adani claims massive coal shortage in india

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/interviews/coal-shortage-to-rise-between-250-mn-to-350-mn-tonne-in-next-3-4-yrs-adani-power/articleshow/9298577.cms

Above is the full article.

If you guys think that the Teresa sale is not happening you may want to consider what Mittal ( just bought MCC ) and Adani think about the coal shortage in India.
Perhaps we should not be cashing in this valuable assets just yet.

On another note, there has been some change in the coal-mining and selling norms more taxes etc. in Indonesia and Australia, do you think there could be some margin and cost pressures on your operations due to a change in these policies?

What I believe that the issue of coal is no more the individual issue of a company. It is the national issue. If you look at it today, for this financial year itself, there is a 70 million tonne of shortage of coal and going forward in next 3 to 4 years, the shortage could be anywhere between 250 million to 350 million coal.

So unless we resolve the major issue, these issues will continue because since we do not have control on the rules and regulation of the other countries from where we are importing coal, any change in there can inflict negatively our sentiments in power sector here. As far as Adani Power is concerned because we have integrated model where the coalmining is with us, the ships with us, the port with us and then the power plant with us.

This integrated model supports is better than the other countries. So I can only say that the affect or negative affect of, any negative changes in these countries from where we import coal would be minimal for our case.

Currently how much of the coal requirement is imported in the country?

In the country today anywhere about 60 to 70 million tonnes is being imported and by 2017, this would go anywhere between as I rightly said sometime back that it will go anywhere between 250 million to 350 million and there are a lot of anomalies there. There are plants which are on the coastal area who are using the domestic coal.

There are plants which are next to coalmine, they are using imported coal. So we have done one study and that our study was done by very renowned consulting company that even if we were to only rationalise the allocation of coals to these power plant, the country would save approximately 17000 crore per year only for the transportation cost.

You can appreciate that the coal which is moving from the coastal area to the pithead, if that can be utilised in the coastal area and the coal which is being produced in the mine, if that can be utilised in the plants which are near to it, the transportation which is currently getting wasted can be capitalised and can be used in a better way.

So what we have been suggesting to the government that in the event when it is almost certain that we will have to import lot of coal inside the country, why do not we go for a pooling price mechanism by which one entity of Government of India imports coal all and it distributes it evenly to each and every power producer.

If you could just clarify for us what your coal requirements are which are being met by imports and how you at Adani Power are doing to address that whole issue of or are you indeed trying to address that issue of reducing your reliance on imports and trying to rely more on domestic sources of coal?

Any company in India would like to rely more on the domestic coal. We have our linkage granted and we are in the process of signing the agreements with the coal companies here. We have our linkage for Mundra, we have our linkage for Tiroda and we had applied long back about our linkages of coal for our Kawai project.

But since Government of India has not done any new allocation in the last more than a year, it has not moved forward and they have not done it because there is not capacity available. So the fundamental question here is unless capacity available, they will not be able to allocate or even if they allocate they will not be able to honour it.