This morning the major miner announced it had reached terms for a “significant portion” of its hard coking coal volumes for 2010.

BHP did not reveal the price or the period covered but said the deals were “based on a structural change to a shorter term market pricing for the contract period”.

However, numerous media reports have indicated BHP landed a $200/t deal with JFE for the June quarter.

BHP said it had reached agreement with a range of customers in Europe, China, India and Japan.

“These settlements reflect the company’s commitment to achieving market-clearing prices over time across all its bulk commodities,” BHP said.

While there has been more speculation on quarterly pricing for iron ore, Macarthur Coal chief executive Nicole Hollows revealed during a conference call a week-and-a-half ago that BHP Billion Mitsubishi Alliance was negotiating quarterly coking coal pricing.

“Negotiations currently seem to be delayed, mainly I think because of BMA putting forward quarterly pricing and other parties looking at quarterly pricing,” she said.

Pricing for metallurgical coal is traditionally settled through annual contracts for the Japanese financial year starting April; however, spot coal deals have long eclipsed the benchmarks set last year thanks largely to unprecedented demand from China, a major coal producer and once a net coal exporter.

Xstrata settled some annual thermal coal contracts for as low as $63/t last year, but was asking Japanese utilities for $100/t in February, the Australian Financial Review reported.

Xstrata and Rio’s $70-72/t annual benchmark contracts with Japanese utility Chubu Electric last year were a 42-44% discount to premium thermal coal export prices of $125/t in 2008.

BMA’s $129/t premium coking coal benchmark with Nippon Steel last year was 57% lower than the record prices of $300/t set for the commodity in 2008.

The lower prices last year resulted from the steel market slump which followed the onset of the global financial crisis.