India to Face Coal Shortages, WCL Chief Says
By Commodity Online
08 Apr 2008 at 10:08 AM GMT-04:00
resourceinvestor.com
NAGPUR, India (CommodityOnline.com) -- Demand created by upcoming power plants could lead to coal shortages in the coming years, according to D.C. Garg, Chairman and Managing Director, Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL).
WCL alone faced a shortage of 6 million tonnes of coal last fiscal. Ministry of Coal, Government of India, had allotted it linkages to the tune of around 52 million tonnes while the company was able to produce only 43.5 million tonnes, Garg told mediapersons.
More than 75% of WCL's coal linkages are to power projects in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Northern India. The rest are for cement, steel, paper and other industries and small consumers.
WCL will achieve its peak production level of 45 million tonnes in 2013, after which the production would decline. New mines would have to be opened fast to meet the increase in demand, he added.
India is one among the top as far as coal deposit is concerned. It now ranks 3rd amongst the coal producing countries in the world. Through a sustained programme of investment and greater thrust on application of modern technologies, it has been possible to raise the production of Coal from a level of about 70 million tonnes at the time of nationalisation in early 1970's to 355 million tonnes (provisional - excluding Meghalaya) in 2003-04.
Most of the coal production in India comes from open pit mines contributing over 81% of the total production. A number of large open pit mines of over 10 million tonnes per annum capacity are in operation.
Shovels with capacity up to 25 cu. m., Dumpers up to 170 tonnes, Draglines up to 24/96 capacity and input crushing conveying system are deployed in hard coal open pit mines. Large capacity bucket wheel excavators are in operation for lignite mining.
Underground mining currently accounts for around 19% of national output. Most of the production is achieved by conventional Board and Pillar mining methods. Side by side, intermediate technologies using Side Discharge Loaders (SDL) and Load Haul Dumpers (LHD) in Board and Pillar method of working have been introduced.
Contemporary technology in the form of Longwall Powered support has also been introduced in a limited scale.
The gradation of non-coking coal is based on Useful Heat Value (UHV), the gradation of coking coal is based on ash content and for semi coking / weakly coking coal it is based on ash plus moisture content , as in vogue as per notification.
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