In recent years, India's steel and power generation have increased significantly, and the demand for coal is very strong, with the annual mining volume increasing by 10%, and it has become the world's second largest coal mining country. As we all know, India is short of oil and natural gas, but fortunately it has abundant coal resources. Coal is naturally its largest energy consumer and is the cornerstone of India's industry.
Similar to India, the mainland's current energy consumption is dominated by coal, accounting for 60% of the total energy consumption. In recent years, domestic coal mining and excavation have been running at a high level, and there is no downward trend. Compared with China and India, what is the annual production capacity of each year?
India: Coal consumption continues to grow at a high rate
In terms of reserves, India is one of the top five coal resources in the world, with total hard coal reserves of about 400 billion tons and proven reserves of 11 billion tons, which is enough for India to mine for more than 130 years. Hard coal resources are mostly distributed in northeast India, with more than 70 coal producing areas, and lignite resources are mainly distributed in the southern foothills of the Himalayas and the southern states of Madeira and Tamil Nadu.
India's coal is shallow, of which non-coking coal is basically concentrated within 300 meters of coal seams, coking coal is mostly buried within 600 meters, and open-pit mines account for about eighty percent of the total number of coal mines in India. In order to strengthen the management of the coal industry, India has established a Ministry of Coal and nationalized coal enterprises throughout the country.
Headquartered in Kolkata, the state-owned coal company of India is not only India's but also the world's largest coal supplier, issuing policy guidelines and coordinating subsidiaries. It controls about 80% of India's coal mining production, has eight subsidiaries and operates 390 coal mines, and in 2023, India's state-owned coal company will produce 756 million tons of coal annually, and is expected to become the world's first company to produce more than 1 billion tons of coal in the future. The second-ranked Singarini Coal Mining Company has rapidly expanded its production capacity in recent years, with an annual output of nearly 70 million tons.
For the whole of 2023, India's total coal production was 1.011 billion tonnes, exceeding the one billion tonne mark for the first time and an 11% increase from the previous year's output, the data showed. Although India has become the world's second largest coal producer, it is still unable to meet domestic demand.
This is mainly due to the low production of coking coal and thermal coal in India, and the high ash content of most of the coal mined by India, which is a big problem for the power generation industry, and most power stations in India are not equipped with flue gas desulfurization devices. Therefore, more than 200 million tons of coal must be imported from overseas every year to solve the problem of insufficient domestic production capacity, and the dependence on coal imports is as high as more than 20%. Among them, the steel industry imports coking coal, and the power and cement industries import thermal coal.
It should be noted that India's coking coal reserves are insufficient, but steel production has increased significantly in recent years, and the demand for coking coal is also hungry. In 2020, India's coking coal imports were only 10.67 million tons, and by 2023, they have reached 68 million tons, and at the current growth rate, more than 100 million tons of imports will be a matter of one or two years.
In response to the rising demand for coal, the Indian government has taken steps in recent years to liberalize the coal monopoly and allow private companies to mine coal mines through tenders and sell them on their own in the market. Once a private company wins a bid for a coal block, 25% of the production can be sold on the open market, and the life of the private company will be extended from four years to five years.
Compared to India, the demand for coal in an economy as large as ours is unparalleled. Coal plays the role of "ballast stone" and "stabilizer" in the mainland's energy supply. As early as the end of the 80s of the last century, the mainland's coal production has exceeded 1 billion tons, which means that India's coal production is only the level of the continent more than 30 years ago.
Over the past 20 years, the mainland's coal industry has become bigger and stronger, and great changes have taken place. In the past, coal production on the mainland was dominated by small and medium-sized coal mines, but now a large number of backward production capacity has been eliminated through reform. For example, more than 10,000 coal mines originally produced more than 3 billion tons of coal per year, but now only more than 4,300 coal mines can produce more than 4 billion tons of coal, and the output of large-scale coal mines with an annual output of 1.2 million tons and above accounts for more than 85% of the country, and 81 coal mines with an annual output of 10 million tons have been built, and the quality and efficiency of the coal industry have been significantly improved.
According to data released by the China National Coal Association, the country's raw coal output in 2023 will be 4.71 billion tons, a record high, accounting for more than half of the world's total coal production, and the country's coal imports will be 474 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 60%, and the two major data of coal production and import volume will hit a record high.
Today, the mainland's coal industry has formed five major coal supply guarantee bases in Shanxi, Mengxi, Mengdong, northern Shaanxi and Xinjiang, and there are seven provinces with a raw coal output of more than 100 million tons, an increase of one over the previous year. Among them, Shanxi Province and Inner Mongolia are still the provinces with a raw coal output of more than 1 billion tons, accounting for half of the mainland's coal production.