Brushing aside the anxiety about the future of Coal India Limited (CIL)as “undue worry as Coal India is sound and secure”, in the wake of opening up of coal sector for commercial operators, Mr. Pramod Agrawal, the Maharatna coal behemoth’s Chairman said “there is no proposal to give away any CIL block for commercial mining, so there is no cause for concern. The company has sufficient blocks with abundant resource capacity to continue as a commercially viable entity even in the competition era”.
CIL has 447 coal blocks, mainly explored, under its disposal. In addition, 16 additional blocks were allocated to CIL – 10 under the Coal Mines (Special Provision) Act and 6 under the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act – making CIL the largest coal resource holder in the country.
The combined capacity of these 463 blocks is close to 170 billion tons (BT). Most of the 16 blocks recently allocated have a minimum production capacity of 10 million tons (MTs) per year. Their combined maximum rated capacity is 264 million tonnes.
At the current production rate, and even taking into account the projected growth in the years to come, CIL will be able to produce and fuel the country’s growing demand for coal to a considerable extent in the foreseeable future. The aim of CIL is to produce and supply 1 BT of coal by 2023-24 and to take it further from there.
Having its own in-house consulting arm, the Central Mine Planning and Design Institute, with over four decades of expertise, is another huge advantage for CIL in a competitive scenario. With exploration, mining planning , design, infrastructure engineering , environmental management as strong points, most of the issues of coal mining are dealt with, giving CIL an edge over other participants in the coal sector. CIL also has a talented pool of multidisciplinary professionals.
“Domestic demand for coal is outstripping the indigenous production. The resultant gap is being met through coal imports at huge forex outgo. If commercial miners can step in to fill this gap, imports to some extent would be reduced” said an official of the company adding, “but their presence does not dent CIL’s status as the company is resilient and has the capability to expand”.The country had imported 247 MTs of coal during 2019-20 of which 52 MTs was coking coal and the rest 195 MTs was non-coking coal.
CIL is increasing internal operational efficiency. Synergizing its efforts with the state and central authorities concerned is a more critical issue for the company to address a number of issues related to increasing its output and supplies.