So much is changing for the Russian producers, in the coal exporting infrastructure, in the industry’s ownership aspirations and the growing realisation that the home market is beginning to pick up, offering attractive alternatives to exports. The key infrastructural change is the shift in emphasis from sales shipped through non Russian ports to Russia’s own terminals. Facilities are being built (Vanino) and expanded (Ust Luga, Posiet) and being talked of as replacements for Murmansk or for additional capacity in the Far East. Russia’s markets, too, evolve, as European demand declines, as buyers get fussier with NOx, and as the Asian market explode.
This year The McCloskey Group holds its Russian Coal Markets conference at Istanbul in Turkey, 25th & 26th September 2007.
Russia’s Black Sea markets are of course substantial, with Turkey and Ukraine heading the customer list, also with sales into Romania, up the Danube and into the Mediterranean.