“I think everyone is expecting a pause in growth, a slowdown next year,” he told International Longwall News over the phone when asked about the sentiment of the conference attendees.

“The attitudes to that varied. At one end some people were quite comfortable with that and were suggesting it is probably a good time for the industry to perhaps try and get its house in order a bit more given the chaotic rate of growth.”

At the other end he said people were more downbeat.

However, Shaw said that, in general, there was a sense that in the short term the coal industry was not headed for a dire collapse and the weak Australian dollar was cushioning the local industry.

On the coal sector outlook, Shaw considers the medium term to be from 2015 onwards.

“In the case of the Bowen Basin, they [mines from the area] are probably the world’s most important supplier of traded high-quality metallurgical coal and the outlook for demand for high-quality coking coal is good in the medium to long term,” he said.

He said the steady and continuing urbanisation of nations such as China, India, Indonesia and Brazil would maintain robust demand for steel and energy for the medium term and onwards.

On the global coal supply side of the equation Shaw said it would certainly grow as there are significant projects on the drawing board in terms of new mines and new rail and port infrastructure “not just in Queensland but elsewhere in the world as well”

Shaw said 2008 coking prices had resulted in a global rush to get the product out of the ground, onto a ship and into the world market.

He said producers in the US, Canada and Russia were trying to increase production although these nations were facing similar infrastructure constraints difficulties to Australia along with some mine-specific ones.

India as a growth market

While Shaw notes that China is pretty much self-sufficient in coking coal, he sees India as a new market aside from Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Europe as the main drivers of trade and demand.

From 2015 he is expecting India to become a significant importer of coking coal and said most of the nation’s coal resources were best for generating power, and the qualities go down from there.

“A lot of the coal mines in India are really pretty average stuff,” he said.

He said India’s government, coal and steel industries had very ambitious targets for new production capacity but CommSec was not confident about the prospects of it happening in the nearer term.

Shaw used the example of South Korean steelmaker POSCO, with the company having a steel plant waiting for the necessary approvals and permits for over 10 years.

Isaac Regional Council Mayor Cedric Marshall told ILN that the numbers at the conference were down from last year’s debut but the proposed mines in the Galilee Basin were a highlight, with the prospect of the basin hosting billions of tonnes of mainly steaming coal.

The Bowen Basin Coal Conference was organised by Informa Australia.