No logic for transporting coal through rail-ship-rail route – AIPEF
Bahadurjeet Singh/Rupnagar
Power Ministry has absolutely no logic to put an additional burden of transporting coal through a rail-ship-rail (RSR) route having prohibitive cost. Punjab should be allowed to transport coal by rail route only, writes Padamjit Singh Chief Patron of All India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF) in a letter to R K Singh, Union Power Minister.
The power ministry has asked Punjab to start lifting coal from Mahanadi and Talchar coalfields in Orissa through RSR formula from January 2023.
It may be mentioned that 1980 MW Talwandi Sabo Power Limited in Punjab has coal linkage of 67.20 lakh MT with Mahanadi and Talcher and as per the advisory, 15-20 percent of total annual requirements of about 12-13 lakh MT is to be routed through RSR mode.
V K Gupta Spokesperson AIPEF said that in case of present practice at Talwandi Sabo thermal plant , wherein coal is moved from mine to thermal station by rail the freight distance by rail is 1900 KM, but with RSR mode the coal would be transported 1700-1800 Km by rail in addition to sea travel of 4360 km.
Further due to multiple transportation and handling of coal through RSR mode, the transit loss will increase from 0.8 percent to 1.4 percent besides deterioration in quality of coal adding that due to multiple transshipments. The total transportation time under RSR mode will be around 25 days against 4-5 days through rail routes.
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It may be mentioned that Punjab is reluctant to use RRR mode to run Talwandi Sabo thermal plant because of high transportation cost as well as long transit time of 25 days.
Chief Minister Punjab has already urged Union Power Minister to allow 100 percent supply of coal to Punjab through direct rail mode instead of existing rail-ship-rail mode.
No logic for transporting coal through rail-ship-rail route – AIPEF. AIPEF in its letter alleged that now due to lobby of ports and shipping business the coal that was earlier moved by rail would now be transported by longer and costlier RSR route. Further central government is constructing the eastern dedicated freight corridor to move coal from the mine head to thermal station and now even before the completion of dedicated freight corridor, shifting to RSR mode would defeat purpose of dedicated freight corridors.
December 20,2022
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