http://www.mining.com/chinese-coal-imports-could-jump-to-500m-tonnes-in-3-years-89246/Chinese financial website Finet quotes Phil Ren, chief of the China Coal Importers Association, as saying at an industry conference in Singapore, China's coal imports may reach 400 million – 500 million tonnes within three years.
That would constitute massive growth from current levels. China imported 234.3 million tonnes of coal in 2012, which constituted a huge jump – 28.7% – over the year before.
Ren said that the Chinese market is highly sensitive to price movements and would import coal even when it is able to satisfy coal demand from domestic sources.
The China National Coal Association announced yesterday that production in the country reached 3.66 billion tonnes in 2012, up by 4% compared to the year before.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2013-05/22/content_16518558.htmChina's coal imports will continue from a more diversified number of sources over the long-term, exerting a major influence on international coal prices, according to Platts, a leading source of benchmark price assessments in the energy, petrochemicals and metals sectors.
James O'Connell, the editor-in-chief of Platts' Coal Trader International, which delivers price assessments for coal trading in the Atlantic and Pacific markets, said that the US in particular will pursue chances to increase its coal exports to the country.
He added that other countries are also expected to export more coal to China, including Indonesia, Australia and Russia.
According to data from Platts,
US coal exports will increase from 50 million metric tons in 2012 to 270 million tons by 2016, as the country sees a rapid development of its shale gas resources, with more bound for China and India especially.O'Connell said:
"In the next 10 years, India will become China's biggest competitor in coal imports from Indonesia, which provides thermal coal at the best prices."The US imported about 40 million tons of coal mainly from Colombia in 2008, but it is now shutting down its coal-fired power plants, and has quickly become a major coal exporter to Europe and China, he added.
The US energy shift is similar to that in other coal-producing countries such as South Africa, which now exports about 62 million tons to Europe, India, Japan, South Korea and China.
O'Connell said the real positive for China is that as nations shift their emphasis away from coal-powered generation, supply choices open up for China, reducing coal import prices.
In the past year, 40 percent of China's coal imports were from Australia and 34 percent were from Indonesia.
It also imported from South Africa, Russia, Colombia, Canada and the US, meaning it has become the center of global coal demand, O'Connell said.
Europe is also expected to see a huge reduction in the installed generation capacity of coal-fired power plants by 2020, as it increases its solar power and wind power consumption, again beneficial for Chinese coal-fired power generation companies, price-wise.
China imported 290 million tons of coal in 2012, a 59 percent rise year-on-year, ranking it as the world's biggest coal importer, according to the General Administration of Customs.
Its average imported coal price has dropped 7.4 percent to $99.5 a ton in the past year.
Meanwhile, it exported 9.28 million tons of coal in 2012, a record low since 1986.
"China has become an important buyer in the international coal market over the past four to five years," O'Connell said.
"Its seaborne coal demand accounted for 20 percent of global seaborne coal trading, which was about 1 billion tons in the last year. China usually purchases its coal when prices are low, but its large purchases, caused by its demand, will continue to push prices higher," he said.
"Thus, we can clearly see a regulated fluctuation of international coal prices in past years."
With China's coal demand from its power generation companies expected to continue until 2020, the country's coal-buying business with other markets such as Australia and Indonesia is expected to rise too.
A decade ago, China produced about 1.4 billion tons of coal annually at an average cost of $11 a ton. Last year, its annual output reached 3.7 billion tons, but the cost for each ton of coal rose to $37. [url]http://online.wsj.com/articlehttp://online.wsj.com/article
/SB10001424052748704312504575617810380509880.html#[/url]
SYDNEY—The idea of peak oil—the point at which global production reaches its maximum—has fixated the energy industry for years. Now, China is grappling with a new worry: peak coal.
State-run media reported that Beijing is considering capping domestic coal output in the 2011-2015 period, partly because officials worry miners are running down reserves too quickly to meet the needs of a rapidly expanding economy.
"China accounts for around 14% of global coal reserves but its share of global coal consumption is already over triple that at 47%, which is unsustainable," Hong Kong-based brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets said in a report last month.
Imposing a cap would be significant as China's mining sector is already finding it hard to keep up with domestic coal demand, which has grown around 10% annually over the past decade.
Its net coal imports exceeded 106 million metric tons in the first nine months of the year—higher than the level for 2009 as a whole—and state companies have been aggressively acquiring overseas coal assets to secure long-term supply.
In the three years to September 2010, Chinese companies spent $20.96 billion on overseas coal-sector acquisitions, according to Dealogic.
An output ceiling would also underpin regional coal prices, which are near six-month highs on expectations that China will import record volumes of coal this month and in December.
While China hasn't declared publicly it will impose a coal production cap, the idea is gathering momentum.Zhang Guobao, head of China's National Energy Administration, said in a speech on Oct. 27 that he doesn't favor the country's coal output expanding above four billion tons a year.
Policy makers are mulling an annual cap of between 3.6 billion tons and 3.8 billion tons in the next five-year plan, running from 2011 to 2015, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported earlier.[PEAKCOAL]
This would be unlikely to hurt large state-owned miners, such as China Shenhua Energy Co., 601088.SH -0.10% as they have invested in modern equipment and can generate economies of scale. Shenhua aims to double its annual coal output capacity to 400 million tons in the 2009-2014 period.
However, small mines and township operations will be under increasing pressure. Shanxi province has closed scores of small mines in a bid to improve safety and efficiency, and Inner Mongolia region and Henan province are taking similar steps.
Even if no official limits are introduced, China can't keep growing coal output much beyond another decade, analysts say. The mining sector is constrained by chronic infrastructure bottlenecks, especially road and rail, and those coal deposits that are easiest to mine have already been tapped.
Experts are starting to predict when China's coal reserves will run out—a nightmare scenario in a country where 70% of its energy is derived from coal.
According to BP BP +1.09% PLC, China can only continue at current rates of production for 38 years before its coal reserves are exhausted. That compares with 245 years in the U.S., and 105 years in India.
BP estimates that China had 114.5 billion tons of proven coal reserves at the end of 2009, ranking it third behind the U.S. and Russia. The International Energy Agency says China could have as much as 189 billion tons of coal that it hasn't tapped yet.
Calculating the size of China's coal reserves isn't easy. The government doesn't publish data on discoveries or how much coal can still be recovered from existing mines. Complicating matters further, China's National Bureau of Statistics recently stopped issuing monthly output figures.
In addition, not all coal has the same energy content. That's significant as many new discoveries in Inner Mongolia are of poorer quality than the coal reserves being depleted in Shanxi.
But the strength of China's coal demand, and moves by miners to raise output in step, is worrying the market as well as Beijing.
Even if China's annual coal demand growth halved to 5% then the country would run out of coal in 21 years unless it finds material new deposits, CLSA says, using 114.5 billion tons of reserves as a benchmark.
The picture isn't much brighter when calculations use IEA estimates of China's proven reserves. Annual consumption growth of 5% would see China run out of coal in 28 years, it forecasts.
"With either estimate, it is clear that the rapid increase of coal production puts China's energy security at risk," CLSA says.
http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/market-amp-transportation/Overall international trade in coal reached 1142Mt in 2011; while this is a significant amount of coal it still only accounts for about 15% of total coal consumed. Most coal is used in the country in which it is produced.
Indonesia has overtaken Australia as world’s largest coal exporter. It exported over 300Mt of coal in 2011.
Australia is remains the world's largest supplier of coking coal, accounting for roughly 50% of world exports.
China Coal 4% imports
growth 25% growth total
2011 3660 234 3894
2012 3806 292 4099
2013 3960 366 4325
2014 4120 457 4575
2015 4282 572 4854
2016 4453 715 5168
2017 4631 894 5525
2018 4816 1117 5933
2019 5009 1397 6405
2020 5209 1746 6955
If they want to stop coal production at 4 billion tons then it will be in the next year or two and then the only growth in coal will be from imports which at this rate would be total global imports by 2018 forcing production expansion everywhere to keep up with demand, sort of like the oil market. Massive investments of coal multis in Swaziland, etc and used up mining areas like silesia, Newcastle, etc. and Northern Alaska to keep global electricity growth, purely dependent on coal, going as oil is pretty limited to transport and coal needed for electric and steel production. With huge demand and high proces maybe total global produiction of coal could expand rapidly using cheap indian and chinese labourers sent to Africa, Siberia, etc. in the millions.
