Hyderabad | Nov 22, 2017: With rising demand for coal whose dispatches to power sector rose by 18 per cent across the country in October, State-owned mining company Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) decided to go full throttle in coal production.
Officials decided to advance commencement of operations in all 12 new mines and open them in December itself. “If all goes well, we want to commence operations in the first week of December as there is a constant rise in demand for coal,” highly placed sources in SCCL told Telangana Today.
The officials already submitted a report to Chief Minister, K Chandrashekhar Rao and are awaiting his nod. The Chief Minister recently announced that he would kick-start operations from at least one of the 12 proposed new mines in December itself. Once his appointment is fixed, operations will begin in all 12 mines before the end of December.
Of the 12 mines proposed for inauguration, six are underground and the remaining are open cast projects. Singareni Collieries plans to scale up its production by 21.07 million tonnes per annum (MTPA) through these new mines. The coal mining company also plans to invest a whopping Rs 2,300 crore to operate these mines located in the districts of Mancherial, Khammam, Jayashankar-Bhupalpally and Peddapalli.
To meet the increasing demand, SCCL already scaled up its coal production and is supplying more coal than its commitments to various power plants across the country. It registered an increase of five per cent to 4.2 million tonnes in October against about 4 million tonnes during the corresponding period in the previous fiscal. The company increased coal supply by 120 per cent to TSGenco, 105 per cent to NTPC-Ramagundam and 106 per cent to KPCL-Raichur in Karnataka by supplying 71.95 lakh tonnes, 65.86 lakh tonnes and 17.68 lakh tonnes respectively. It is also providing coal to Koradi, Parli and other thermal stations.
“Though we achieved five per cent growth in coal production, the output was down by 14 per cent against our monthly target of 5.75 million tonnes. Similarly, the output over the April-October period was 31.83 million tonnes against the target of 35 million tonnes. But, production was up by three per cent as compared to the corresponding period last year. Further, we set a target of increasing the coal output to 100 million tonnes in 2019-20. Hence, it is crucial for us to open new mines to increase our output and meet the rising demand for coal,” a top official said.
The State-owned mining company surpassed its annual coal production target of 58 million tonnes in 2016-17 by achieving an output of 61.4 million tonnes. A turnover of Rs 18,389 crore was registered for 2016-17, up by 11.3 per cent over previous year’s Rs 16,516 crore. At present, the company is operating 30 underground and 16 open cast mines, where around 66 per cent of its coal is supplied to power plants. The remaining coal output is supplied to cement, captive power, sponge iron and other sectors.
(Source: https://telanganatoday.com/)