Japanese coal imports seen at post earthquake low - Barclays

Monday, 13 Jun 2011

According to data from the Japanese Finance Ministry, Ms Amrita Sen a commodities analyst with Barclays Capital in London comments on the outlook for Japanese coal imports which fell 19% to 12.9 million tons in April compared with the month-earlier period.

Ms Sen spoke in an interview today and refers to coal in terms of metric tons on March 11, the country the biggest importer of coal for power was hit by an earthquake and tsunami that crippled Tokyo Electric Power Co Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant. Other atomic reactors were shut down. Ports for handling coal were also damaged.

She said “The trough is now. I would not expect to see a further fall in imports. The question is when they will pick up. It’s conditional on when the ports come back on line. Infrastructure is being rebuilt. I would expect by the end of the third quarter for sure for imports to pick up again. It might be earlier.”

She added that “The loss in Japanese ports was about 13.5 million tons” of coal-moving capacity. That’s the swing. And then, you say two of them were very badly damaged and two were damaged. So, maybe six to seven million tons come back on line by the third quarter.”

(Sourced from Bloomberg)