The country’s largest power producer, NTPC, plans to augment coal availability by floating fresh tenders for coal imports.
The company has invited bids for purchase of 2 million tonnes (mn t) coal, of which 1 mn t will be used to feed its own power stations, whereas the remaining volume has been floated on behalf of the power plants of Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC).
This comes after the government had asked power producers to utilise imported coal for blending so that the burden of increased coal supply on the part of Coal India Ltd (CIL) can be eased to an extent.
NTPC, in fact, has already procured coal through imports via previous contracts. Incidentally, total imports by the company increased 71% y-o-y to 0.84 mn t during Apr-Aug’21 compared to 0.49 mn t in Apr-Aug’20.
However, the case of DVC is different. The company reported zero coal imports in the current fiscal, and had also informed that its operations were affected by unprecedented rains and constraints in domestic coal supply.
Salient features of the tender:
The tender process would be carried out on a reverse auction basis by evaluating the techno-commercial and price bids. The last date for bid submission is 2 Nov’21.
Bidders are required to declare the coal mine(s) outside India from where they are intending to supply coal as per the specification tabulated below.
Coal procurement via imports is expected to provide relief to both the power utilities by easing the critical coal stock position faced by their power stations.
Notably, among the power stations earmarked for supply of imported coal under the contract, only 4 have stock levels for more than 7 days of power generation.
However, the provision would lead to an increase in power generation cost as the present coal prices in the seaborne market are particularly high.
Leave a Reply