Originally Posted by
DiscoDB
.........
75% of the proven coal reserves in the world are in just 5 countries - USA (23%), Russia (15%), Australia (14%), China (13%), and India (10%). Sitting just outside of the top 5 is Ukraine.
These figures are essentially meaningless. "Proven reserves" is a legally defined term intended to prevent stock market fraud. Proving reserves is time consuming and expensive (involves lots of drilling), and is only done to satisfy a customer or a potential customer that the coal is there before they can be persuaded to sign a contract.
The only relation between "proven reserves" and "real economically recoverable coal" is that the latter is larger - but the size of both figures also depends on the actual price of coal, not to mention potential or actual restrictions on mining, and it is quite easy to see "proven reserves" worldwide going to zero worldwide in the lifetime of many of us, not because the coal was all mined, but because it is either unsaleable or impossible to mine.
Anyone with a moderate knowledge of world geology recognises that the figure for "proven reserves" is a tiny fraction of the actual coal that is potentially mineable. For example, in the Sydney basin, coal has been mined round the edges from the Hunter to Lithgow to Illawarra, and in the middle of Sydney - but the coal is present over the whole basin, just not as easy to mine (same reason the rail bridge over the Hawkesbury killed the mine at Balmain!).
John
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol
Bookmarks