The Indian government will exclude coking coal assets from its plans to auction coal blocks for commercial mining by private stand-alone mining companies, an official from Indian state-controlled Coal India Limited (CIL) told SteelOrbis on Wednesday, January 28.
Given the very limited availability of coking coal resources in the country, the interests of CIL and its plans to increase coking coal production will need to be protected by keeping coking coal mining as the latter’s exclusive domain, the official said.
The Indian government earlier this month had issued the Coal Mines Special Provisions Ordinance, empowering it to auction coal blocks to various end-user industries and also adjusting the legal framework enabling private miners to undertake coal mining without end-use restrictions.
Until now, coal mining in India has been the exclusive domain of government owned and managed companies under the Coal Nationalization Act 1973.
Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL), the wholly-owned subsidiary of CIL and the country’s sole coking coal supplier, accounts for 30 million mt per year of domestic coking coal production capacity, with plans to increase it by 10 million mt per year by 2017 and by another 10 million mt per year by 2020.
During the April-December 2014 period, the import-dependent Indian steel industry received 28.47 million mt of coking coal, up from 27.21 million mt in the corresponding period of the previous year.