On March 8, Australian mining giant and the world's largest hard coking coal producer BHP Billiton announced that it had reached terms for a significant portion of its hard coking coal volumes for 2010, based on a structural change to shorter-term market-based pricing for the contract period.
A BHP press release said that the company has reached agreement with a range of customers throughout Europe, China, India and Japan. BHP went on to say that these settlements reflect its commitment to achieving market clearing prices over time across all its bulk commodities.