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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (8101)	7/9/2008 8:53:16 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 24231

A good example of how everything is connected to everything else... UPDATE 2-Russia hydro, rail shortage to cut coal exports Tue Jul 8, 2008 12:09am IST LONDON/MOSCOW, July 7 (Reuters) - Russia's hydro power levels have fallen to the lowest for 16 years and coal-fired plants are struggling to take up the slack because a rail wagon shortage is making it hard supply enough fuel, Russian coal exporters said on Monday. For years there have not been enough rail wagons available to move all the commodities competing for space, but the shortage of hydro power would make the situation worse this year, they said. "It is much worse this year and it is earlier than usual this year because of the hydro power situation," said one of the largest coal exporters and suppliers of domestic coal. Sergei Yushin, finance director of RusHydro HYDR.RTS, the world's second largest hydro-electric power firm after Hydro Quebec, said there is no clear solution for this year. "The acute water shortages are in the European part of Russia, the stations on the Volga river, and these account for about one-third of our electricity production," Yushin told Reuters. On top of that, there are around 20,000 rail wagons in Russia but 30,000 are probably needed, with old old wagons falling apart three times as fast as they can be replaced. Higher coal prices make it more affordable to buy wagons costing over $40,000 each, but the supply is just not there. "The Chinese don't have wagons to spare for export. They have their own huge need to meet," a Russian coal mining source said. Not only large-scale coal-fired plants but also smaller communal combined coal-fired heat and power plants serving several apartment blocks could run out of fuel in the winter due to transportation problems. "The coal plants usually buy their fuel for the winter now, in the summer, and build stocks. At this rate, if nothing changes, we think there could be four power stations shut down during the winter in the west of Russia, at Murmansk, St Petersburg, and elsewhere," an exporter said. The government is likely to displace some coal exports from the rail network in order to prioritise the movement of domestic coal, the exporters said. "The producers all have large stocks of coal in Kemerovo and elsewhere at the mines but they can't move it because there are so few wagons," another major exporter said. "They will have to move the domestic coal as a priority and we will lose even more wagons for export coal," the first exporter said. "Already when we are receiving the programme of wagons each month we are getting 50 percent of what we requested." Even without a hydropower shortage Russian coal exports were projected to fall by at least 10-12 million tonnes in 2008 from around 85 million tonnes total thermal and coking coal last year, exporters said. Russian natural gas exports may also be affected in the winter, coal exporters said, as they are diverted to make up for coal shortfalls. "It's hard to predict clearly at the moment, nobody knows exactly what's going on but it's hard to imagine that gas exports would be unaffected," a third major coal exporter said. (Reporting by Jackie Cowhig in London and Simon Shuster in Moscow; Editing by Marguerita Choy in.reuters.com