China to import more coal but price impact limited, IEA says

LONDON - China's rising coal demand looks set to boost its coal imports but any impact on international prices should be limited, the International Energy Agency's China programme manager said.

Coal imports into China rose more than a third in the first eight months of this year, while exports slipped. Imports were boosted by rising consumption to power energy-intensive industries, such as cement makers, and by the need to avoid transport bottlenecks between the inland mines and consumers.

"There's a great deal of coal residing in other nations that are willing to provide it," Jonathan Sinton, China programme manager of the IEA's Office of Non-Member Countries, told Reuters on the sidelines of a China energy conference.

"It's difficult to imagine the price impacts are going to be particularly large for other buyers in the market because of the availability of high quality coal."

Imports could become increasingly attractive, Sinton said.

"In some cases, it will almost certainly be cheaper to mine coal in Australia in large open-cast mines, transport it by ocean, which is still relatively cheap - fuel oil is getting cheaper - to a port in southern China, than to build a new railroad which is becoming more expensive and tranship it and put it on a coastal freighter and send it down," he said.

China, the world's top producer and consumer of coal, derives about 70 per cent of its electricity from coal.

- REUTERS