Domestic coal must be mixed with imported coal in order to prevent a new breakdown in thermal power plants. Serbia paid one billion euros for that in four years. Why and from where does Serbia import the most coal?
Serbia last year imported about three million tons coal, coke and briquettes and spent about 422 million dollars for that. Most of these energy sources came from Indonesia, about 1,2 million tons, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina, about 933 thousand tons, and Montenegro - about 148 thousand tons.
In the same year, 32 million tons of coal were produced in Serbia, according to the data Electric utilities of Serbia.
Coal imports began to rise sharply after the disaster at TENT in 2021, which was caused, among other things, by the poor quality of fuel (lignite) and stopped its work and forced Serbia to urgently import expensive electricity.
The final result was - around one billion euros in damage to the Republic of Serbia, and one year later EPS stated a total of almost 800 million euros in additional costs for importing electricity.
In order to reduce the cost of importing electricity, EPS turned to importing coal.
"JP EPS has taken certain steps in order to reduce the problems of insufficient quantity and quality of its own coal, which result in reduced production and large and expensive imports of electricity. Those steps are primarily related to coal imports", it is written in the annual report of EPS from 2022.
The idea was to import a sufficient amount of coal that would be mixed with coal from Kolubara and enable greater production of electricity in thermal power plants.
In four years, from the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2025, the cost of importing coal reached one billion euros, according to RZS data.
During the previous four-year period, from 2018 to 2021, the total price of coal imports was only about 61 million euros.
Mostly from Indonesia
Coal from Indonesia, which is the largest exporter of this energy source to Serbia, arrives via two ports - Romanian Constanta and Montenegrin Port Bar.
Transport through the Montenegrin port began in the autumn of last year.
When it arrives at the port, the coal is transported further by rail to Vreoc, and the public procurement procedure for this service is underway.
From there, the coal is further transported to TENT B, by railway of the thermal power plant.
Photo: Republic Institute of StatisticsRZS data on coal imports
SNS machinery for further transport
However, according to Dragoslav Ljubičić, a worker at TENT, who was transferred to a new job and general secretary of the SDS due to support for students, it could soon be possible to transport coal to TENT A, and SNS businessmen could be involved in the whole story, he claims.
Coal, he says, will be transported from the unloading site to the mixing site for TENT A in the future by trucks, at a price of 500 euros per transport.
"During the training of the workers, there is talk that this will be done. It is interesting that the local financiers of SNS have already bought the trucks, they were told what they should be. They say that 500 euros per truck is a transport that is maybe two kilometers from the place of unloading. All these costs are included in the price of coal, and therefore the production price of electricity also increases. This is what TENT workers are talking about among themselves," Ljubičić told "Vreme".
Coal trains for TENT from Indonesia arrive on the Bar railway from the port of Bar to Vreoci station, where they are picked up by TENT's railway. And further transport to TENT-B is carried out.
Now the citizens have come up with the idea that they could unload that coal at the Tamnava loading station, and mix it there with 👇
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