C&O to invest $100m next year

Benget Besalicto Tnb., The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Mon, 10/05/2009 9:01 AM

Coal and Oil (C&0) Group of India plans to invest up to US$100 million in Indonesia next year to acquire coal mines and buy more ships to strengthen its position in coal trading in the country,

“We see Indonesia, as a major producer of coal, as the right place to invest. It is part of our strategy to secure our coal supply in the long term,” the Group’s president director and CEO Ahmed A. R. Buhari said last week in an interview.

Buhari pointed out that the coal mine his company planned to acquire should have a production capacity of at least five million tons per year, whether in Sumatra or Kalimantan.

“We’ll use it to fire our Coastal Energen power plant in India that will have a generation capacity of 1,200 megawatts when it starts operation in 2012,” he said.

The company is developing a coal-fired 2,400 megawatt Coastal Energen power plant. The first phase of it will be in operation in 2012 with a capacity of 1,200 MW.

“After that we’ll build the second phase that will add another 1,200 MW capacity. For that we’ll need more coal from other countries especially from Indonesia,” he said.

According to him, for the next few years his firm planned to increase its coal imports to India by about 500 percent from 5 million tons currently to 25 million tons per year.

About 70 percent of the coal will come from Indonesia, while the rest will be imported from South Africa and Australia.

So far, to secure its coal supply for the Coastal Energen Power Plant, it has signed a number of deals with several coal firms in Indonesia to buy around 5 million tons of coal per year from the country.

He quoted a report by McKinsey, which said that as India is continuing to raise its per capita consumption of electricity, India’s total imports of coal will increase by almost three times to 100 million tons by 2015. This year alone, India’s coal imports are predicted to jump by 19 percent to 39 million tons from 33 million tons last year.

India generates about 70 percent of its electricity from coal. The rest is generated from hydroelectricity, gas-fired plants and nuclear energy.

It has seen its electricity demand grow at between 8 and 10 percent per year during the last few years. Its current per capita consumption of electricity is 612 kilowatt per hour (KWh), which is higher than Indonesia’s 496 KWh but lower than that of China at 1,898 KWh and Singapore at 8,176 KWh.

The Indian government said it expects per capita consumption to rise from 612 KWh to around 1,000 KWh per year in the next few years.

“Actually, our total demand in India will rise from 120 gigawatt (GW) to around 335 GW by 2017. To do that we will need a total investment of US$600 billion,” he said.

“Coal will still be the most viable source of energy for us in India. Currently, some 70 percent of our electricity needs are derived from coal-fired power plants. Perhaps that will increase further in the future as I don’t see other more viable sources other than coal.”

India expects per capita consumption to rise from 612 KWh to around 1,000 KWh in the next few years.