Coal trade statistics are available from a number of sources such as the IEA (International Energy Agency) and EIA (the United States’ Energy Energy Information Administration). Decades of data is available for research although the data must be purchased from the IEA in their annual publication, ‘Coal Information’.
In this case the data was downloaded from the EIA’s International Energy Statistics database which includes imports and exports for 122 countries. Data from 2013 to 2015 categories the data into rank and coal use categories (lignite, sub-bituminous, bituminous, anthracite and metallurgical coal). The data was converted into a CSV file and wrangled into an appropriate format to generate the map and charts below.
The map below shows exporting and importing countries. Darker colours indicate higher imports or exports. The map is interactive, so countries can be clicked on to show their import or export tonnages and the map can be moved around to show different regions of the world. The map can also be zoomed by using the + and – buttons in the top left corner of the map. A compression algorithm was applied to the country shape data such that the country fill colours may not have a very high resolution and not cover the underlying countries.
For the South-East Asian region, the dark red shaded countries of Indonesia, Australia, Russia and South Africa show the highest exports and are also close spatially, which will minimise shipping costs. The largest thermal coal importers are located in this region too with China and India importing large quantities of thermal coal in 2015.
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The same data set can be plotted in different ways. See below for bar charts comparing coals exports for different coal rankings and countries. The year can be varied via the dropdown box. The chart shows the exports in millions of tons. This chart is also interactive. Data series can be removed by clicking on the appropriate legend series. One series can be selected by double clicking on the series in the legend.
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In terms of total world coal exports, bituminous coals dominate with sub-bituminous coals coming second with less than 50% of the bituminous coal exports. Exports of lignite and anthracite coals are significantly less than bituminous coal exports. Indonesia and Australia dominate thermal coal exports with Indonesia exporting primarily sub-bituminous coals and Australia only supplying bituminous coals. Indonesia also supplies a significant amount of bituminous coals with levels similar to exports from Colombia and approximately 10Mt less than South Africa.
The data is pivoted such that the exports are compared over time (2013-2015) in the line chart below. In this chart, the rank is selected by the dropdown box. Bituminous coal exports reduced by approximately 20Mt for Indonesian coals between 2013 and 2015. Colombian coal exports increased by approximately 10Mt for 2014, but decreased for 2015, such that, exports decreased by about 2Mt between 2013 and 2015. Exports of Indonesian sub-bituminous coals initially increased by about 5Mt for 2014, but then decreased for 2015. Exports of anthracite coal decreased between 2013 and 2015.
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The data can be summarised into the following chart which shows the overall thermal coal exports. In 2014 and 2015, the top 6 thermal coal exporting countries (Australia, Indonesia, Russia, Colombia, South Africa and the United States), accounted for 90% of the export coal volume. Countries that fall under the ‘Other’ category include Netherlands,Kazakhstan, North Korea, Poland and Mongolia. Netherlands doesn’t technically export coal as the country doesn’t have any coal mines. Coal simply passes through the country.
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The top 6 coal exporting countries account for the majority of coal traded in the world, especially within the South East Asia Region. A future blog will explore which countries the coal from exporting countries is going…