Coal Issue

First, the head of the Ministry of Energy has visited the section of “Maikuben-West” LLP in Bayanaul district. One of the top managers of the company, Yerlan Upushev, noted that 150 to 200 coal cars are being released every day. If last year the company had produced about 3.6 million tons of solid fuel, then the current year the production volumes were planned to be increased to almost 4.3 million tons.

After that, the minister arrived in Ekibastuz, where he visited the section of “Bogatyr Komir” LLP and  “Vostochnyi” open cut, which is a division of “EEC” JSC. Both enterprises specialize in energy coal and the share of household fuel shipment here is rather low. For example, last year “Bogatyr” produced about 41 million tons of coal and only 1.4 million tons of them were intended for domestic use. At the same time the management of the enterprise noted that they would be ready to supply more coal for the population, if there were related requests

At the meeting in Akimat of Ekibastuz, attended by the heads of coal mining enterprises and transport companies, Kanat Bozumbaev summarized the results of his working trip.

“According to the current situation, it was noted that there was a backlog in the extraction and supply of coal in the small and medium-sized open cuts, both for export and for the domestic market, in January, during severe frosts, when some open cuts were stopped for a week or ten days, it had nothing to do with the backbone enterprises”, – the press service quoted the Minister of Energy. “We monitored the whole country for coal, and revealed its absence in only three or four district centers, and it was temporary, since there was no railway and coal was delivered traditionally by road. The Prime Minister instructed the akims at the government meeting to keep these issues under strict control. I think that in the next day or two this situation will be improved. I think that there is no need to say that any shortage of coal exists in Kazakhstan. The mood of coal miners is like this: we give coal to the country, just tell us how much is it needed. The railwaymen say “We will raise the tariff by seven percent and take out as much as necessary.”

According to the press service of the Ministry of Energy, in 2017 coal-mining companies produced 106.7 million tons of coal, which is 8.3%, or 8.2 million tons more than in 2016. 56.3 million tons of coal were shipped to power stations in Kazakhstan, which is 7.1 million tons more than in 2016. Shipment of coal for public utilities and the population in 2017 amounted to 12.5 million tons, an increase of 18% compared to 2016. In 2017, coal mining companies exported 29.3 million tons of coal, which is 3.1 million tons more than in 2016.