{"id":678604,"date":"2026-05-18T12:35:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/678604\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T12:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T12:35:09","slug":"chinas-coal-output-slips-as-imports-extend-decline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/678604\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s Coal Output Slips as Imports Extend Decline"},"content":{"rendered":"

China\u2019s coal production last month inched down by 1%, to 385.63 million tons, Reuters has reported<\/a>, citing official statistics data. The decline was from an all-time high achieved in March.<\/p>\n

Over the first four months, China\u2019s coal production also dipped, to 1.58 billion tons, which was a modest 0.1% decline on the first four months of 2025, and came amid ample supply, and despite higher coal generation and lower imports.<\/p>\n

Imports of coal into China slid by 14% last month to 33.1 million tons, with imports for the four-month period since January at 149.4 million tons, down by 2.1% on the year, the data also showed.<\/p>\n

Power generation from coal and gas-fired plants in China last year went down for the first time in a decade, driven lower by alternative energy sources such as wind and solar. Coal production, meanwhile, rose<\/a>, prompting the government to address concerns of oversupply with production curbs. Even with them, coal production in the country last year hit an all-time high, rising 1.2% to a total of 4.83 billion tons.<\/p>\n

The decline in imports observed over the first four months of this year appears to be an extension of a trend that began last year. In 2025, China\u2019s coal imports fell by 9.6% from 2024 to a total of 490 million tons, driven lower by the booming domestic production and lower thermal power generation.<\/p>\n

Right now, China is among the countries that are ramping up thermal power generation at the expense of gas, which is in increasingly tight supply as a result of the Middle Eastern crisis. In China, this translated<\/a> into a 3.1% annual increase in coal and gas generation last month, according to the new data. Thermal power generation, which is mostly coal, went up by 3.6% on the year last month.<\/p>\n

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com<\/p>\n

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China\u2019s coal production last month inched down by 1%, to 385.63 million tons, Reuters has reported, citing official…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678605,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,327044,312084,327046,327045,317312,19183,75,8666,327047,74093,128,192708],"class_list":["post-678604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-china-coal","tag-coal-generation","tag-coal-imports","tag-coal-output","tag-domestic-supply","tag-energy-security","tag-environment","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-lng-crisis","tag-reuters","tag-science","tag-thermal-power"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678604\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}