KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) - Indian coal production and supplies to thermal power plants are poised to hit another bull run, with 15 of the 31 coal blocks auctioned last year slated to get into production by March 2016.

A Coal Ministry review meeting last week on the operational status of the auctioned coal blocks, concluded that despite some delays beyond the control of the new owners, “progress on operationalization of the auctioned blocks was satisfactory”.

Simultaneously, on the supply-side, coal stocks at 101 thermal power plants in the country doubled during December 2015, with only three plants holding “critical” coal inventories, or less than seven days consumption.

Only 7% of total thermal coal consumption was met through imports during the month and that too because three thermal plants operated by private sector companies were designed to operate only on import coal.

“Fifteen coal blocks auctioned last year will commence production in March and join eight mines which had started production since being auctioned last year,” Coal Secretary Anil Swarup said.

“Coal production and new blocks have been able to boost coal production largely owing to easing of three factors: land acquisition, environmental clearances and availability of railway rakes,” he said.

According to a Coal Ministry official, the final count of eight coal blocks still to get back into production was under review by the government, and although no date had been set, the government was hopeful of getting them back on the rails within the current calendar year.

However, the Ministry declined to comment on incremental output expected from the coal blocks getting back into production, on the grounds that a ramp-up of output from these blocks would be in a phased manner based on deployment of `man and machine’ by the respective mine operators.

Meanwhile, buoyed by the rising coal production, the Ministry directed Coal India Limited (CIL) to maintain its 9% growth achieved in December for the full year of 2015/16 which would translate to a total production of 550-million tonnes during the 12-month period ending March 2016.

“In a meeting held earlier this month, CIL was asked to sustain the momentum in growth achieved during April to December 2015 and the company should hit the record target of 550-million tonnes in the current fiscal,” Swarup said.

Underlining the achievement of CIL, he said that while the miner during 2010 to 2014 had been able to increase aggregate production by 31-million tonnes, it had achieved an identical increase in production in just the 12 months of 2014/15.

However, a section of Coal Ministry officials were cautious on the supply side touching an oversupply situation since demand for power was seen to be getting depressed.

It was pointed out that plant load factor (PLF) of thermal power plants in the country had fallen to an average of 63% during April-December 2015, which was about three percentage points lower than corresponding previous period and a worsening of PLF would limit the ability of the plants to increase coal off-take from miners despite rising coal production.