tons would enable power plants to increase stock, but they would have to make timely bookings as per their fuel supply agreements. He said that the general practice of minimising fuel inventories to check cash flow was not prudent in the case of bulk fuel consuming industries.

As reported earlier by Mining Weekly Online, according to data sourced from the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), on April 22, thermal power plants with aggregating generation capacity of 140 065 MW had coal stocks of 15.01-million tons, equivalent to about nine days’ consumption, against a normative stock requirement of 22 days set by CEA.

However, even as private and public thermal power companies report a sharp fall in coal stocks, the Coal Ministry has denied that there is a coal shortage in the country.

The Ministry maintains that all government-operated thermal power companies are being allocated coal above their requirement to meet the rising power demand while private thermal power companies are being allocated coal as per their “contractual agreement”.

The placation of private thermal power companies from the Ministry comes in the wake of government's decision to make “out of turn coal allocation to government thermal power plant”, which private power companies have labelled as “discriminatory and a distortion of a level playing ground based on ownership of the power generation plants”.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has written a letter to the Prime Minister, seeking his intervention to ensure that CIL will offer additional railway rakes for the transportation of coal to thermal power plants in the Delhi region, as the Indian capital is facing acute shortage of power as a result of lower coal stock.

The newly elected Karnataka Chief Minister, H D Kumaraswami, has also communicated to the Prime Minister warning of the coal shortages being faced by three power plant in his state, which currently have coal stocks to operate for 15 days.