巴克莱—煤和天然气2010年5月月度报告
Trade flows in the coal market are being turned on their head. South Africa has
switched from a predominantly Atlantic supplier to largely being an equal supplier
to Pacific and Atlantic markets. Our focus piece investigates divergent demand
dynamics in the Atlantic and Pacific basins accelerating the shift of coal trade flows
from west to east.
􀂄 We expect API4 prices to mostly retain a premium over API2 prices so long as the
marginal exports from South Africa continue to go east to India and China. However,
the vast divergence between the two benchmarks is likely to reduce once European
demand for coal returns, with the potential for transitory spikes in API2 possible
(resulting in it trading above API4 prices) as Europe would need to pay higher prices
to attract coal from South Africa, Russia and even Colombia headed east.
􀂄 We have revised up our Newcastle price forecast from $90/t to $99/t for 2010. This
is due to a stronger performance than expected in the year-to-date and still solid
fundamentals. We keep our API4 price forecasts intact at $90/t, but have revised
our API2 price forecasts lower from $84/t to $81/t to reflect the growing
divergence between the two basins.
􀂄 Another surge in Chinese imports in March and reports of growing spot interest
from Chinese consumers have led us to revise up our relatively optimistic forecast
on China’s imports. At the same time, Korean imports continued to grow and Japan
imports grew for the first time since January 2009.
􀂄 A combination of weak Norwegian inflows, concerns about LNG supply availability,
colder temperatures and high Interconnector exports has helped support April NBP
prompt prices. NBP day-ahead prices closed the month at