Performance goals of the Subsidiary Company “Thermal Power Plants and Mines Kostolac” in the current year are close to the results achieved in 2013th, which otherwise was a year of record production. In 2015th, according to power utility Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) energy balance in TPP “TE – KO Kostolac”, it is planned to excavate a little more than 9 million tons of coal and produce 6.4 billion kilowatt – hours of electricity.
This year’s financial plan of Kostolac Company compared to last year is more restrictive, which is in line with all the overall economic developments in the Republic of Serbia and EPS consolidation. There have been provided funds 30 percent less than the total last year’s budget, including the additional funds approved last year through rebalancing.
Performance goals of the Subsidiary Company “Thermal Power Plants and Mines Kostolac” in the current year are close to the results achieved in 2013th, which otherwise was a year of record production, says Goran Horvat, Acting Director of SC “Thermal Power Plants and Mines Kostolac”:
– There have been excavated more than 2.6 million tons of coal and 10 million cubic meters of overburden since the beginning of the year until mid-April. When we talk about electricity, we produced about 1.9 billion kilowatt – hours until mid-April, which is at the level of 89 percent of the plan. The biggest backlog was in the production of unit B1, which is delayed with the completion of revitalization. By the unit B1 revitalization it has been put point on a major project started in 2009th. At this point, maybe it looked like something hard to attain, but we have shown that it is feasible and possible.
During the winter period there were some problems in the implementation of production obligations, primarily due to last year’s natural disasters, which have caused major problems in the operation of the mining sector which are still reflected today:
– First we had to rehabilitate the existing ones, and then to build new facilities for drainage at the open pit “Drmno”, which suffered in the last year’s natural disaster. During this time there has been done a great work on the rehabilitation of the disaster consequences. Priority investment activity in the open pit “Drmno” was the development of a new line of wells LC14 and the beginning of the activities for making waterproof screen, which should protect mine “Drmno” of groundwater from the direction of its intensive progress towards the west, stressed Horvat.
The investigations on the western part of the Kostolac coal basin are ongoing, which have strategic importance for the further development of mining in the region. The results of previous research works show that there are respectable quantities of coal on this stretch which are estimated at about 400 million tons, and also this site has a significant amount of gravel that can be exploited as building material.
The ambitious productions as well as investment operations are next, which should be implemented in terms of a reorganization of the Electric Power Industry of Serbia:
– It will not be easy but I believe that we will be able to achieve our goals by teamwork, maximum effort and engagement. We can expect a building of unit B3. The contract was signed last year and ratified by the National Assembly, and on March 13th, EPS Supervisory Board adopted a decision on the loan for this project. That the new unit could work there must be investment in expanding production capacity of mine “Drmno” from the current 9 to 12 million tons of coal, concluded Horvat.
