It would be the first time since 2015 that Coal India has imported the fuel, highlighting efforts by state and federal officials to stock up to avoid a repeat of April, when India faced its worst power cuts in more than six years.

The Siarmal mine, located in the state of Odisha (eastern India), will start producing 2-5 Mt/year and will ramp up its production capacity of 50 Mt/year in 5 to 7 years.

REPowerEU is about rapidly reducing our dependence on Russian fossil fuels by fast forwarding the clean transition and joining forces to achieve a more resilient energy system and a true Energy Union.

China's domestic coal production hit a high of 395.79 million mt in March, before slipping to around 362.80 million mt in April

Japanese manufacturers that use thermal coal for their own power generation have more than a month's worth of stocks, but a few manufacturers have a high dependency on Russian supply, according to the documents.

Due to the ongoing geopolitical crisis, the EU member states have set up a purchasing platform for gas, LNG and hydrogen. In this way, one wants to become more independent of Russian energy imports and react against the strong price fluctuations of natural gas.

China, the world's top coal producer, mined 362.8 million tonnes of the fuel last month, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed on Monday, equivalent to 12.09 million tonnes per day.

Out of the 204.9 GW of installed coal-fired power generation capacity in India, around 17.6 GW is designed specifically to run on imported coal. Other power plants import the fuel for blending with domestic coal.

"The document says the rule is about HS codes, so it is applicable to all origins," a South Korea-based source said. "This should help Russian coal demand more than other origins because it is already at a discount to other origins."

Sources said Pakistan is looking at countries like Afghanistan and Tajikistan given the significant price difference compared to the South African coal, which accounts for around 70% of Pakistan's imports.