Coal India Seeks Faster Approvals, Imports, Overseas Miners

July 1 (Bloomberg) -- Coal India Ltd., the world’s biggest coal producer, wants mining approvals sped up to help it boost production to meet a widening supply shortfall that is forcing more imports, Chairman Partha Bhattacharyya said.

Faster consent will allow the company to increase output by 10 percent, above its target of 7.5 percent, from a current production of 404 million metric tons a year, Bhattacharyya said in an interview. Domestic output has failed to meet demand, particularly from power generation, requiring the nation to increase imports by an average 10 percent to 15 percent a year.

“Increasing coal production capacity is not the same as adding to power generation capacity because you need so many other things,” Bhattacharyya said in New Delhi on June 15. “Coal in India is found in forests and places that are inhabited by tribes. Mining disturbs both.”

India, the world’s second fastest-growing major economy after China, aims to add 13,000 megawatts of new capacity annually, President Pratibha Patil said in parliament on June 4. More power is needed to cut outages that last as long as 8 hours in peak summer months in the capital. The country’s surge in power use has created a gap in coal production meeting demand from generators, Bhattacharyya said.

“If power generation capacity has to increase at a rate of 7 to 8 percent, maybe it can be managed,” he said. “But if it is to increase at 20 percent, I don’t think coal for that can come from indigenous sources.”

Overseas Partners

Coal India is taking steps to boost production, he said. It will seek to join with foreign companies to develop underground mines, Bhattacharyya said. Coal India, which mines more coal than Peabody Energy Corp. and China Shenhua Energy Co., the top coal producers in the U.S. and China, was created in 1975 from nationalized companies and has concentrated on less-complicated open-cast mining.

Environmental approvals to prospect for more reserves is a process that can take as long as seven years in India, Bhattacharyya said.

The constraints of coal production are forcing companies to seek reserves overseas. Coal India is looking at importing 4 million tons of coal this year.

NTPC Ltd., India’s biggest electricity generator, plans to import 12.5 million tons. Both state-owned companies are also scouting for overseas mines. In 2007, Tata Power Co., which is building a 4,000-megawatt plant in western India, bought a 30 percent stake in two coal mining units owned by Indonesia’s PT Bumi Resources, Asia’s third-largest coal miner. The $4.14 billion plant will run on coal from the Indonesian mines.

Imports Jump

India’s coal imports will more than double to 100 million tons by 2012 from 40 million tons, estimates Kaamil Fareed, a senior trading manager at the Coal & Oil Group, which supplies coal in India and Pakistan.

Coal India also plans to revive old mines to meet power plant demand for the fuel.

The company has identified 18 old underground mines with total reserves of 1.6 billion tons to increase output. These mines were abandoned by Coal India because of difficulties such as water-logging and fire. Coal India short-listed ArcelorMittal, the world’s biggest steelmaker, and nine other companies to develop its abandoned mines, Bhattacharya said yesterday.

Coal India has favored open-cast pits over underground mines, he said, as the majority of proved reserves were at depths of less than 300 meters (984 feet). “We know that we have a shortcoming in planning underground mines because we kept on doing better and better in open cast,” Bhattacharya said. “But underground has been ignored.”

Going Underground

Coal India lost the skill of underground mining because of its preference for the open-cast method, said Ashok Dhillon, chief executive officer at Canasia Power Corp., a Canadian company that has been trying to build a power plant in northern India for 15 years amid a lack of coal supplies.

“While they are one of the largest producers in the world by sheer volume, they are not the most expert of miners,” Dhillon said. “There may be reserves that Coal India finds difficult to get at but other international mining companies would find relatively easy to mine.”

The company has identified seven coal blocks where underground mines with a capacity of between 2 million tons and 5 million tons can be set up. The planning and development of the mines will be outsourced to international companies.