China flags plan to cut coal use

Chinese officials and policy advisers say the country’s decade-long boom in coal-driven heavy industry is about to end as the leadership shifts priorities towards energy conservation, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The advisers predict China's coal consumption will peak at only a fraction above current levels after the State Council, or Cabinet, last week set an ambitious total energy use target for the five-year plan ending in 2015.

Jiang Kejun, who led the modelling team that advised the State Council on energy-use scenarios, said: “Coal consumption will peak below 4 billion tonnes.”

Aussie coal miners unfazed by US threat

Australian coal miners have played down the competitive threat from US rivals targeting the Asian market but admit there needs to be an improvement in the local coal sector’s overall cost competitiveness, according to the Australian Financial Review.

Australian Coal Association chief executive Nikki Williams said the entire local coal industry’s competitiveness was being threatened by such factors.

“Competitors – whether from the USA or elsewhere – which do not face the uncompetitive pressures being applied by Australian state and federal governments and trade unions, are eager to grab market share,” she said.

Rio Tinto faces Mozambique rail snag

Rio Tinto may be forced to cooperate with Brazilian competitor Vale or abandon plans to build a major export hub for its coal projects in Mozambique after the country’s mines minister indicated only one rail line would be built, according to the Australian Financial Review.

Mozambican Mineral Resources Minister Esperanca Bias told reporters on the sidelines of the Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town that the government would prefer to see just one line constructed.

Rio booked an embarrassing $US3 billion write-down on its Mozambique coal assets after admitting the resource and infrastructure constraints would not be conducive to a 20 million tonne mining operation it had planned when it paid $4 billion to acquire the projects from Riversdale Mining in 2011.