Industry experts are expecting anything but a cut in coal demand for the foreseeable future.
This has resulted in greater coal demand from the PRB over the past decade.
However, while coal demand is subdued in the near term, it will gradually pick up.
This incredible growth is largely due to a phenomenal increase in the met coal demand.
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While these had dropped to record lows, sparking a boom in natural gas-based electricity production, coal demand fell.
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Secondly, if the coal demand in U.S. remains subdued for long, the miners will streamline their businesses for exports.
But even a deadline of 2005 is expected to cut coal demand sharply.
The major growth in coal came from developing economies, with China accounting for 46% of global coal demand in 2011.
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Our long-term outlook remains bullish largely due to the long-term outlook for coal demand from export markets and sustainable U.S. demand.
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India faces massive electricity shortages due to a mismatch between coal demand and supply, making it dependent on imports from Indonesia and other countries.
Norfolk Southern's slick systems and tight schedules don't make it immune to a slowing economy, a dip in coal demand or pullbacks in Asian trade.
However, we believe the domestic coal demand is a more exciting opportunity for Union Pacific in the near-term because the export facilities available now are limited and inadequate.
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However, there lies a hindrance to the revival of domestic thermal coal demand if the U.S. Environment Protection Agency raises the bar on carbon emissions on power plants.
The export coal demand is expected to grow, although at a slower rate, given the tight truckload capacity, growth in international coal prices and improving global demand, particularly from Asian economies.
However, these figures are somewhat distorted by a drop in coal shipments, which contributed 44% of total rail shipments last year, as coal demand has been impacted by a switch to natural gas for electric power generation.
However, the two most important questions to be answered are: is the export market large enough to make up for the dip in domestic coal demand, and how long will it take for companies in the U.S. to be able to take advantage of the export markets?
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On the other hand, if the industry scraps all of its smaller and older plants, Credit Suisse estimates, steam coal demand would drop by 15% to 30%, or as much as 324 million tons a year, while gas demand would increase 8% to 16%, or as much as 3 trillion cubic feet a year.
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The China National Coal Association expects demand to grow by 4-6% in 2010 and the coal consumption to expand to roughly 3.4 billion tonnes.
Global demand for coal has been on the rise as Asian economies, especially China and India, demand massive quantities to power its cities and industrialization projects.
The produced coal EBITDA margin increased from around 13% in 2006 to 22% in 2008, with increasing global demand for coal resulting in higher profit margins for coal producers like Massey.
The produced coal EBITDA margin increased from around 13% in 2006 to just over 22% in 2008, as increasing global demand for coal resulted in higher profit margins for coal producers like Massey.
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The metals and coal sectors aren't demand driven, but they are price sensitive to the dearth of incremental supply, particularly coal, iron ore and even copper with all its mine outages.
Another problem is that demand for coal in Britain is increasingly concentrated in the winter months.
Demand for coal has fallen even faster than the environmentalists who have been lobbying against coal had anticipated.
The demand for coal, as a result, is significantly high in this region both in thermal and metallurgical coal.
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Closures, combined with weak demand for electricity nationwide tied to the slow economy, have translated into less overall US demand for coal.
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China is undergoing a sweeping infrastructure build-out that has created an almost insatiable demand for coal, copper and iron ore (for steel production).
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However, in 2009 as a result of the global economic downturn demand for coal fell to resulting in EBITDA margins of around 16%.
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Driven in part by an "inventory cleansing" but also by strong emerging market demand, especially from India and China which are responsible for almost half of the world's demand, coal's looking hot.
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