Power min intervention sought for third-party sampling of coal

The failure of Coal India to implement third-party sampling and analysis has prompted the Association of Power Producers (APP) to write to the ministry for intervention in operationalising the mechanism, as decided in a stakeholders meeting in June last year. Third-party sampling and analysis intends to empower power producers to independently verify quality of coal supplied.

In a meeting, attended by private developers, ministry officials, APP and state-owned power firms, it was decided that a panel of reputed third-party sampling companies would be drawn up by a committee consisting of power utilities, central electricity authority and CIL. Power utilities could select a third-party sampler from the list for sampling and analysis at the loading end. It was also decided to review these arrangements after three months.

APP, in its letter addressed to Piyush Goyal, has said that CIL has failed to operationalise the mechanism “due to lack of seriousness on the part of Coal India and its subsidiaries. Further, CIL circulated the standard operating procedure (SOP) for coal sampling in September, 2014 but has deviated from what was agreed in the meeting”.

Moreover, APP has pointed out deviations in the SOP for third-party sampling and analysis issued by CIL.

The circular fails to specify that payment for the sampling will be done by the power utilities as decided in the meeting to ensure sampling was done without any influence of CIL, APP said in the letter, and added that the company also failed to specify if the sampling results will be used for billing purposes, thus denying clarity to utilities who may go for third-party sampling.

“Unless the process of third-party sampling and analysis, by design, is not made completely free from the influence of CIL and coal companies, results of the analysis cannot be expected to be fair,” APP said.

The issue of coal quality has previously led to a standoff between the two public sector giants with power ministry and NTPC alleging that the quality of coal supplied by CIL was of low grade.