Western Coal Field To Produce 100 MT Coal By 2020, Plan To Open 36 Mines Unveiled

Western Coalfields (WCL), main subsidiary of biggest coal miner of the country Coal India has moved ahead to increase its coal production by 150%  and is slated to achieve 100MT of coal production by 2020. Interestingly, this target is more than the earlier target of 60MT and will help CIL to achieve ambitious coal production target of one billion tons by 2020. To achieve this target WCL has planned to open 36 mines in 36 months. Minister of State (IC) for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal has unveiled this plan recently.

Company has recently acquired 2500 hectare of land from farmers that will generate around 1300 direct employment opportunities for the farmers. With this enhanced production western and southern part of the country will be benefited and major relief would be for Maharashtra. Goyal hoped that through the pace with which coal mines are opening, the dream of providing 24x7 affordable power for all will become reality. Interestingly WCL started registering negative growth after 2009-10 from the level of 45.74 MT coal production and the company was registering operational losses since last three years.

The company was about to be referred to BIFR and there was no hope seen of further progress and failure on the part of company to acquire land was the main reason for the pathetic state of the company but now government is keenly looking to resolve this issue. Due to this since October - November 2014 the company started thinking on different lines and after extensive exercise taken till now company has now identified substantial number of viable projects with the help of Ministry of Coal, Coal India and other authorities. Company has now prepared a vision document and working according to this document company has acquired record 2650 hectare of land during last one year against 2620 hectare in last ten years.