KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) - India’s largest power producer, NTPC, has floated a global tender for import of seven-million tones of coal to feed 12 of its thermal power plants across the country.

The import would be the start of the company’s plans to import a total of 15-million tonnes of coal during 2014/15 based on a projected shortfall in supplies from domestic miner Coal India Limited.

During 2013/14, NTPC imported 10-million tonnes of coal to meet shortfall from domestic sources. Last fiscal year, the company was not able to meet the higher import target of 16-million tonnes, citing a ‘procedural problem’ relating to concluding import contracts.

According to tender documents inviting international coal suppliers, 2.25-million tonnes of coal would be earmarked for its thermal plants at Talcher, Kaniha, Farakka, Kahalgaon and Barh, while another 2.05-million tonnes would be for the Simhadri and Ramagundam plants and 1.15-million tones for the Rihand and Vindhyachal plants. Another 1.55-million tonnes would be to feed plants at the Dadri, Sipat and Mouda projects.

One of the major reasons for the power utility’s import dependency had been its inability to commence coal mining from any of the ten captive mines allocated to it, even though NTPC had projects in hand to add generating capacity of 20 000 MW by 2017.

As a strategic objective to reduce import dependency, NTPC had planned investments of $1.4-billion to develop its captive coal-mines and reduce the share of imported coal in its total requirement to 10% from 21% at present.

The power generating company’s captive coal blocks have estimated reserves of three-billion tonnes but it has failed to meet targets to produce three-million tonnes of coal by 2013/14 and 37-million tonnes by 2017, with none of the captive coal projects nearing completion.

As an example, the company was allocated the Pakri Barwadih coal block in the eastern Indian province of Jharkhand in 2004, with production scheduled for February 2014, but the project had been stalled in the face of agitation against land acquisition with NTPC pleading its inability to do anything without the support of provincial government.

The company had also been unable to make headway in its stated objective of acquiring stakes in coal assets overseas barring a few cases in Indonesia, Mozambique and Australia.

NTPC currently has an installed capacity of 42 964 MW, of which more than 37 000 MW is coal based.