metallurgical_coal
Critical · 1 lists

Metallurgical coal

energy_fuel · primary

USGS_2025

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.

Headline indicators

229US$/t (nominal)

Australia premium HCC FOB East Coast (REQ, DISR forecast)

0.21

Moderate · 2026

lifecycle flow

  1. 01Reserves

    58.8Bt

    China leads · 69% share

  2. 02Production

    26,943,367.1t

    Mongolia top · 2023

  3. 03Trade

    -

  4. 04Stocks

    -

  5. 05Consumption

    -

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.

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.

Read the methodology, illustrated live →

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