Gas and Coal: Even Japan imports more Coal in the face of the GAS boom
Japan will import the highest amount of coal in the past two years as energy companies rush to obtain affordable power generation supplies amid skyrocketing Spot liquid natural gas prices, Bloomberg reported .
A cold and snowy winter in Japan has increased demand for electricity against which domestic companies have no alternative but to turn to Indonesian or Australian coal.Japan is expected to import over 17.3 million tons of coal in January, as we said. a record since December 2019, i.e. from the ante covid period. So Green and Covid policies have increased the consumption of coal also in Japan, with a + 5% on the five-year seasonal average.
Coal prices have also risen in the past few weeks due to a month-long export ban, Indonesia's top coal exporter, as well as the Russia-Ukraine crisis, which has worried commodity markets over disruptions to exports of coal. energy, including coal, from Russia.
However, comparable coal prices for utilities are lower than prices for spot LNG cargoes in Asia, which are suffering from strong European competition. LNG prices for March delivery rose more than 17% this week to $ 27.00 per million British thermal units (MMBtu), industry sources told Reuters on Friday. The Russia-Ukraine crisis and cold weather in Japan were key drivers of the jump in LNG prices in Northeast Asia for March.
The economic rebound of the pandemic has driven coal-fired power generation to a new record in 2021, with global coal demand likely hitting another new high in 2022, undermining net-zero efforts, the month said. last the International Energy Agency (IEA). The global recovery in 2021 has dashed any hope that coal-fired power generation may have peaked, the IEA said. However, it was ESG policies that cut investments in the oil and gas sector before an alternative energy source was available to increase the use of coal. As you will see, records in the use of thermal energy sources will be exceeded in the coming months due to the wrong push towards green. And let's hope it's not too cold.
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The article Gas and Coal: even Japan imports more Coal in the face of the GAS boom comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/gas-e-carbone-perfino-il-giappone-importa-piu-carbone-a-fronte-del-boom-del-gas/ on Sat, 29 Jan 2022 15:48:49 +0000.