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No bids for over 70% of Indian coal mines up for auction
- arcticbull 5y agoHave we considered sending in the bitcoin mining P/E firms? An opportunity for vertical integration.
- reader_mode 5y agoBitcoin is way to volatile for that kind of a commitment - it's short term pump & dump I would say.
- kolinko 5y agoBitcoin miners already purchuased at least one coal plant.
- reader_mode 5y agoBuying a running or decommissioning coal plant is a short term play. Buying a coal mine is incredibly long/integrated.
- seriousquestion 5y agoBitcoin is 12 years old, and supposedly 60% is held by long term investors. https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/bitcoin-market-data-exchanges-trading https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/bitcoin-market-data-exc...
- ipaddr 5y agoAnd only 2 million coins are left.
- knownjorbist 5y agoTo be mined over the next 80 years, of course.
- randomhodler84 5y ago119y, estimated last coin circa 2140
- selfhoster11 5y agoEach of these can be subdivided to eight decimal places. Lots of room to accommodate transactions on the order of $$ to $$$ for a while.
- imtringued 5y agoOh yeah boys, let's enjoy our future income being less than past income!
- lostlogin 5y agoI’m pleasantly surprised this hasn’t happened after reading this recently: https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-miners-are-giving-new-life-to-old-fossil-fuel-power-plants-11621594803 https://www.wsj.com/articles/bitcoin-miners-are-giving-new-l...
- hedora 5y agoSince they need two bids to proceed, does anyone else want to go in with me, bid a dollar, and immediately abandon the mines?
- rrmm 5y agoThe mines probably come with liabilities of all sorts.
- hh3k0 5y agoThat does sound like fun but I'm sure there's a minimum bid.
- Hippocrates 5y agoIt might work if posted on /r/wallstreetbets
- Permit 5y agoI am not familiar with the environmental laws in India but in Canada you are often on the hook for closing down and cleaning up a site once it is abandoned (that is, you can't just walk away from it). My understanding is this can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. I recently met someone who was leasing oil wells (edit: natural gas, not oil) that lacked sufficient pressure to pump gas into a pipeline. The wells still had enough pressure that you could use them as an immediate fuel source so they were hooking up a few cryptocurrency mining rigs to a generator there. Apparently the companies who own the wells like this because they don't immediately have to declare the wells abandoned and pay the cleanup fees.
- gruez 5y ago>so they were hooking up a few cryptocurrency mining rigs to a generator there The generators can run off crude oil directly?
- erik_seaberg 5y agoIt does burn so a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_engine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_engine works okay, it’s just not as clean or efficient as an engine with tight temperature/pressure tolerances for very specific fractions of the fuel.
- lr4444lr 5y agoQuestion for those who know better: isn't the Indian coal industry rife with mafia activity, or is that all in the past?
- idlecool 5y agoMy dad worked in coal India for around 3 decades, and I grew up in one of the townships. I have never heard of Mafia involvement. However, I have seen coal being stolen from moving trains that transport coal. They are mostly locals who probably sell it or use it themselves, but it doesn't account to much AFAIK.
- manishsharan 5y agoI really find it hard to believe that you have never heard of Mafia involvement in Cola mines of Bihar even though your dad worked in Coal India. However just because you did not hear of it does not mean it doesn't exist. There is a while section about this on Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Raj https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_Raj And this : https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://businessworld.in/amp/article/CBI-searches-in-W-Bengal-Jharkhand-Bihar-UP-in-coal-mafia-scam/28-11-2020-347652&ved=2ahUKEwiWlKvwxdnxAhUkB50JHSVICtgQFjAGegQIJRAC&usg=AOvVaw2lhvkCuAe2Hdy_GZzx5diN&cf=1 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://... Also this : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suryadeo_Singh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suryadeo_Singh There are also a bunch of Bollywood movies with Coal Mafia as a background. "Gunday", though not about coal Mafia, is pretty entertaining.
- idlecool 5y agoThanks for the info. I have never been to Bihar or know about the situation there. My dad mostly worked in SECL and WCL (2 of the 8 fully owned subsidiaries of Coal India). They don't have any mining operations in Bihar or surrounding areas. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Eastern_Coalfields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Eastern_Coalfields [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Coalfields https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Coalfields
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- AnotherGoodName 5y agoCoal usage peaked ~2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_coal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_coal Just in the past two weeks: Germany closing even new coal plants - https://reneweconomy.com.au/german-coal-plant-closes-after-just-six-years-to-produce-green-hydrogen-from-wind/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/german-coal-plant-closes-after-j... Philipines will not build new coal plants due to economics. They will instead invest in grid scale storage and renewables - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-10/biggest-philippine-power-generator-will-drop-new-coal-projects https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-10/biggest-p... It's mostly economics. When other generation and storage systems drop by orders of magnitude in price in just 2 decades it throws the old equations out. There's no economic reason to build a coal plant today. https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/12/03/plunging-prices-mean-building-new-renewable-energy-is-cheaper-than-running-existing-coal/?sh=5ad07e8831f3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2018/12/03/plu...
- melling 5y ago38% of the electricity globally is coal. We’ve got quite a long way to go.
- whimsicalism 5y agoBecause of sunk costs (not in the fallacy sense). Doesn't mean it makes sense to build a new one. Agreed we have a long way to go :)
- melling 5y agoWe are building lots of coal plants globally. https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissions-china-goes-on-a-coal-spree https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissi...
- jes5199 5y agoI don’t understand why China is building so many coal plants - for several years it’s been reported that they run them way, way under capacity.
- rossdavidh 5y agoOk, how about does anybody have a need for a big hole in the ground? Swimming pool? Storage? Carbon sequestration, maybe even?
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoThe bidding process and ownership obligations are probably just convoluted enough to dissuade the small players. You see this sort of thing all the time when all manner of goods, equipment or land goes to public auction. A small player would jump at the chance to buy a mine for cheap if they were reasonably confident they could actually walk out of the deal owning a mine for cheap.
- mullingitover 5y agoI'm absolutely shocked that nobody has purchased the mines strictly to claim the carbon reduction from leaving the coal in the ground.
- gentleman11 5y ago80:20 principle?
- manquer 5y agoThe demand for coal in India is not projected to drop anytime soon. This is has nothing to do with the financial viability of coal power viz-a-viz other sources. This is a combination of multiple factors - Indian coal is pretty poor quality and has lower energy density, imports could be better economically for power plants. - The true cost of mining with all the regulation and corruption is making imports cheaper for many plants. - Major mining players are grappling with huge debt and do not necessarily have the ability to take up new projects - Coal India a government owned entity controls most of the market and transportation is dependent on Indian Railway also fully government owned, other contracts/ services have to be also favorable/in-place to make a mine viable
- kristianp 5y agoAdani recently commissioned a new mine in Australia, much to the chagrin of many. So that backs up your comment about imports.
- rablackburn 5y ago> The true cost of mining with all the regulation and corruption is making imports cheaper for many plants. Where has so much less regulation around coal mining that local production is being undercut?
- manquer 5y agoRegulations not just on environmental and operational aspects but also on things like pricing, who to sell to (was recently relaxed for these bids), what quantity, when they will pay ( Government is not that prompt, you cannot do much about it) etc. The Government pretty much owns most of the demand (power plants), transport (Railways), the largest player (Coal India) so the economics can become really distorted
- safog 5y agoIt’s not really specific to coal mining - everything has so much red tape in India. Part of it is colonial heritage and the other part of it is socialist roots of the founders. India has never had an economic right party in power at all. It has been various flavors of populism and socialism. The recent agriculture bill is an interesting case in point.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoI work for a major power company in the US and about 50% of our power comes from coal. The next one is natural gas coming it at 30%. It's because there is so much red tape around nuclear and damming rivers that it's really the only option. Since we're farther north, solar is nothing but a tax write off if there is a loss. Wind is very unreliable and touchy. If it's too windy, we gotta stop them or their velocity gets so fast it pulls the fiberglass apart. Too little and it can barely generate power worthwhile. We're trying what we can but not only to shareholders, but to people who buy power from us, we can't exactly tell them "yeah we're gonna institute brown outs because we want more green energy." I mean we'd have numerous states breathing down our necks and nobody would look upon us favorably during rate increase time. Coal is here to stay for a solid hundred years and I don't care what anybody says. Unless we hit a power storage revolution to that of computers, we will not be escaping fossil fuels. They are still far too abundant, cheap, and reliable.
- mlindner 5y agoYou realize that we aren't building any more coal plants in the US right now right? Tons of coal plants are shuttering all over the country every year. Coal has been going down every year for a long time in the US. There aren't any new coal plants currently planned anywhere in the US.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoNot in the electrical industry. Maybe in other types of facilities, but in electrical, we need reliable, continuous, and cheap ways to provide power. Nothing beats coal and natural gas[0]. Obviously though Natural gas is cleaner so we're making moves to expand that. Hence why it takes up 30% of our generation as opposed to like the 5% of green energy. So what you see in the article I listed, while coal is being used less, natural gas is being used more. [0] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48596 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48596
- mlindner 5y agoI just told you a fact and you ignored it. Even in the electrical industry there are coal plants shuttering every year, and there are NO new coal plants planned in the US, for any purpose. And yes Natural Gas is increasing, but we were talking about coal. Coal has been going down for over a decade now in all sectors, and will continue to go down. US electricity generation for coal has been going down every year. In 2020 combined renewable energy generation (hydro+solar+wind+biomass+geothermal) surpassed coal energy generation. So you're talking nonsense. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/0?agg=0,1&fuel=vtvv&geo=vvvvvvvvvvvvo&linechart=ELEC.GEN.COW-US-99.A~ELEC.GEN.NG-US-99.A~ELEC.GEN.NUC-US-99.A~ELEC.GEN.HYC-US-99.A~ELEC.GEN.WND-US-99.A~ELEC.GEN.SUN-US-99.A~ELEC.GEN.GEO-US-99.A~ELEC.GEN.BIO-US-99.A~ELEC.GEN.OTH-US-99.A~&columnchart=ELEC.GEN.ALL-US-99.A&map=ELEC.GEN.ALL-US-99.A&freq=A&start=2001&end=2020&ctype=linechart<ype=pin&rtype=s&maptype=0&rse=0&pin= https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/0?agg=0...
- webinvest 5y agoAnyone know if property rights in India are weak or solid?