Madrid (Platts)--21Feb2013/852 am EST/1352 GMT
Spain's state-owned coal miner Grupo Hunosa is preparing a court action after more than half a million tons of coal were found to be missing from its strategic storage site, a company spokesman told Platts Thursday. "The Group is studying court action which it will present soon," the spokesman said. He did not say who the court action would be brought against nor the exact quantity of missing coal, since it was not yet clear where the coal had disappeared to and the investigation had not yet concluded. According to the spokesman, the shortfall was first observed in September at the country's strategic storage site, the Almacenamiento Estrategico Temporal de Carbon (AETC), which Hunosa oversees. According to local daily La Nueva Espana, two coal companies, Coto Minero Cantabrico and Uminsa, both part of Spain's largest coal mining group Grupo Victorino Alonso, were initially found to be short of 205,000 mt at the site, the paper said. A spokesman for the companies could not be reached for comment Thursday. By December, after further investigation, the shortfall was seen at 528,214 mt, including 369,711 mt belonging to utility Endesa, which had not been counted initially. According to the paper, the value of the missing coal is Eur46 million ($61 million). An Endesa spokesman declined to comment Thursday. The issue of the missing coal has delayed the payout of Eur111 million in state aid which is owed to the mining companies for 2012, market sources said. News agency EFE reported that the payout will take place by the end of February, citing the senator of the Leon region, Luis Aznar. Besides the delayed payout of state aid, of which around 45% corresponds to Grupo Victorino Alonso, the Industry Ministry also delayed a decree governing the amount of domestic coal that would receive subsidies. The decree, which should have been published at the start of the year, only came out this week, authorizing the burning of 20.05 TWh of domestically mined coal in nine of the country's power stations. The presence of coal-fired generation in the generating mix has fallen from 21.8% in January 2012 to 12.4% in January this year, according to figures from grid operator Red Electrica.--Gianluca Baratti, newsdesk@platts.com--Edited by Jonathan Fox, jonathan_fox@platts.comSimilar stories appear in International Coal Report. See more information at http://www.platts.com/Products/internationalcoalreport