Nampo, North Korea. After meeting with President Trump in Florida, Chinese Premier Xi Jinping may have ordered North Korean coal ships to return home full due to US requests to sanction North Korea. Ironically, the coal is anthracite or the same coal used in Ukrainian power plants. Currently Ukraine is importing their coal from Canada and the USA, Poroshenko may get a call from Kim Jung-Un.
North Korean cargo ships are heading home to the port of Nampo, the majority them fully laden, after China ordered its trading companies to return coal from their neighbor, shipping data shows. China’s customs service issued an official order on April 7 telling trading companies to return their North Korean coal cargo, said multiple trading sources with direct knowledge of the order.
China banned all imports of North Korean coal on Feb. 26, cutting off the country’s most important export product. US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping were discussing North Korea at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort recently.
Dandong Chengtai, one of China’s biggest buyers of North Korean coal, said the company had 600,000 ton of North Korean anthracite coal sitting at various ports, and a total of 2 million tons was stranded at Chinese ports.
To make up for the loss of North Korea, China has ramped up imports from the United States in an unexpected bonus for US President Donald Trump, who has declared he wants to revive his country’s struggling coal sector.
Data shows no US coal was exported to China between late 2014 and 2016, but shipments soared to over 400,000 ton by late February. Supply problems were extensive after a strong storm knocked out supplies from the world’s top coal region in Australia, forcing Chinese steel makers to buy even more US coal.