South African Coal Sales to India Jump, Europe Hurt

South Africa's Richards Bay Coal Terminal, the world's biggest coal-export facility, expects a 30- fold surge in sales to India this year, increasing prices for European power producers competing for supplies.

The terminal shipped 7.3 million metric tons to India in the first 10 months, compared with 300,000 tons for the whole of last year, Donovan Raj, the terminal's shipping coordinator, said in an interview Nov. 22. That may rise by another 2 million tons before the end of the year, he said. Richards Bay coal prices have gained 86 percent this year.

Benchmark prices for thermal coal, used in power plants, have reached a record in Australia, South Africa and Europe in the last three weeks. Costs have risen because of shipping and rail bottlenecks as Asian customers compete for supplies with European utilities. Indian coal demand will exceed supply for the next five years, Tata Power Co. said last month.

India is the golden child at the moment, Raj said, speaking from the terminal on South Africa's northeast coast, the biggest single source of coal for European power plants.

Indian Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said Aug. 24 the nation planned to add 78,755 megawatts of capacity in the five- year development plan ending in 2012. That would add 60 percent to the current level, much of it though coal-fired plants.

India in the medium term is going to be a massive importer, said Gerard McCloskey, chairman of U.K.-based consultant McCloskey Group Ltd. Its imports will rise to 100 million tons a year by 2015, from 33 million tons now, he said.

Shipping Potential

Richards Bay's shipping potential will expand to 91 million tons a year by the first half of 2009, from 72 million tons now, said Kuseni Dlamini, the terminal's chief executive officer.

That is a market the world is looking at, Dlamini said. Richards Bay, which has about 3.5 million tons of coal stockpiled at the moment, is owned by mining companies including BHP Billiton Ltd. and Anglo American Plc.

Coal exported from Richards Bay rose to $95.10 a ton, the highest since at least August 2000, in the week ending Nov. 23 according to McCloskey Group. Coal from Newcastle, Australia, rose to a record $88.63 in the week ended Nov. 23.

The jump in prices is encouraging European utilities to buy supplies from the U.S. The power producers are paying more for the shipping than for the coal, London shipbroker Galbraith's Ltd. said this month. Peabody Energy Corp., Consol Energy Inc. and Arch Coal Inc., the three biggest U.S. coal companies, forecast the largest increase in exports in 20 years.

Additional demand is also coming from Japan and South Korea. The nations each bought 300,000 tons of coal through the port this year, compared with none last year.

`Good Returns'

The interest from Asia is helping to sustain prices McCloskey said. It's guaranteeing good returns for anyone involved in the South African coal industry.

BHP is the biggest exporter of coal from South Africa, followed by Anglo and Xstrata Plc.

More than a quarter of western Europe's thermal coal is shipped from Richards Bay, which reported total shipments of 66.5 million tons last year. Exports through October this year were 53.8 million tons, little changed from a year earlier.

November's volumes should total about 5.6 million tons, from 6.48 million tons a year earlier, Raj said.

Derailments of trains run by Transnet Freight Rail, the state rail operator formerly known as Spoornet that delivers coal to the port, and bad weather have hampered shipments, Dlamini said.

Turnover times for ships at the port have been slowed by equipment shortages at the government's National Port Authority.

Helicopter Service

A helicopter used to transfer pilots to ships was replaced in September this year after crashing in 2005, Raj said. In the interim pilots have been transferred by boat, a process that can take four to six hours, instead of the 90 minutes to 2 hours by helicopter, Raj said. The helicopter service is no longer operating at night.

While Richards Bay is the world's biggest coal-export terminal, Australia's Newcastle port ships more of the fuel from two terminals. South Africa is the world's third-biggest thermal coal exporter after Australia and Indonesia.

Source - Bloomberg