Viewpoint: US met coal miners expect more upside
US coking coal producers say spot prices have yet to hit a ceiling, despite the lull in China, as buyers digest surging offer levels and plans by top economic planning body the NDRC to stabilise steel and iron ore prices.
While last week's US low-volatile offers approaching $300/t cfr China and a dip in Chinese steel prices has checked buying, suppliers and buyers say demand is unchanged.
Mongolian exports to China are still affected by Covid-19 restrictions at the Ceke and Ganqimaodu border posts, while US, Canadian and Russian alternatives to Australian coal have covered just over half of China's regular imports. China imported 14.74mn t of coking coal in January-April, down from 27.08mn t a year earlier.
Chinese mills have also looked to domestic mines to supply some of their needs. But a supply gap remains, and this is reflected in the rise in US prices since the second half of last year. Premium low-volatile US coals, such as Oak Grove and Blue Creek 7, are a natural fit for China and have led the increase in prices. The rise in Atlantic low-volatile coking coal prices has extended to US high-volatile material since late last year. Arch Resources concluded a 300,000t year-long deal for high volatile A coal into China in December, and more recently sold a spot cargo into China at $179/t fob Hampton Roads. The share of Metinvest's US coal in China has also grown, with its low-volatile Affinity coals well received and its Wellmore and Carter Roag brands increasingly visible.
Prices are still below the highs of 2018, when US values rose in line with Australian values. In January 2018, Argus-assessed Australian premium low-volatile prices hit the year's high of $260.50/t fob and averaged $207.42/t fob for the rest of the year, reflecting Chinese demand. In the same year, US low-volatile coal hit a high of $206/t fob Hampton Roads and averaged $188.17/t fob, driven by strong Australian prices. The US high-volatile A price averaged $198.11/t fob Hampton Roads in 2018, and hit a high of $218/t.
While China also imposed import controls on coals in 2018, it was a general ban to support domestic coal mining — not a ban on Australian coals alone. US coal exports to China were subjected a 25pc tariff from late August 2018, removing 2.8mn t, or 4pc, of China's coking coal imports in 2017. With Beijing lifting the tariff last year, US firms' access to China has improved. Chinese buyers started seeking US spot cargoes in late February 2020, ahead of tariff exemptions that began on 2 March.
US producers are only restricted by their ability to offer sufficient volumes, following last year's output cuts of around 20pc and maximised term commitments to European, South American and domestic buyers.
Chinese buyers still expect the falling steel prices of the last week and deteriorating steel margins to limit acceptance of rising coking coal prices. Some Chinese participants say prices could start falling in June, particularly as many late-June and July-loading US cargoes are understood to be held by trading firms, rather than mills.
The high cost of freight has also compounded the rise in cfr China prices, which was largely driven by demand and tight supply. But as long as restrictions are in place on the Mongolia border, Chinese mills will have little choice but to look to US, Canadian and Russian imports. Panamax rates for coal cargoes on the route from the US east coast to China are estimated at $50-55/t this week, up by about $20/t from the start of this year.
Other pressure points
US coking prices are supported by other factors, including strong export demand from Europe and Brazil, and domestic demand.
US domestic demand has been strong since the second half of last year, with the Argus-assessed domestic Midwest hot-rolled coil (HRC) assessment exceeding $1,600/st yesterday. Coke consumption in the US has been strong as a result, and US integrated steelmaker Cleveland Cliffs is due to restart its Monessen coke plant in August, adding to domestic demand.
US met coke producer SunCoke Energy returned to full capacity in the first quarter and is investing at the Jewell coke plant in West Virginia to allow it to start producing foundry coke. Jewell currently sources around 1mn st/yr of coal from Virginia and southern West Virginia.
New high-volatile A production coming to market from Arch Resource's Leer South project in the third quarter is expected to find buyers in China. Since the 2018 import bans, Chinese mills have been adjusting their blends to reduce reliance on Australian coal, shifting towards burning more imported high-volatile material with domestically produced coal.
Related news posts
BHP cuts Australian met coal sales guidance again
BHP cuts Australian met coal sales guidance again
Sydney, 18 April (Argus) — Australian mining firm BHP has cut its coking coal guidance for the 2023-24 fiscal year to 30 June to a new decade-low of 43mn-45mn t because of the impact of wet weather and cyclones on its Queensland operations. The BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA), which is 50pc owned by BHP and 50pc by Japanese trading house Mitsubishi, had already cut its guidance by 18pc in January to 46mn-50mn t of metallurgical coal for 2023-24, down from the previous guidance of 56mn-62mn t issued in July. At that time it cited the impact of the sale of the Blackwater and Daunia coking and thermal coal mines in Queensland to Australian independent Whitehaven, which it completed on 2 April, maintenance, a fatality at its 10mn t/yr Saraji mine and increased removal of waste. The latest downgrade was blamed again on the Saraji incident, as well as on wet cyclonic weather in Queensland and an inventory rebuild after the impact of flooding and labour shortages in 2022 and 2023. The inventory rebuild will continue into calendar year 2025, which could further weigh on sales into 2024-25. The further reduction in expected sales volumes led BHP to increase its cost guidance for 2023-24 to $119-125/t from $110-116/t in January and from $95-105/t in June. BHP received an average price of $274.99/t for hard coking coal and $204.55/t for weak coking coal during July-December, up from $242.52/t and $190.74/t for January-June and $270.65/t and $252.12/t in July-December 2022. It defines hard coking coal as those with a coke strength after reaction (CSR) of 35 and above, with weak coking coal being those with a CSR of below 35. Argus last assessed the premium hard low-volatile metallurgical coal price at $249/t fob Australia on 17 March, down from $336.50/t on 17 January. By Jo Clarke BHP metallurgical coal sales (mn t) Jan-Mar '24 Oct-Dec '23 Jan-Mar '23 Jul-Mar '23-24 July-Mar '22-23 Coking coal 5.41 4.76 5.37 14.66 16.86 Weak coking coal 0.93 0.75 0.71 2.21 2.04 Thermal coal 0.02 0.20 0.10 0.52 0.80 Total BMA 6.36 5.71 6.19 17.39 19.70 Total BMA (100%) 12.72 11.41 12.37 34.78 39.39 Source: BHP Australian metallurgical coal prices ($/t) Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2024. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.
Q&A: Ramaco adding production, sees market growth
Q&A: Ramaco adding production, sees market growth
New York, 16 April (Argus) — Randall Atkins is a founder and chief executive of metallurgical coal producer Ramaco Resources. He also has been involved in energy-related investment and financing activity for over 40 years. In this Q&A, edited for length and clarity, he discusses effects from the Francis Scott Key bridge collapse, his outlook for coal and the company's research projects. What effect has the Key bridge collapse and Port of Baltimore closing had on Ramaco and the US coal industry in general? Like most things of that tragic nature, it is going to take longer than everyone expects to actually solve the problem. I think where it is going to impact producers probably more is on the rails. There will be a need for...producers to rearrange stockpiles and to rearrange where they are going to try and ship, even at reduced levels. Particularly, CSX is going to have an immense logistical complexity to deal with over the near-term. We do not ship from Baltimore. We have not seen any problems, knock on wood, with our rail shipments post the incident. What are your long-term projections for metallurgical coal given expectations that low-volatile coal reserves will shrink in coming decades and the steel industry could be in oversupply? Low vol coal has traditionally been the highest priced coal and the dearest, if you will. High vol A coal has over the last few years grown in importance, and to the extent that there is any new increase in production in the US, it's high vol. What we perceive is that there is going to be a crowding in the high vol space. As a result, our increase in production is primarily in low vol. As far as the demand side is concerned, we do not believe that blast furnace steel demand is going to decline anytime soon. There's a lot of noise from the green community that hydrogen is going to replace coal in blast furnaces. We took some advice on that from the IEA…and when that question was posed (to IEA), the answer that was given was it would take about $1.5 trillion to build a pilot plant using hydrogen by 2035 and probably about another equal or greater sum to build a commercial facility by 2040. So, I don't lose a lot of sleep on the demand for coal for blast furnaces. What I do see shifting, however, is the US has held relatively steady at about 20mn short tons (18.1mn metric tonnes) of met coal demand over the last 10 to 15 years. The growth is clearly overseas, and the growth is clearly at the moment in Asia. When we started back in 2017, and 2018 was really our first year of production, we predominantly sold coal domestically; I think 80pc of our coal went to US steel mills. Now that is almost reversed. We're going to sell probably this year, 70pc overseas, and about a third or less domestically. With Europe moving towards electric arc furnace technology and significant new blast furnace capacity coming online in Asia, what kind of role will the US play as a coal supplier over the coming years? It is cheaper to use a blast furnace than electric arc. And the steel that they (Asian companies) mostly require is the heavier steel for cars and buildings and things of that nature. So, they have a bias towards blast furnace capacity. The US and Europe are very developed economies that are trying to go and wean away from coal, (while) the rest of the world is aggressively moving further into coal. People will shake their heads at the cost that European and American consumers will start to have to pay for that privilege. We see market growth is still there, but it's a different kind of growth. It will be more in the Asian markets, predominantly some in Europe, some in South America and Africa. The low vol coal demand in Asia is extremely strong because while they are able to buy high vol product from Australia very inexpensively, they do not have the low vol production. They need that to blend up to get the proper mix in their blast furnaces. There is a very good future for low vol, and that is the direction we are positioning ourselves. How confident is Ramaco about securing its investments in the longer run given the emphasis on ESG? What I see is sort of a dichotomy. In the thermal coal business, there's not a lot of investment in new mining there for the obvious reason that their customer base is declining. On the met side, it is a bit shortsighted from an investment standpoint because of the composition of the ownership of met coal companies. Virtually every major metallurgical coal producer except for us went through bankruptcy and post-bankruptcy proceedings. Their board composition became essentially distressed debt investors...Their interest was not developing a long-term coal company. Strategically their vision was: "How can we most quickly get money back out of that coal company?" We are certainly the only coal company that is doubling in size. We produced a little under 4mn st last year. We will be at about 4.5mn st this year. We can maybe go higher, depending upon the market. The market is not strong right now. The other issue (for coal producers) even when they weren't doing special dividends, is they've now shifted to doing large-scale share buybacks. You are starting to see the cost curve increase for most domestic coal producers. What you haven't seen, but I think you will probably find over the next probably 18 to 24 months, is you will begin to see depletion kick in. The amount of coal that they are able to produce from their existing operation will begin to decline. And that is strictly a result of not investing in new mine production. My approach was to kind of be a little bit of an outlier and then approach coal to products as an alternative use, certainly for thermal coal. And that, of course, brought us to rare earth (mineral extraction). Do you have funding for Ramaco's rare earth materials projects? Let me step back one step. We introduced the idea that we actually had rare earth (deposits) in May 2023….When we sent the samples to be tested, they tested them as if they were hard minerals. In other words, they did not combust off the organic material. What we have done since then, is we went back and we had samples that were probably 200-300 parts per million. From a commercial standpoint, we have kind of crossed the Rubicon that this is indeed sufficiently concentrated that it makes commercial sense. Now what we are doing is we are going through a process of further chemical analysis and testing to determine what is the best extraction and refinement technique. And the last point you raised was financing. We have a very nice growing mining metallurgical business, which can provide the funding to do whatever we want to do on rare earth. I am not too concerned about our financing capability. Any updates on your coal-to-carbon product projects ? We have looked at a number of different things with the national labs. We started looking at carbon fiber, which could be made from coal and we have got some patents around some very interesting processes. The areas that we are now focusing on...are using coal to make synthetic graphite. The other thing we are working on is using coal for direct air capture. We are considering going into a pilot phase sometime starting later this year with Oak Ridge National Laboratory on a synthetic graphite plant. As far as direct air capture, we probably have more work to do. We are also working on that with Oak Ridge. But I would hope that sometime by 2025, certainly 2026, we would perhaps have our first product, quote unquote, to be able to offer into the market. And it would be delightful if it was synthetic graphite. By Elena Vasilyeva Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2024. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.
Poland's JSW declares force majeure on coking coal
Poland's JSW declares force majeure on coking coal
Warsaw, 15 April (Argus) — Polish coking coal and met coke producer Jastrzebska Spolka Weglowa (JSW) declared force majeure on some of its coking coal contracts and cut its output outlook following a fire at its Budryk mine on 5 April. JSW expects production at Budryk mine — which produces premium hard coking coal, semi-soft coking coal, as well as thermal coal grades — to fall by 400,000t than previously planned as a result of the blaze. The fire affected a long wall located at a depth of 1,290m that was planned for closure, but it forced the evacuation of mines from affected areas, the company said. A fire that broke out at the firm's premium hard coking coal-focused Pniowek mine in December last year will also result in greater production loss than previously expected, JSW said. Output at Pniowek will be down by 450,000t from the 350,000t reduction estimated in December. JSW operates four mines in southern Poland. In the first quarter of this year, JSW produced 2.4mn t of coking coal, representing a decline of about 10pc both on the year and on the quarter. JSW's production of coke reached 830,000t in the first quarter of this year, up by 8pc on the year but down by 5pc from the fourth quarter of last year. Metallurgical coke typically accounts for about three-quarters of JSW's total coke output. Its met coke sales significantly exceeded output, reaching 990,000t in the first quarter of this year. JSW last year produced 10.9mn t of coking coal, down by 1pc on the year, and 3.35mn t of coke, up by 4pc on the year. By Tomasz Stepien Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2024. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.
April-May maintenance to close Australian coal systems
April-May maintenance to close Australian coal systems
Sydney, 10 April (Argus) — Australian rail firm Aurizon will close the 50mn t/yr Blackwater coal system in Queensland over 13-17 April for maintenance, with further closures scheduled for May. The firm, which operates the Central Queensland Coal Network (CQCN), confirmed that it plans to close its 60mn t/yr Goonyella system during 1-3 May, its 15mn t/yr Moura system for 14-16 May and Blackwater again during 27-29 May, as part of an annual planned maintenance programme. The only CQCN system not included in the maintenance programme is the 15mn t/yr Newlands system. Blackwater and Moura deliver coal to the port of Gladstone from the southern end of the Bowen basin. Goonyella delivers to the adjacent ports of Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal, which is a multi-user facility, and BHP-operated Hay Point from the central Bowen basin. Newlands delivers to Abbot Point from the northern Bowen basin. Aurizon, Pacific National, BHP and some smaller coal haulage operators use the CQCN. Aurizon is targeting a 5pc year-on-year growth in coal haulage by its fleet across the CQCN and New South Wales/southern Queensland in the 2023-24 fiscal year to 30 June. This implies a target of 194mn t for 2023-24. It hauled 94mn t during July-December, leaving it a target of 100mn t for January-June. By Jo Clarke Send comments and request more information at feedback@argusmedia.com Copyright © 2024. Argus Media group . All rights reserved.
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