Coal news and updates

Glencore January-September coal production drops 8% y-o-y to 102.7 mt

Diverse miner Glencore produced 102.7 million mt of coal during the January-September period, slipping 8% year on year, as it continued to limit production in a weak market environment, the company said Wednesday.

The miner said in its production report that it produced 16.2 million mt of South African export thermal coal during the first nine months of 2015, falling 7% on the year.

Output of South African domestic thermal coal for the first three quarters of the year also fell 8% on the year to 15.6 million mt.

Glencore attributed the lower production at its South African operations to the closure of the Optimum opencut operations and Middelkraal. However, the miner noted that Optimum's underground mine was still operating, although it was under business rescue proceedings, and increased production at Impunzi and Tweefontein has partly mitigated the overall reduction.

At its Colombian operations, Glencore produced 13.9 million mt at Prodeco over the January-September period, slipping 8% on the year, as it lowered production to meet temporary night railing restrictions.

At the same time, the miner's 33.3% pro-rata share of production from the Cerrejon mine was 8.4 million mt, edging 2% higher.

In Australia, its export thermal coal production for the nine-month period dipped 8% on the year to 38.8 million mt, while domestic thermal coal production at the Australian operations dropped 31% from the same period in 2014 to 2.9 million mt.

Glencore has been scaling back production in Australia due to weak market conditions.

Australian coking coal production for the first nine months of 2015 fell 9% on the year to 4.2 million mt, due to geological issues at Oaky North, while semi-soft coking coal output rose 8% on the year to 2.7 million mt.

All average energy commodity export prices fell compared to the first nine months of 2014, with the South African thermal coal average realized export price dropping 23% on the year to $54/mt.

The average realized export price of Australian thermal coal dropped 16% from January-September 2014 to $61/mt, while in Colombia, the average realized export prices for the period were $64/mt at Prodeco and $57/mt at Cerrejon, slipping 175 and 15% on the year, respectively.

In Australia, the average realized export price of coking coal and semi-soft fell 16% and 18% on-year, respectively, to $101/mt and $79/mt.

source: http://www.platts.com