Commodities
Coal’s Four-Year Lows Hide a Coming Global Supply Squeeze
- Benchmark price is at lowest since 2021, close to $100 a ton
- New mines held back by financing curbs, stranded asset concern
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Languishing global prices today mask a very different future for the world’s most-consumed source of power.
Australian thermal coal contracts, the benchmark for Asia, are hovering close to $100 a ton thanks to a mild winter and global oversupply, a price level last seen in May 2021, before the energy-market upheaval that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While that is battering producers and will cheer those predicting the end of the dirtiest fossil fuel, it’s a trough that may not last.