Global Coal Market Research Articles

Practical Difficulties Associated with the Indian Coal Washeries: A Case Study

ABSTRACTBeneficiation of lower grade coal continues to play a vital role for Indian coal industries, and it brings newer challenges to maintain its competitiveness in the global coal market. Studies have shown that the actual clean coal yield in most of the Indian coal washeries is much lower than that of the theoretical yield. Improper quantification of raw coal qualities and inappropriate maintenance of operating conditions for the processing equipments are often believed to be the two major causes for this lower yield. So, the importance of accurate quantification of these raw coal qualities has been demonstrated in this article. In addition, maximization of the plant yield has been illustrated through a case study. The results indicate that the yield could be increased up to 64.83%, which is nearly 21.64% higher than the plant’s actual yield. This study has been carried out in two stages: Firstly, variation of available coal quality and the presence of near gravity material have been quantified, and secondly, maintenance of constant incremental quality approach has been verified.

Price and Volatility Spillovers Across the International Steam Coal Market

We examine the degree of integration of the global steam coal market. Using a variety of measures, we show that the Australian market remains the dominant force in setting world coal prices, followed by Mozambique and South Africa. We find little evidence of asymmetric price and volatility transmission. In fact, most markets react to both positive and negative shocks in a symmetric manner. The coal market displays a significant degree of integration, although this varies over time. While China provides a major source of volatility to the global coal market, it is relatively insignificant in terms of price transmission.

Drivers for the renaissance of coal

Coal was central to the industrial revolution, but in the 20th century it increasingly was superseded by oil and gas. However, in recent years coal again has become the predominant source of global carbon emissions. We show that this trend of rapidly increasing coal-based emissions is not restricted to a few individual countries such as China. Rather, we are witnessing a global renaissance of coal majorly driven by poor, fast-growing countries that increasingly rely on coal to satisfy their growing energy demand. The low price of coal relative to gas and oil has played an important role in accelerating coal consumption since the end of the 1990s. In this article, we show that in the increasingly integrated global coal market the availability of a domestic coal resource does not have a statistically significant impact on the use of coal and related emissions. These findings have important implications for climate change mitigation: If future economic growth of poor countries is fueled mainly by coal, ambitious mitigation targets very likely will become infeasible. Building new coal power plant capacities will lead to lock-in effects for the next few decades. If that lock-in is to be avoided, international climate policy must find ways to offer viable alternatives to coal for developing countries.

Cost of equity on the Polish and global coal market - comparative analysis

The mining industry in Poland as well as in the world is considered to be a strategic industry, of special significance for the economy. At the same time it is an industry requiring high capital outlays. Equity plays an important role in financing of the mining enterprises. The objective of the article is to compare the cost of equity on the Polish and global coal market. The object of the research are the Polish and foreign mining enterprises listed on the stock markets. The basic research method is CAPM.

The World's Greatest Coal Arbitrage: China's Coal Import Behavior and Implications for the Global Coal Market

In 2009 the global coal market witnessed one of the most dramatic realignments it has ever seen – China, long a net exporter of coal, suddenly imported a record-smashing 126 Mt tons (103 Mt net). This inversion of China’s role in global coal markets meant that Chinese imports accounted for nearly 15% of all globally traded coal, and China became the focal point of global demand as traditional import markets like Europe and Japan stagnated in the wake of the financial crisis. The middle kingdom's appetite for imported coal seems insatiable, and the “China Factor” appears to have ushered in a new paradigm for the global coal market.But China doesn’t ”need” the coal. The world's largest coal producer cranked out 2.96 Bt of production in 2009, backed up by 114.5 Bt of reserves. While the world’s other fastest growing importer, India, is plagued by a growing gap between coal supply and power demand that it is unable to fill domestically, this is not the case in China. The spike in Chinese demand for imported coal is therefore a more complex (and less easily predictable) phenomenon that requires careful examination if the world is to understand what impact China might have on global energy markets in the coming decade.In this paper Richard Morse and Gang He devise a model that explains Chinese coal import patterns and that can allow the coal market to understand, and to some degree predict, China’s coal import behavior. They argue that the unique structure of the Chinese coal market creates a series of key arbitrage relationships between Chinese domestic coal markets and international coal markets that determine Chinese import patterns.The implications of this argument are significant for the development of the global coal trade in the coming decade. The arbitrage relationships that Morse and He describe directly link the domestic price of coal in China to the global price of coal. Developments in China‘s domestic coal market will be a dominant factor determining global coal prices and trade flows (and by implication power prices in many regions). This makes understanding the domestic Chinese coal market, which operates according to a unique economic and political logic, crucial for any participant in the global markets.

Development and perspectives on supply and demand in the global hard coal market

The year 2007 was filled with record high prices and extreme volatility levels for many commodities and the global coal and freight markets were no exception. Naturally this opens up a discussion of what may be the root causes for the extreme price developments, and whether they can be attributed, wholly or partly to a change in supply and demand within the seaborne hard coal market, a lack of investment or a changing market structure. This paper takes a closer look at these topics building upon the earlier analytical methods and previous work of H. Gruss (1989–2003) and C. Kopal (2006–2007) published in the Zeitschrift fur Energiewirtschaft.