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Australia's Newcastle Thermal Coal Price Drops for Sixth Week
March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Thermal coal prices at Australia's Newcastle port, a
benchmark for Asia, dropped for a sixth week as disruptions to exports eased in
Queensland and China and amid weaker demand from Northern Hemisphere buyers
after winter. The weekly index for power-station coal prices at the New South
Wales port dropped $4.86, or 3.9 percent, to $119.50 a metric ton in the week
ended March 28, according to the globalCOAL NEWC Index.
Xstrata Plc, the world's largest exporter of power-station coal, and Rio Tinto
Group last week lifted declarations of force majeure on deliveries of mostly
coking coal from two mines in Queensland where shipments had been missed
because of flooding. China's exports of thermal coal have resumed ``in
earnest,'' Tex Report said March 25.
``Supply conditions are a little less tight now than they were a few weeks
ago,'' said Gerard Burg, a minerals and energy economist at National Australia
Bank Ltd. in Melbourne. ``That would act to cool the market a bit, particularly
at a time when we might see a little less demand out of northern Asia just from
the point of view of seasonal conditions.''
Forty-two vessels were waiting off Newcastle to load coal as of midnight March
30, the Hunter Valley Coal Chain Logistics Team, coordinator of coal
transportation through the rail and port system from the Hunter Valley to
Newcastle, said on its Web site.
The weekly globalCOAL index is still 33 percent up so far this year. The
monthly index for Newcastle thermal coal prices rose $38.65, or 42.5 percent,
to $129.52 in February, the fifth straight monthly record.
Source - Bloomberg 30/03/08
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