global coal consumption has advanced by over 50% in the past decade

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. They may well be better for public generators

who get preference from the state-run coal mining sector:

With a severe shortage of domestic coal supply as the state-run monopoly Coal India is unable to increase output, private utility Tata Power is scouting for coal mines overseas, particularly in Indonesia and South Africa, a senior company official said today.

"Given the demand for the fuel for our Power plants and shortage of domestically produced coal, we have to depend on imports. We are looking at Indonesia and South Africa for acquiring coal mines," Tata Power Executive Director (Operations) S Padmanabhan told in an interview here.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-06-27/news/32441278_1_coal-mines-mundra-umpp-tata-power-executive-director

As the 2nd Wikipedia article said, there are 2 state run generators bigger than Tata.

Even if India could improve its ports and already stretched railways, and adapt its power plants to burn alien coal, can it afford to import so much? Coal prices have soared in recent years (the benchmark price is some 50% above its average in 2009), partly due to Chinese demand. Indonesia has imposed new rules that hamper foreign mine owners from exporting coal at below market rates. So, adjusted for quality, foreign coal is perhaps four times pricier than the local stuff. The cost of shopping abroad could be as much as $20 billion by 2017—or 1% of today’s GDP.
...
“I can see if someone is sleeping on the job,” boasts Arup Roy Choudhury, the chairman of NTPC, the country’s biggest electricity generator. In the floor above his office in Delhi a CCTV studio allows him to spy on his empire. He can zoom in on a giant construction site in Mouda, near those mines in Nagpur, where in March a new plant will fire up, fuelled by coal produced by Coal India. NTPC is likely to get the coal it needs partly because it is state-owned and big.

Another power firm in the same state with a new plant coming on line in March expects to get only half the fuel originally promised by Coal India. Private-sector firms with plants coming on line often assume they will be last in the queue for domestic fuel. If they substitute imported coal for domestic coal they worry that they may not be allowed to pass on the costs and that if they are, the electricity boards won’t be able to pay.



http://www.economist.com/node/21543138