An unusually rainy stretch towards the end of India’s monsoon season this year has halted production at a major coal mine, worsening the shortfall in the production of the fossil fuel in the country.
On Sept. 29, the Lilagar river in the central state of Chhattisgarh abruptly changed its course, flooding the Dipka coal mine in Korba district.
Chhattisgarh produced the highest quantity of coal in the country in financial year 2018-19. In the past seven days alone, rainfall in the state has been 261% more than its average for this time period over the last 50 years. All workers at the Dipka mine have been rescued, but some heavy machinery has been damaged.
Coal India, the state-owned monopoly miner which owns the Dipka mine, supplies over 80% of India’s domestic coal. Dipka alone has an annual output of more than 30 million tonnes, almost 5% of the firm’s total production. A Coal India executive told Reuters on the condition of anonymity that production at the mine will be halted for a month due to the flooding.
Coal from Dipka would have been supplied to the Sipat power plant, which is owned by the state-owned generator NTPC and has a capacity of 2.98GW. Power from here is transmitted to the states of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Goa.
For the rest of this article: https://qz.com/india/1720453/coal-indias-output-may-be-further-disrupted-after-dipka-flooding/