The landlocked coal-rich Inner Mongolia in north China will soon have an open access to ship its coal from a port in its neighboring province to fuel-thirsty customers in eastern and southern regions, reported Wednesday’s Xinhua News.
A port terminal to be built in Huludao, Liaoning Province, will support an annual throughput of 50 million tonnes of coal when the first phase of the project becomes operational by 2012, Zhao Rongqing, the chief of port affairs in Huludao City, said on Wednesday.
The annual throughput would be eventually expanded to 230 million tonnes, Zhao said.
He said a 300-km railway will be built to link the port directly with Xilingol, a major coal production base in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
Inner Mongolia is China’s coal heartland. Its verified coal deposit of 732 billion tonnes is much greater than the 250 billion tonnes in Shanxi Province, which is currently China’s biggest producer of the fossil fuel.
The region’s coal output has been quickly catching up, reaching 600 million tonnes last year, compared with 615 million tonnes in Shanxi.
However, transport bottlenecks have been hindering Inner Mongolia from sending the resource to end users in coastal and southern regions, where coal-fired electricity plants suffer severe fuel shortages every year, especially in winter and summer.
