China Has Overcome 90% of Coal Shortages

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The number of Chinese provinces with significant power shortages is down to two in mid-October instead of 18 at the start of the month. The number of coal power plants with dangerously low coal stockpiles (less than 7 days) has also decreased by 90%.

China’s coal imports jumped 76% in September from the level of imports in 2020. There have been mainly more imports from Russia and Indonesia.

Coal prices have more than halved after hitting a record high of 1,982 yuan ($310) per metric ton.

China ordered coal mines to expand their production levels to produce 220 million tonnes a year of extra coal, a nearly 6% increase from last year. New coal mines were also approved.

Planners set a target of daily coal output of 12 million tonnes, which reached a year’s high of 11.6 million tons on Monday, up from around 10.4 million in late September. In September, China imported about 3.7 million tonnes of thermal coal from Russia. That’s up 28% from August and more than 230% higher than a year ago. China imported three million tonnes of thermal coal from Indonesia last month, up 19% from August and 89% from September 2020.

Winter has not started in China and there will be increased coal usage for home heating.

In 2020, U.S. coal production decreased 24.2% year over year to 535.4 million short tons (MMst). The total productive capacity of U.S. coal mines was 933 MMst, a decrease of 7.6% from the 2019 level.

China increasing coal production by 220 million tonnes (242 million short tons) is 45% of US coal production. China will be producing about 3.9 billion tons of coal and with imports will be about 4 billion tons of coal.

SOURCES- CNBC, Power Technology
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com