Page 4 - AsiaElec Week 41 2021

AsiaElec COMMENTARY AsiaElec

China looks to Kazakh coal

amid energy crisis

CHINA is the world’s biggest coal consumer. 39mn kilos; China said it bought 150mn kilos.
CHINA Neighbouring Kazakhstan sits on some of the Political scientist and sometime opposition
world’s biggest coal reserves. Yet they have never leader Petr Svoik is inclined to believe the higher
done much business trading the stuff, largely figures, explaining that Kazakh customs officials
because it is expensive to move by rail. have been playing with data on commodity sales
That may be about to change. to China for years.
Rolling blackouts caused by a coal shortage “There are several reasons” for the inconsist-
are threatening China’s economy. Gummed-up encies, Svoik told Eurasianet. “On the one hand,
supply chains, the post-COVID consumption they have different methods of accounting for
boom and emissions-reduction targets are all to commodity groups. On the other hand, there is
blame. But Beijing also miscalculated last year, corruption and smuggling.”
imposing an informal ban on products from Transparency Kazakhstan, the local branch
Australia, one of its largest coal suppliers, when of the international anti-corruption watchdog,
Canberra called for an independent investiga- has reported on such data discrepancies with
tion into the origins of COVID-19. other countries as well, also blaming graft in the
Coal prices have risen almost fourfold over customs agency.
the last 12 months, the The Wall Street Journal There is one thing the data agree on: Kazakh
reported this week, reaching record highs. coal is a drop in the bucket for China, which
Now China is looking for new sources, imported 308mn tonnes in 2019, according
willing to brave even the most indirect import to the IAE, three times Kazakhstan’s total pro-
channels. duction. (China is also the world’s largest coal
The eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang producer.)
received its first shipment of Kazakh thermal But for Kazakhstan, which is struggling to
coal (the kind used in power plants) this week. wean itself off the climate-warming fuel, its
The delivery route was anything but optimal. neighbour’s crisis creates new opportunities.
Landlocked Kazakhstan first sent the coal at For now, 90% of coal mined in Kazakhstan is
least a thousand kilometres in the wrong direc- used locally, where it is sold at state-regulated
tion, overland to a Black Sea port in Russia. prices, which are one-third lower than export
There a bulk carrier took on 136,000 tonnes for prices.
a 30-day, 15,000-kilometre odyssey to Zhejiang, As Kazakhstan switches from coal to gas and
Bloomberg reported. some renewables to meet its emissions targets,
“China as a whole has been buying more it will free up coal supplies to sell abroad, the
thermal and coking coal from Kazakhstan since Association of Mining and Metallurgical Enter-
the start of the year, as power cuts have become prises, a lobby group, told the Kursiv business
more frequent and coal supplies dwindle,” the newspaper on October 4.
South China Morning Post reported on Octo- With higher coal prices, sending this dirt-
ber 5. iest of fuels straight across the border by rail
But how much coal China buys from becomes more economical, even if the net
Kazakhstan is something of a mystery. Figures warming effects on the global climate remain
the two sides provide to the UN’s international the same.™
trade statistics database do not match
Whereas Kazakhstan reported shipping Almaz Kumenov is an Almaty-based jour-
28.5mn kilos of coal to China in 2016, China nalist. This article originally appeared on
reported receiving only 10.5mn. In 2019, the Eurasianet.
last year for which complete data is available,
Kazakhstan told the UN that it had sold China

P4 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 41 13•October•2022