Day 3 of the financial bid round witnessed JMS Mining walking away with the Urtan North coal block, which was procured at a closing bid of 9.5% against floor price of 9%.
Earlier, the company had won Urtan block on Day 1, and has now acquired two blocks in the Sohagpur coalfields of Madhya Pradesh, thus having an advantage in setting up the mining infrastructure at the same location.
As expected, Jindal Power emerged as the winner of Gare Palma IV/1 block. The company was eyeing the resource for quite some time as it holds relative importance in catering its captive coal requirement, but to the dismay of the industry onlookers, it was acquired with minimal contest.
It is pertinent to note that the company had acquired the same block in the previous round of auction when bidding was carried out on INR/t basis, by quoting highest bid of INR 230/t. However, Coal Ministry denied the allotment claiming that the bid was too low.
This time the company has won it at a closing bid of 25% against floor price of 24%. Considering National Coal Index (NCI) for G12 coal grade present in the block, the notional price comes out as INR 1335.1/t against latest representative price of INR 1219/t. This indicates revenue share of INR 333.77 would be paid for unit metric tonne coal production, which is only INR 104 in excess from the previous term.
It would be interesting to see whether the government would confirm the selection when final list is announced on 11 Nov ’20.
The only bright spot on the day was bidding for the Gotitoria East and West, two separate blocks in close proximity, which was heavily contested among the 8 participants. In the end, Boulder Stone Mart managed to edge out the contestants, by submitting final bid of 54% which was 32.25% higher than the floor price.
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