Coal news and updates

Argus, IHS license coal index to HK bourse

Global energy and commodity news and price reporting agency Argus and IHS Inc, a leading global source of critical information and insight, have licensed the API 8 coal index to Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) to enable the listing of coal derivative products. HKEx will launch API 8 thermal coal futures contracts, to be traded on its derivatives market later this year, pending regulatory approval and market readiness, the exchange has announced.

The API 8 index assesses the spot market price of coal delivered to south China. The country consumed around 4bn t of coal last year and imports, at 327mn t, were up by 13pc from a year earlier.

Argus Media chairman and chief executive Adrian Binks said: “We welcome further recognition of our coal price assessments which are bringing greater transparency to the physical thermal coal market in Asia.”

IHS Energy publisher John Howland said: “The decision by HKEx to list derivative products settled against the API 8 index further underlines the ever-increasing support for this benchmark not only in Asia but globally.”

“The rationale behind our Asia Commodities platform is to meet the needs of the industry in Asia,” HKEx chief executive Charles Li said. “The interest in this year’s LME Week Asia shows how important Asia is to the global commodities business. This is just the beginning of our Asia Commodities plan,” he added.

The API coal indexes are calculated by averaging the relevant Argus and IHS price assessments. The methodologies used to derive these prices are available at www.argusmedia.com/methodology and www.mccloskeycoal.com.

The IHS assessment used in the API 8 index is the IHS McCloskey/Xinhua Infolink South China (5,500kcal NAR) marker. Xinhua Infolink is a leading privately owned independent Chinese business intelligence and insight provider.

Source: www.greentechmedia.com