Indian miner-CIL, has received a major boost after allocation of new coal blocks elevated resources of the coal major.
Coal resources of CIL have increased by 8.3 BnT after allocation of 16 coal blocks by the Indian government. Incidentally, CIL’s resource capacity took a leap to over 172 BnT from 164 BnT after the allocations, which makes it around 54% of the country’s entire coal resource.
CIL had highlighted that current rate of coal production combined with the proposed expansion plans projected in the coming years, would enable it to meet the rising coal demand of the country to a considerable extent.
It is pertinent to note that country’s coal requirement is huge and is increasing with the thrust on capacity addition in power sector. Evidently, the domestic demand for coal is far outstripping the rate of indigenous production, which despite the best effort from CIL, is still widening.
CIL has welcomed the initiative taken by the Indian government to operationalise commercial coal mining, citing that it would assist the country to become self-reliant in meeting the coal demand internally and reduce the import dependency.
However, the coal company seemed confident that it would remain the prominent player in coal market despite the arrival of several new private miners.
“Notwithstanding the entry of private miners in commercial coal mining, CIL is confident of staying ahead of the competition with a strong resource base, core expertise of operations, updated mechanization and multi-disciplinary work force” said an official of the company.
Indian government has recently made alterations in respect of Ministry of Coal under the ‘Mineral Law (Amendment) Ordinance 2020’ which is envisaged to further facilitate the developments made in commercial coal mining.
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