Coal Imports Fell, Output Rose In 2021-22, Yet States Faced Power Crisis

Even though throughout the September-October interval of 2021, a number of states had been observing a risk of blackouts attributable to extreme scarcity of coal provide, between April 2021-January 2022, dry gas imports had decreased to the extent of 173.32 million tonnes as in comparison with 180.56 million tonnes throughout the corresponding interval of earlier yr, at the same time as manufacturing was sturdy.

In keeping with official knowledge of the Coal Ministry, throughout the identical April 2021-January 2022 interval, coal import by the facility sector had fell to 22.73 million tonnes as in comparison with 39.01 million tonnes throughout the corresponding interval of final yr.

Discount in imports confirmed that the nation had ample provide of home coal, as its output has been document breaking.

Earlier this month, Coal India Restricted, which is the most important provider of dry gas within the nation, had stated in a press release that 2021-22 has turned out to be a high-performance yr for it with a flurry of earlier information bettered.

CIL had stated that it’s making an attempt to the touch the 670 million tonnes manufacturing goal within the present fiscal.

But throughout September and October months of 2021, as many as 5 states particularly Gujarat, Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi and Tamil Nadu had been going through acute scarcity of coal and had been resorting to scheduled energy cuts to keep away from the opportunity of blackouts.

Along with this, a number of energy stations had been left with the availability of solely two days of dry gas, when underneath regular circumstances, this inventory is of as much as 15 days.

The scarcity of coal throughout that interval was due to heavy rains witnessed in coal bearing areas in September 2021, which hampered its motion to energy technology items, thus affecting energy provide in these states.

Additionally, unprecedented enhance in costs of imported coal had led to substantial discount in energy technology from imported coal based mostly energy vegetation.

That is the rationale when throughout the present fiscal, document coal manufacturing and sharp discount in its import was seen, main states going through energy scarcity had come as a jolt.

In the meantime coal import by the facility sector declined from 69.22 million tonnes in 2019-20 to 45.47 million tonnes in 2020-21, as per official knowledge.

The share of dry gas provide by Coal India Restricted, which was round 60.8 per cent of complete consumption of coal in 2019-20, elevated to 63.3 per cent in 2020-21 and additional to 64.3 per cent in 2021-22 (April- January 2022).