Into the furnace: Europe has stopped importing coal from Russia

Alexander Titov commented to Izvestia on the coal embargo impact on the European and Russian coal markets.

Alexander Titov, senior expert of the Energy Department of the Institute for Energy and Finance, noted that if you choose from two sides, then for Russia there is less dependence on the European market.

- The embargo from the EU and the UK is about 50 million tons of coal per year (including 47 million tons of thermal coal), or 50% of European imports. For Russia, such volumes are 22% of total coal exports. That is, the dependence is less, but still significant,” the analyst added.

As Titov added, now European countries are actively looking for new suppliers. The key countries that are currently increasing coal supplies to Europe are South Africa, Australia and, to some extent, Colombia. European companies are looking for any free volumes on the market, which, for example, led to a significant increase in imports of Kazakh coal in the II quarter.

“But the task of replacing Russian coal has not yet been completed, and difficulties with gas imports from Russia only exacerbate it, because the shortage of gas and rising prices lead to the resumption of generation at coal-fired thermal power plants. This may give an additional need for imports of 20–30 million tons per year,” the expert specified.

- It is possible that part of the export to Europe will remain. For example, the UK assumes that after the embargo is introduced on August 10, exports can be partially carried out under special licenses (we believe that in conditions of shortage they will be issued). Also, part of the volumes can go through the UAE traders, to which our companies partially switched, moving away from the Cypriot trading companies, - Alexander Titov summed up.

As for the losses for specific producers in Russia, they will suffer from the embargo to varying degrees, since the largest of them are already more oriented towards the East.