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Despite declaring force majeure, Wesfarmers announced it had settled a March quarter price of $US221 a tonne for hard coking coal from its Curragh mine this week – a 7.8% increase from the December quarter.
“Recent severe flooding in central Queensland is significantly impacting Curragh’s metallurgical coal production and QR National’s Blackwater line, with rail operations on this line not expected to resume before mid-January 2011 at the earliest,” Wesfarmers Resources managing director Stewart Butel said.
“Force majeure remains in place for export and domestic contracts.”
The Financial Times recently reported that spot hard coking coal prices were up to $295/t.
This is close to the $300/t level for the commodity during the Queensland flooding in 2008.
Indexed weekly Newcastle thermal coal spot prices were nearly $130/t on Friday, surpassing the $100/t level reached in November.
