Terming the accusations that it published inaccurate reserve figures as `baseless,’’ Coal India Ltd (CIL) top management, on Tuesday, claimed that these betrayed a ``sinister design aimed at promoting coal imports.’’
Global environment lobby Greenpeace had earlier claimed that CIL, which is preparing to tap another round of capital market funds, had overstated its reserve figures, thereby misleading the investors.
“These are absolutely baseless reports, and may be a sinister design to promote coal imports,” Chairman S. Narsing Rao said here without naming Greenpeace. All the functional directors of CIL were present on the occasion.
He said that CIL had used the JORC method (used in Australia and some other countries) for estimating its extractable reserves during its IPO in November 2010, which had then stood at 18.86 billion tonnes.
However, subsequently it migrated, under government instructions, to the United Nation’s Frame of Classification (UNFC), which pegged the figure at 18.2 billion tonnes. This was done to bring the computation process in line with international practices.
Dynamic figure
CIL Director Technical N Kumar said that reserves were anyway a dynamic figure which kept changing as new reserves were added annually.
He emphasised that total reserves remained the same, the only small change in figures arising due to the `mineability’ of the coal deposits.
