Coal news and updates

China coal price up after long trough

Australian thermal coal prices were steady this week, with supplies still plentiful, while domestic prices in top coal consumer and producer China inched up for the first time in 11 months, raising hopes of increased demand.

Australia's Newcastle spot daily index was little changed at $US80.47 per tonne on Thursday, down from $US80.54 a week earlier, data from online trading platform globalCOAL showed.

Last Friday, the weekly globalCOAL index closed at $US80.54 per tonne, up 40 cents on the week.

"There's still a lot of cheap coal around," one Singapore-based market source said of the Australian market.

But in China, where prices have been hovering around four-year lows, there was a slight increase due to winter restocking by utilities.

Chinese domestic coal prices rose slightly to 531 yuan ($US87.07) per tonne this week, according to the Bohai-Bay Rim Steam Coal index.

China's power generation picked up sharply to climb for a sixth month in September. Coal stocks at six major Chinese power plants fell to 19.7 days worth of consumption as of October 11, down 1.58 days from the preceding week.

However, its total September coal imports still dropped 0.9 per cent from a month earlier to 25.7 million tonnes.

Despite signs of a pickup in demand, China is considering scrapping a 10 per cent tariff on exports of steam coal from 2014 to rebalance domestic supplies.

Source: Reuters