Govt to issue new regulation on mine-mouth power plant

The government expects to issue later this month a new regulation on the development of a mine-mouth power plant, Kontan daily reported on Tuesday.

Gultom Guska, the head of the supervision and consultation of coal production and marketing at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, said in Jakarta on Monday that the new regulation would encourage coal miners to build a power plant within their concession areas in cooperation with other companies.

He said that coal miners could form a consortium with other parties to build mine-mouth power plants in their concession areas. ?Coal miners could own up to 51 percent in the coal-mine power plant,? he added.

By encouraging coal miners to build power plants in their concession areas, the problems related to coal supply could be resolved, he said, adding that many coal-fired power plants faced difficulties to obtain coal supply because most of coal mining companies exported their production.

According to Gultom, with the new regulation, coal miners would be given attractive price for the power supply their produce as long as they are able to provide coal supply for up to 30 years. He said that the government would fix the power supply price at between 5 US cent and 7 US cent per kilowatt hour. (*)