India's largest utility NTPC Ltd plans to ramp up coal imports to 15 million tonnes by 2012 to meet demand at its coal-fired plants, in line with the projected expansion in the generation capacity.
Mr RS Sharma CMD of NTPC said that "We expect our coal requirements to rise to 225 million tonne by the year 2012 adding that the utility plans to meet the requirements through captive production and imports.”
Mr Sharma said that domestic supplies of coal from Coal India Ltd are expected to fall short of the company's requirements at 195 mt, thus prompting NTPC to look at other avenues of sourcing fuel. Apart from the imports, the company intends to mine 15 mt of coal by 2012 from the captive coal blocks allocated to it by the government.
He added that we plans to import 12.5 million tonne of coal in the current fiscal that began April 1 to fulfill its need of 150 million tonne.
Source : SteelGuru