According to US Census data , US metallurgical coal exports totaled 4.7 million mt in August, up 22.9 percent from 3.8 million mt in July. Compared to the same month last year, exports increased 35.7 percent from 3.5 million mt. August 2017 was the highest export figure since March 2015.
The top met coal export destinations in August were India (606,785 mt, up 299.6 percent year-on-year from 151,842 mt), China (513,844 mt, up 612.2 percent year-on-year from 72,148 mt) and Brazil (482,200 mt, down 13.9 percent year-on-year from 559,937 mt).
For the first eight months of 2017, US met coal exports totaled 31.78 million mt, up 32.4 percent from 24 million mt in the same January-August period last year. The eight month figure for met coal exports represents a 58.5 percent of total US coal exports for the period.
For the eight month period, total US coal exports totaled 54.3 million mt, up 63.3 percent from the same period in 2016. For the January-August 2017 period, the largest export destinations for US met coal were Brazil (4.2 million mt), Japan (3 million mt) and India (2.3 million mt).