PTI reported that coal shortage continues to haunt India's largest power producer NTPC, which is depending heavily on imports, though the company hopes that situation would start looking up 3 to 4 months.

Mr RS Sharma CMD of NTPC said that “We are importing coal to meet the fuel shortage for our coal-fired thermal power plants. We hope, by March to April, coal supply should become normal.”

Mr Sharma said that there have been severe shortage of coal supply to thermal power plants in the entire country and some plants are even running at inventories which cannot last even a day.

According to statement by Central Electricity Authority, 43 such plants have coal stocks for less than 7 days, whereas 28 power units have availability of fuel for four days, as on December 31s, 2008.

The coal supply, however, was better during December 2008 compared to November. The fuel inventories at thermal power stations were slightly low in November compared to December. As per report, there were 51 Power plants which had coal stocks for seven days and 35 units were running on critical fuel inventory for as less as 4 days in November against the ideal situation of 25 days.

Interestingly, by December end, 4 power plants were running at coal stocks which could not last a day including thermal power stations in Yamuna Nagar-Haryana, Parichha and Unchahar in Uttar Pradesh and Bandel in West Bengal.

(Sourced from Press Trust of India)