Coal suppliers from the United States and Canada have bypassed companies from Russia selling coal to China. According to Chinese customs statistics, in the first nine months of the year, imports from these countries increased by 870.6 and 92 percent, respectively. writes Kommersant.
The United States supplied 7.2 million tons and Canada 6.6 million tons. Russia showed an increase of 77.4 percent to 7.7 million tons. At the same time, in the coking coal market, the United States bypassed Russia even alone – 1.46 million tons against 927 thousand. A year ago, American companies did not supply coking coal to China at all.
The reason for the change was the unofficial ban on coal purchases in Australia by the Chinese authorities, with which Beijing unleashed a trade war. Thereafter, Australian suppliers redirected shipments to Japan, South Korea, India and Vietnam.
Russia was unable to take advantage of the situation due to infrastructure problems. Lack of transportation capacity prevented the increase in deliveries as fast as the North American companies were able to do.
The Managing Director of the NRA Rating Service, Sergei Grishunin, noted that previously the United States and Canada occupied significant positions in the export of coking coal by sea, but when fuel prices fell, many suppliers went bankrupt. However, the countries retained their port infrastructure, which makes it possible to multiply the supply.
In early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted that the country could not take advantage of the rise in prices on the global coal market, because it had not taken up in its time increasing the capacity of railways in the Far East.
In turn, Anatoly Chubais, Special Representative of the Russian President for Relations with International Organizations to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals, predicted that the coal strategy adopted a year ago would inevitably fail, since it was drawn up without taking into account the global energy transition. In his opinion, an orientation towards China in the medium term is doomed in advance.
The demand for coal and prices for it in the world have skyrocketed against the backdrop of the energy crisis in the largest economies of the planet. In China, due to a shortage of energy resources, enterprises began to stop, and in the European Union, a record increase in gas prices led to a sharp increase in demand for coal, despite the region’s plans to abandon this source of energy.
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