Guest essay by Eric Worrall

h/t Breitbart; According to Russia’s TASS news agency, China and Russia are negotiating a 100 million ton coal deal. This is in the wake of a 40 million ton coal deal with India.

Russia, China work on agreement for supplying 100 mln tonnes of coal — Energy Ministry

18 FEB, 19:45

It is reported that consumers’ needs to be obtained

MOSCOW, February 18. /TASS/. Russia and China are developing an intergovernmental agreement on the supply of coal in the amount of 100 mln tonnes, Head of Department of Foreign Economic Cooperation and Fuel Markets Development at the Russian Energy Ministry Sergey Mochalnikov announced on Friday.

Mochalnikov recalled that in October 2021, Russia and India signed a memorandum on the supply of 40 mln tonnes of coal to India as part of the Russian Energy Week. “Now an intergovernmental agreement with the People’s Republic of China is being developed, and the figure is 100 mln tonnes,” he said.

“In the coming years, consumers should receive as much coal as they need,” Mochalnikov said.

As follows from Mochalnikov’s presentation, the share of Russian coal in the Asia-Pacific market in 2021 was 12%. At the same time, since 2010 this figure has increased by 8 percentage points – from 4% to 12%).

Read more: https://tass.com/economy/1405789

China suffered severe energy shortages in 2021, thanks to their ill considered geopolitical games with imports of Australian coal, and Premier Xi Jinping’s 2021 attempt to power the Chinese economy by magic, perhaps in an effort to look good on the world stage during COP21.

With rising industrialisation in Africa, with China, India and other Asian powers engaging in a naval and military arms race, ramping up their military industrial production in preparation for the coming military confrontation in the South China Sea, and floods in China in 2021 likely causing long term damage to coal production in some districts, global demand for coal likely to remain strong for the foreseeable future.