India coal output surges 33.9% in May 2022

For the month of May 2022, the Ministry of Coal reported that India's overall coal production had risen by 33.88% to 71.30 million tonnes (MT). The production of coal stood at 53.25 MT in the month of May 2021.

This was disclosed by the Coal Ministry in a special press release. Coal production is the key to thermal power production, which still accounts for over 75% of the power generation in India. Coal production has seen a sharp revival in May supported by all the major coal producing companies.

For the month of May 2022, the production was higher across the 3 key production units.  Coal India Ltd saw 30.4% growth in coal production in May 2022 at 54.72 MT accounting for 77% of the total coal output in the month. Telangana based Singareni Collieries saw 11.04% growth in coal output at 6.04 MT.

The biggest spurt in growth came from the captive coal mines (especially those of NTPC), which saw coal output grow by 83.33% YoY at 10.54 MT. These were reported by the Ministry of Coal on its website.

For the month of May 2022, the coal dispatches increased by 16.05% to 77.83 MT which includes the dispatches from the inventory also. This is as against 67.06 MT during the month of May 20, since dispatches are not exactly comparable in May 2021 being the peak of the COVID period.

Overall dispatches by Coal India, Singareni Collieries and the captive mines were up by 11.3%, 5.66% and 67.06% respectively. In the same order, the coal dispatches of the 3 producers of coal were 61.24 MT, 6.13 MT and 10.46 MT respectively.

The capacity utilization has gone up substantially in the month of May 2022 and that is the major highlight. For instance, if you look at the top 37 coal-producing mines in India for the month of May, then 23 of these mines produced more than 100% of capacity, something that shows very high levels of utilization.

Another 10 mines reported capacity utilization levels of between 80% and 100% in the month of May 2022. Clearly, the coal mines have been able to ramp up their production substantially in the month of May 2022.

The result of this ramp-up is visible in the generation of power. For example, thermal power, which is the coal-based power generation, has registered a smart rate of growth of 26.18% during the month of May 2022 as compared to May 2021.

The overall power generation in May 2022 has been 23.32% higher than in April 2021 and on a sequential basis, the power generation is 2.63% higher than the power generated in April 2022. In a sense, this should give comfort to the power plants that the shortage of coal is being addressed.

Coal-based power generation in May 2022 has been 98,609 MU in comparison to 1,02,529 MU in April 2022. That represents a fall of -3.82% on a sequential basis. This is only the thermal power generation. However, total power generation has increased in May 2022 to 1,40,059 MU from 1,36,465 MU in April 2022 and this is largely due to a surge in the alternate renewable sources of energy like hydro and wind energy.