Coal news and updates

Brazilian miner Vale has cast doubt on the frequently quoted figure that Mozambique could in the medium term be exporting 100 million tonnes of coal a year, local media reported on Tuesday.The new chairperson of Vale´s Mozambique subsidiary, Pedro Gutemburg is quoted by state-run daily paper Noticias as saying that this was an extremely ambitious target because what would determine how much coal Mozambique mines and exports was the existence of a market, and whether Mozambique is competitive on that market.

 

“The world market for coking coal is 300 million tonnes a year”, and Australia, which is the largest producer, has 160 million tonnes, and there are other producers such as Canada, the United States and Russia, with about 40 million tonnes,” Gutemburg said.

 

He added: “It’s no good producing 100 million tonnes of coal, if you have nowhere to sell it.”

 

According to Guetnburg, the fact that Mozambique had large coal reserves did not mean very much because Mozambican coal was unable to compete on the world market.

 

Vale-Mozambique last week announced that it had made an operational loss of over US$44 million in the first quarter of this year but said this did not mean that Vale was about to abandon coal mining in Mozambique.

 

 

Source: APA