Coal Production per region over time: Asia Pacific has experienced a big increase in coal production over the last four years as the regions GDP has grown strongly - with economic expansion in China.

Coal Production - the top 9 countries measure by annual coal production: China's coal production has grown dramatically in the last four years - this is likely to continue because the country is now (for the last 3 years) a net importer of oil, the economy is growing at about 8-12% per annum and it needs huge coal supplies to supply power for manufacturing and a population of developing consumers .

Coal Consumption per Country - China's consumption has fluctuated with it's GDP growth and dominates the global consumption profile. The USA's coal consumption has also expanded. Russia and Germany consumption has decline as deep coal mines have closed and been replace by natural gas for power generation (Germany's gas production has declined leaving it increasingly reliant on imported gas from Russia and Holland). Not surprisingly, coal production mirrors consumption quite closely because of high transport cost - the only significant exception is Australia, which has huge open cast coal mines in eastern Australia close the coast, which can be shipped efficiently to global markets. At one time in the 1980s, the UK imported significant quantities of Australian coal even though the UK has coal mines, because it was cheaper to import this open cast coal from the other side of the globe.

Coal Prices. Notice how coal prices have shot up in the last few years to record levels.