KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – A last lap unprecedented surge in production has enabled State-miner Coal India Limited (CIL) to end the 2018/19 financial year with production of 607-million tons, marginally short of the 610-million-ton target agreed with the government.

The miner thus achieved a production growth of 7% during the year ended March 31, 2019, against growth of 2.4% in the previous financial year, according to data released by the company.

Significantly, the miner dispelled apprehensions of missing the production target agreed with the government at the start of the financial year, having produced 79.19-million tons of the dry fuel in March, the last month of the 12-month period. This was the highest monthly production ever in the history of the company. It also registered the highest ever daily production of 3.14-million tons on a single day on March 25.

Among the seven wholly-owned producing subsidiaries in the CIL fold, Northern Coalfields surpassed the 100-million-ton-a-year production mark during March, joining CIL subsidiaries South Eastern Coalfields and Mahanadi Coalfields as 100-million-ton-a-year miners.

Company insiders point out that apart from growth in production, growth in offtake at 608-million tons during 2018/19, up from 580-million tons in the previous year, a 4.8% growth, was an indicator that the miner had stepped up efforts to meet rising demand from thermal power producers.

However, officials in independent thermal power producers claim that the current rate of growth in offtake of coal from CIL would not be sufficient to bridge the gap with incremental demand.

As reported by Mining Weekly Online, the Coal Ministry last month eased rules for thermal power companies to source coal permitting them to do so without having a power purchase agreement with electricity distribution companies in place. This will mean that a number of power plants currently not sourcing coal from the State-miner will start to claim dry fuel from the latter, resulting in a spike in incremental coal demand.

Independent power producers claim that CIL will need to ramp up production growth to a sustainable 8% and matching offtake growth to meet such incremental demand.