India: Coal ministry revises timeline for fourth tranche of commercial mining auctions

The Ministry of Coal (MoC) has provided a new timeline for sale of coal blocks envisaged under the fourth tranche of the commercial mining auctions.

As per the latest schedule, the deadline for various pre-bid activities has been extended, including sale of tender documents and registration for auctions. Besides offering prospective bidders an additional time for submitting their request for coal blocks, the due date for technical bids was re-scheduled to 28 Feb’22.

Finally, the electronic auction, consisting of the financial bidding round, will commence in the final week of Mar’22, which was earlier slated to begin from 10 Mar’22.

Revised time-line of auction process

*Last date of registration: 21 Feb’22

*Last date of sale of tender document: 23 Feb’22

*Bid due date: 28 Feb’22

*Opening of technical bids: 2 Mar’22

*Examination of technical bids: 3-23 Mar’22

*Conduct of electronic auction: 24 Mar’22-6 Apr’22

Auction overview

Continuing the streak of auctions under the commercial coal mining scheme, the fourth tranche has been launched with a total of 99 blocks on offer. Of these, 24 are new whereas the remaining 75 are unsold ones which have been rolled over from the earlier rounds.

The offered blocks are spread across nine coal-bearing states, of which 60 are fully explored and 39 are partially explored.

Based on the revenue sharing model, sale of coal blocks under the commercial mining scheme was introduced to fulfill the energy needs of the country by bringing in structural reforms in the auction process.

Key features of the process include introduction of the National Coal Index, ease of participation in the auctions with no restriction in end-use for coal utilization, and efficiency promotion through incentives for early production and use of clean coal technology.

Under these auctions, two tranches have been successfully concluded wherein a total of 30 blocks have been allocated so far.

The most recent sale under the third tranche is still ongoing, where 10 blocks have been sold in the first attempt. However, there remains the possibility of sale in the second attempt for the remaining 10 blocks which had received a single bid in the technical round.