BAKU, Azerbaijan, July 29. Global coal market will remain extremely tight until 2023, Trend reports via the latest update on the coal market from the International Energy Agency (IEA).
As of March 2022 pricing, future coal prices were exceeding $200 per ton through mid-2023.
“Three months later, in July, coal swaps for 2024 were trading at $230 per ton. In the same period, future prices of gas (TTF, July 2024 contract) rose from $15.9 per MBtu to $22.1 per MBtu,” the report added.
According to the agency, as the EU’s ban on Russia’s coal comes into force, the global thermal coal market is forecast to stay extremely tight over the third and fourth quarters of the current year.
“The shift to Russian coal by major importers – including China, Southeast Asian countries and India – should balance markets to some extent but is limited by logistical bottlenecks in Russian eastbound rail freight capacity,” the IEA noted.
Meanwhile, global coal demand in 2022 is expected at 8 billion tons, which is a year-on-year increase of 0.7 percent.
“This would match its all-time peak reached in 2013, but it would be slightly lower than the 8,022 Mt we forecast in Coal 2021 in December because of weaker economic growth,” the agency said.
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