Coal India to Import for First Time in Years

State-run Coal India, the world's largest coal mine, will import fuels used by power companies. A letter from the Ministry of Energy was seen by Reuters on Saturday as the shortage raises concerns about new power outages.

Coal India is the first to import fuel since 2015, highlighting inventory efforts by state and federal authorities to avoid repeated April when India faced the worst power outages in more than six years.

"Coal India imports coal for government-to-government (G2G) basis and supplies it to state generators and independent power producers (IPPs) -owned thermal power plants on May 28, the federal Power Ministry said. 

This letter was sent to senior state energy officials in the central and state governments, including all energy suppliers, the federal coal secretary, and the chairman of Coal India. India is expected to face an even bigger coal shortage in the third quarter of 2022 as electricity demand is expected to increase, fueling the threat of widespread power outages.

India has recently pressured utilities to increase imports to mix with local coal, reducing the supply of domestically mined coal if power plants are unable to build up coal inventories through imports.