Coal India subsidiary South Eastern Coalfield Limited’s Gevra mine is set to become the largest coal-producing mine in Asia.
The coal ministry in a statement on Tuesday said that the mine has been granted environmental clearance to expand production capacity to 70 million tonnes per annum from the current 52.5 million tonnes.
The mine is one of the megaprojects of Chhattisgarh-based SECL and is crucial to meet the production and supply targets of Coal India to meet the energy needs. Gevra became the largest coal mine in the country last year.
At 70 MT coal production, Gevra could surpass the KPC Operation coal mine of Kaltim Prima Coal of PT Bumi Resources, Indonesia, whose annual production was a little over 56 MT (as of October 2023) according to data from Global Energy Monitor.
Tata Power, which has a 30 per cent stake in KPC has rated the production capacity at 60 MT as per investor disclosure.
“We have a vision for Gevra to become the largest coal mine in the world with state-of-art mining operations and this is a significant milestone towards that journey,” said Prem Sagar Mishra, chairman and managing director, SECL.
SECL is the second largest coal-producing subsidiary of the public sector miner Coal India after Mahanadi Coalfields (MCL). While MCL produced 184.9 MT between April-February 203-24, SECL’s production was 162.3 MT, accounting for 23.68 per cent of the total coal production and recording a year-on-year growth of 12.4 per cent.
Coal ministry in a separate statement said that the country’s total coal production between April-February 2023-24 has seen a 12.14 per cent growth to 880.72 MT while coal dispatch grew by 11.08 per cent to 882.44 MT. Production is estimated to rise to 1.5 billion tonnes by FY2030.
Amid the need to sort out coal logistics to keep production and offtake on track, the coal ministry has unveiled a logistics plan for the coal sector that proposed a strategic shift towards railway based system in first-mile connectivity projects to save Rs 21,000 crore and lower the average turnaround time for wagons by 10 per cent across the
country.
