COAL INDUSTRY

Some positive news for a change…
Some positive noises have been emerging from the coal industry recently. CEO of Xstrata, the world’s largest exporter of thermal coal, went on record last week as believing the market had reached bottom. Commenting on the miner’s H1 earnings, Peter Freyberg said: “I think the market probably bottomed about a month ago and there’s been steady improvement over the last four or five weeks, where we’ve seen thermal prices increasing by US$ 5 or US$ 6 in the spot market.”
Meanwhile, in a recent Global Energy Weekly, Bank of America Merrill Lynch noted the recent rally in US gas prices, which were up 60% in 3 months. This is welcome news as ultralow gas prices have led a number of utilities to switch from coal to gas. With gas prices up, however, coal has come back into the equation in some regions – particularly where the lower-cost PRB coal is burned.
… but there’s still too much coal
The coal industry will not be celebrating just yet, however. Low demand in Europe and China and increased exports from producers – particularly the US – is still weighing down the price of coal (bar a minor increase during the recent Colombian rail strike), leading BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata to lay off workers in Queensland. Rio Tinto and BHP have also closed a mine each in the region.
The Indonesian Coal Mining Association (ICMA) has also reduced its production forecast for this year: “The biggest problem is oversupply, because the US has started pouring [its] production into east Asia […] And also Canada has started exporting,” said Supriatna Suhalo, the executive director of the ICMA.
Coal prices will remain flat
Reporting from the Coaltrans Australia conference, Clyde Russell, a Reuters market analyst, noted a distinctly more subdued mood as miners come to terms with low prices and increasing costs of production: they can still talk a good game but privately delegates were worried. It seems coal’s stay in the doldrums is set to last for a while yet.