Energy Publishing Introduces First of its Kind Coking Coal Price Index

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- On Feb. 26 Energy Publishing Co. broke new ground in the coal-marketing industry when it began publishing three price indexes for coking coal. Coking coal is the fastest growing and most volatile segment of the worldwide coal industry and the indexes are the first of their kind.

"After months of discussions with coal producers, traders and buyers, we have put together a suite of price indexes for coking coal," said Forrest Hill, president of Energy Publishing. "Indexes have been used to price steam coal contracts and short-term sales and derivatives for about 10 years, but coking coal has, in the past, proved resistant to indexing."

Energy Publishing's three indexes are:

• CCQ© , based on premium hard coking coal shipped from Queensland, Australia.
• CCH-LOW©, based on premium low volatile coking coal shipped from United States' east coast.
• CCH-HIGH©, a Type "A" high volatile coking coal, also shipped from the U.S. east coast.

"The difficulty in developing a coking coal index has been the variability of coking coal and the view that value of a given coal varies depending on where it is being used," Hill said.

Two factors have now made an index practical.

Foremost is the interest in short-term pricing by BHP Billiton and several other large producers of coking coal.  BHP Billiton has been pushing hard to convert all of its sales to short-term pricing, and the world of coal is rapidly moving in that direction.  The second factor is the progress made by Energy Publishing in developing a set of specifications that define three coals generally agreed to be at the top of the market.

Energy Publishing has unique access to data on mine-by-mine quality measures and historical prices that have made the development of a realistic and usable index a reality. Building the index was done in conjunction with Doyle Trading Consultants of New York, which helped develop the methodology.

"The negotiations now going on between the Australians and their major customers in Japan are expected to result in a significant portion of the total tonnage moving from annual to quarterly pricing," Hill said. "And, many expect prices to move to even shorter terms in the near future.  Short term pricing will be difficult to administer without a reliable coking coal price index, so the publication of the new indexes comes at a critical juncture for coal markets."

To view the Coking Coal Indexes go to www.coalportal.com or contact [email protected] or [email protected] .

Energy Publishing© is a publishing company that reports on coal supply and demand in the major producing countries of: Australia, Canada, South Africa, Indonesia, Colombia and the United States as well as all of the major coal consuming countries.  The company has offices world-wide and is staffed by a reporting team of widely-experienced coal industry specialists.  A copy of the coal quality measures and the methodology used for calculating the indexes will be available to subscribers to the index.

SOURCE Energy Publishing Co.