Metallurgical coal
energy_fuel · primary
Bottom line
Metallurgical coal sits on 1 federal critical-minerals list; mine supply is moderately concentrated (HHI 0.21, 2026), led by 🇦🇺 Australia at 36% of output.
At a glance
Headline indicators
Price · 2026
229US$/t (nominal)
Australia premium HCC FOB East Coast (REQ, DISR forecast)
Mine production HHI
0.21
Moderate · 2026
From ore to use
lifecycle flow
- 01Reserves
58.8Bt
China leads · 69% share
- 02Production
26,943,367.1t
Mongolia top · 2023
- 03Trade
-
- 04Stocks
-
- 05Consumption
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Coverage
Data coverage notes
- no dataMetallurgical coal: no secondary supply exists (consumed as reductant) - No secondary/recycled metallurgical-coal supply exists anywhere in the authoritative ecosystem: met coal's carbon is chemically CONSUMED as the reductant - coke reduces iron ore to hot metal and exits the system as CO2/process gas, so unlike metals there is nothing to recover post-use. No agency (IEA, EIA, USGS, worldsteel, DISR) publishes a 'secondary met coal' statistic. The closest concepts are all IN-PLANT process flows of primary material, not secondary market supply: coke breeze is consumed on-site as sinter-plant fuel, blast-furnace dust carbon can substitute it (carbon replacement factor near 1.0, Lanzerstorfer 2015), and cleaned coke-oven/BF/BOF gases fuel the works (worldsteel: can provide more than 60% of a site's power). Steel-industry circularity (scrap, slag, gases) is a STEEL story, not coal recycling.
- datedExport-restriction inventory ends 2020 - The OECD industrial-raw-materials inventory (vendored snapshot) reports HS-line measures only through 2020; restrictions enacted since are not reflected in the measure table.
Methodology
How strata reads a commodity
The eight-stage lens, the observed-vs-estimated membrane, stage-honest supply, per-stage concentration, ownership resolution and the demand lens - the full method is illustrated live on copper, nickel and lithium.
Provenance
Where this data comes from
- Australia premium HCC FOB East Coast (REQ spot)
- Australia premium HCC FOB East Coast (REQ, DISR forecast)
- EIA US met-coal export value (f.a.s., short tons)
- GEM Global Coal Mine Tracker
gem_coal_mines
- Mongolia EITI (ОҮИТБС) reconciliation-report Excel appendix (free EITI disclosure) - archived via `strata mn-eiti-coal pull`; the coal production + export appendices (found by title, unit auto-calibrated) parse to named-company coal SupplyRecords (the coking-coal-to-China exporters: Erdenes Tavantolgoi, Energy Resources, Mo En Co...). Freshest report auto-adopted (FY2023: 156 named producers).
ni43101_deposits
ownership_control_seed
8 sources · titles open the source card · url opens the publisher