{"id":133827,"date":"2025-05-26T17:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T17:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/133827\/"},"modified":"2025-05-26T17:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T17:47:09","slug":"russian-economy-meltdown-as-coal-extraction-plummets-with-putin-facing-existential-threat-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/133827\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian economy meltdown as coal extraction plummets with Putin facing existential threat | World | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia’s<\/a> coal industry is facing an existential threat as output continues to plummet amid surging financial losses. Exports of Russian coal have steadily declined since Putin’s<\/a> full-scale invasion of Ukraine<\/a> in February 2022.<\/p>\n

They declined by 1% in the first year of the war, 4% in 2023, and 8% in 2024 \u2014 and are expected to drop another 5\u20138% this year. The industry has been hit hard by Western sanctions<\/a> and is struggling to find new markets and clients. As a result production outputs have dropped, and companies face mounting financial losses.<\/p>\n

Experts from the Centre of Macroeconomic Analysis and Short Term Forecast noted in a recent report that coal extraction continues to fall in Russian mines.<\/p>\n

Russian coal has become less competitive than Mongolian, Indonesian and Australian cargoes, analysts say. The industry has also been hit by a sharp fall in the price of the mineral on global markets.<\/p>\n

In the second half of 2023 and early 2024, prices fell to about US$150 per tonne – having previously been around US$450. Worse was to come as prices fell again to US$100 per tonne in the second half of 2024.<\/p>\n

With recent cuts in demand from key buyers in Asia \u2014 China, India, Japan, and South Korea \u2014 thermal coal prices (5,500 kcal, FOB Newcastle basis) could fall to US$69\u201376 per tonne in 2025\u20132026.<\/p>\n

A double whammy of sanctions and falling prices saw losses at coal companies jump 4.1 times between January and September 2024 to a staggering US$1.9 billion (\u00a31.5bn).<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the share of loss-making companies amounted to 52% compared to 35% in the same period in 2023.<\/p>\n

The coal industry is still a major employer in Russia<\/a>, providing thousands of people with jobs.<\/p>\n

Approximately 150,000 Russians work in 58 underground coal mines and 133 open pits.<\/p>\n

Another half a million people are employed in coal-dependent sectors, including thermal power plants, transport, services and supply industries.<\/p>\n

Although coal made up around 40% of the regional budget in Russia<\/a>‘s largest and most important mining region the Kuzbass, it only contributes 0.5% to the country’s GDP.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia’s coal industry is facing an existential threat as output continues to plummet amid surging financial losses. Exports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7655],"tags":[1700,332,58863,16491,29402,657,333],"class_list":{"0":"post-133827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-russia","8":"tag-economy","9":"tag-russia","10":"tag-russia-coal-industry","11":"tag-russia-inflation","12":"tag-russia-interest-rates","13":"tag-ukraine","14":"tag-vladimir-putin"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114575392549265061","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}