Thursday, 9 February 2012 at 14:51, Bloomberg
India bought 81.09 million tonnes of steam coal for its power plants and 33.26 million tonnes of coking coal in 2011. (REUTERS)
India, which uses coal to fire more than half of its power plants, imported 114.35 million metric tonnes of the fuel in 2011, according to shipping data.
The south Asian nation bought 81.09 million tonnes of steam coal for its power plants and 33.26 million tonnes of coking coal last year, according to New Delhi-based Interocean Group.
Power producers and steel plants in India are importing more coal to beat falling output at local mines and lack of railway lines to transport the fuel. Rising imports may boost global coal shipments by 4 per cent to 956 million tonnes this year as India buys 12 per cent more and imports into China climb 8 per cent, data from Clarkson Research Services Ltd, a unit of the world’s largest shipbroker, showed.
India may need to import 142 million tonnes of coal in the fiscal year ending March 2012, Sriprakash Jaiswal, the country’s coal minister, said in April last year.
The port of Mundra in western India received the highest volumes of shipments at 20.1 million tonnes for companies including Adani Enterprises Ltd, Binani Cement Ltd and State Trading Corp, according to Interocean data. Tata Power Co, JSW Group and Bhatia Industries and Infrastructure Ltd among others imported 8.2 million tonnes at Mumbai.
Vizag, Paradip, Gangavaram and Krishnapatnam on the eastern coast, received 10.97 million tonnes, 10.6 million, 9 million and 8.8 million respectively, the data shows.
Power-station coal prices at Australia’s Newcastle port, an Asian benchmark, rose 0.1 per cent in the week ended February 3 to $118.95 a tonne, according to IHS McCloskey data on Bloomberg.
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