The number of thermal plants left with less than seven days of coal reserves has risen from 52 last week to 56 this week, government data showed on Wednesday. Moreover 29 of them are at super critical levels, which means they have coal reserves of under three days.
Discussing the reasons for coal shortage, Partha Bhattacharya, Former Chairman, Coal India, said this is kind of a situation can occur if Coal India fails to supply coal or there is lesser import by power stations.
Below is the transcript of Partha Bhattacharya’s interview with CNBC-TV18’s Shereen Bhan.
Q: As a former chairman of Coal India how worried would you be and what are the options before the government?
A: The coal that the power houses source are from various places. One of course is Coal India’s supply. Second is they have to do certain amount of import of coal and that has to happen as per the time schedule. Now this kind of a situation can occur either because Coal India fails to supply coal; that could be one reason, but that is not always the only reason. Sometimes as you are aware, this year particularly, there have been growth there has been a production growth and so I am not sure whether Coal India as compared to its commitment under the fuel supply agreement have faltered. It may not be so. Then in that case the situation could be because of lesser imports by the power stations. Today at least 25 percent of coal is met through imports.
Q: If I were to just point out what the power minister said, he said that there has been record production in a single month of nine percent by Coal India but yet were faced with this situation. One argument that is being presented is that we have had poor monsoon, demand has been on the higher side, hydel power has been on the lower side but if you were to look at solutions at this point in time what could those be?
A: Right now the domestic coal production is at its peak and there is not much of headroom available to improve up on that then there should be thrust on imports because in any case imports will happen, so why not import now.
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