Putin Boosts Coal More Than Trump Ever Did
The sudden block of supplies caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine has forced up the price.
It’s getting really expensive again.
Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images“Energy Dominance,” championed by President Donald Trump, never did much for the U.S. coal industry. Energy dissonance, though, as unleashed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, is proving effective. Benchmark thermal coal prices just hit triple digits for the first time since 2008. Shares of Peabody Energy Corp., the biggest U.S. coal miner by market cap, have jumped by two-thirds since late February.
The dying fossil fuel has been shocked back to life by the war in Ukraine. As with other commodities produced by Russia, from oil to nickel to grain, the prospect of a chunk of global coal supply being suddenly off-limits has caused the price to spike. Russia is the world’s third largest exporter of thermal coal — the kind used for power generation — accounting for 15% of seaborne trade and weighted toward premium coal with higher energy content. Similar to what’s happened with natural gas, Europe’s dependence on Russian coal has increased as its own production has declined. Nonetheless, revelations of alleged Russian war crimes in the suburbs of Kyiv have pushed the European Union to the brink of banning Russian coal imports, sending disruptive waves through the global market.