Over-the-counter prices mixed, look-alike coal sees near-term gains

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

30 Sep 2010

Over-the-counter coal prices varied through Wednesday's session with marginally improved volumes. Front-month November NYMEX look-alike traded as high as $64.00/st, 25 cents higher than term trades on Tuesday, while front-month Powder River Basin 8,800-Btu/lb physical traded at $14.70/st in conjunction with December, down five cents from the prior Platts assessment. While overall liquidity levels remained low, a trader said in an interview that better volumes were seen in medium-dated look-alike contracts, showing market involvement was on the upswing. Front-end trading drove term volume across all OTC coal products. Front-month November look-alike traded at $63.85/st for five barges and at $64.00/st for five barges. Platts assessed the contract at $63.75/st on Tuesday, following trades at that figure. First-quarter 2011 traded at $64.95/st for five barges, at $65.00/st for five barges twice and $65.05/st for five barges.
Q1 look-alike contracts also traded for volume at $65.25/st for five barges three times. The term traded at $65.00/st on Tuesday, inline with the Platts assessment on that day. Trading in Q4 2011 contracts took place at $70.60/st for five and 10 barges, and at $70.75/st for five barges. Prices were mostly unchanged from those seen Tuesday, when the contract traded in a range of $70.65/st to $70.75/st.
Other physical markets were active Wednesday, with CSX rail delivered 12,500-Btu/lb, -1% sulfur trading once in the November 2010 contract at $67.80/st, unchanged from the prior Platts assessment figure. PRB 8,800 physical saw front-month action, as the November and December 2010 contracts traded once at $14.70/st for the delivery of two trains/month. December 2010 physical traded at a stand-alone price of $14.75/st for delivery of two trains/month. With the downtick in November, the near-term forward curve moved into a slight contango, off from the flat positions Platts assessed on Tuesday. Turnover levels in the paper market were light. CSX swaps traded once in a spread of front-half 2011 over back-half 2011 at a discount of $4.25/st for the delivery of 5,000 st.

Source: Platts