Coal stockpiles in the port of Rotterdam are at the lowest level since August 2008 as nuclear power cutbacks increased demand for coal, Barclays Capital said, Bloomberg reports.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the idling last month of the country’s seven oldest nuclear power plants for safety checks after an earthquake and tsunami damaged six atomic reactors in Japan. The price of coal delivered to northwest Europe has jumped 66 percent in the past 12 months to $128.11, according to data from IHS McCloskey in Petersfield, England.
“We see a greater pull for coal in Europe,” Amrita Sen, an analyst at Barclays Capital in London, wrote in a report today. “The likelihood of holding a higher level of steady state coal stockpile, now that the use of nuclear as base load in many countries has been reduced/questioned, could well trigger an additional bout of restocking.”
Last month’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan crippled the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, causing it to spew radiation in the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1986.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the idling last month of the country’s seven oldest nuclear power plants for safety checks after an earthquake and tsunami damaged six atomic reactors in Japan. The price of coal delivered to northwest Europe has jumped 66 percent in the past 12 months to $128.11, according to data from IHS McCloskey in Petersfield, England.
“We see a greater pull for coal in Europe,” Amrita Sen, an analyst at Barclays Capital in London, wrote in a report today. “The likelihood of holding a higher level of steady state coal stockpile, now that the use of nuclear as base load in many countries has been reduced/questioned, could well trigger an additional bout of restocking.”
Last month’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan crippled the Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, causing it to spew radiation in the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, in 1986.