During a domestic and global glut
According to Mr Kevin Crutchfield, the Virginia company’s CEO, who noted increasing imports into the US as an industry stressor during the company’s most recent earnings call, the dynamic has grated on Alpha’s finances.
To be sure, coal imports in the US are but a tiny sliver of coal consumption and of the problems facing the industry. More pressing concerns range from falling commodity prices powerplant shutdowns, transportation constraints, and environmental regulations to competition from cheap natural gas.
Still, there is something incongruous about the world’s richest coal nation seeing a spike in coal imports during a domestic and global glut.
US Census data said that coal imports in the US increasing by 43% during the first six months of 2014, compared with the same period last year.
Reports submitted by power plants to the Energy Information Administration follow the same trend and show it escalating. In July and August, two months not yet available in the Census data, power plants were already halfway to the total imports for the first six months of the year.
Colombia is the most popular foreign origin this year, followed by Indonesia, Venezuela and Russia, power plants reported.
The Census data, which is supplied by customs districts and includes not just shipments to power plants but also to industrial customers, as well as metallurgical coal and coke volumes, includes half a dozen other countries such as Ukraine, Canada and China.
Metallurgical coal imports, although just a small portion of overall imports, rose rapidly this year as well. At the half year mark, such shipments were already at 90% of last year’s imports.