At least in six power utilities, which serve some of the most important load centres of the country, there are coal stocks for only four to seven days, although a stock for 32 days is considered ideal for power plants located far from the coal source.

The 705mw Badarpur TPS, which caters to the needs of the Delhi region, had stocks only for four days on April 1, 1999. Second on the list is the 220mw Majaffarpur TPS in Bihar. It had stocks to last only five days. Both 1260mw Kolaghat TPS in West Bengal and 1260mw Wanakbori TPS in Gujrat have stocks for six days, while the 1143mw Satpura TPS in Madhya Pradesh and the 690mw Parli TPS in Maharashtra have stocks for seven days.

As for two power stations under the Punjab State Electricity Board (SEB), coal stocks atthe 440mw Bhatinda TPS fell considerably from 60 days to 11 days and the Ropar TPS had stocks to last only 13 days.

Sources pointed out that coal stocks in power utilities started declining after the coal companies, particularly Coal India Ltd (CIL), faced with growing accumulated outstandings, asked the SEBs and other power utilities to deliver irrevocable revolving letter of credit (IRLC) or pay in advance for 10 days' supply of coal.

This was made effective from November 1, 1998. As on March 31 this year, CIL had an accumulated outstanding of around Rs 6,000 crore of which dues of power utilities were about Rs 4,900 crore. This also included disputed dues.

Since most of the SEBs did not have sufficient money to pay for the entire amount of coal required to maintain sufficient stocks, they started using a part of their stocks to maintain respective generation levels.

As on April 1, 1999, coal stocks at all the power utilities taken together declined to 12.8 million tonnes (mt) -- equivalent to astock for 21 days -- from 17.13mt or 27 days as on April 1, 1998.

According to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA) data supplied to CIL and the Indian Railways and used to monitor coal movement from coal mines to power utilities, coal stocks at Badarpur declined from 3,60,000 tonnes on April 1, 1998 to only 38,000 tonnes on April 1 this year; at Mujaffarpur from 50,000 tonnes to 8,000 tonnes; at Kolaghat from 2,71,000 to 88,000 tonnes; at Wanakbori from 4,30,000 to 1,08,000 tonnes; Satpura from 4,10,000 to 1,35,000 tonnes and at Parli from 1,28,000 to 78,000 tonnes.