Spot Australian hard coking coal peaked at $US245 per tonne free-on-board in mid-April after Cyclone Ului shut down the Hay Point Coal Terminal earlier in the month.

Quarterly deals have been slipping further south since.

BHP Billiton struck a price of $209/t FOB for premium hard coking coal with Japanese steelmakers for the December quarter according to various reports – 7% down from this quarter’s price.

While anything over $200/t is definitely positive for coking coal producers, on the recent fall Harrington noted there were some negative signals coming out of China but said it was always “kind of like reading tea leaves there”.

With quarterly pricing, he said the big change was four times the negotiation.

He added that everyone seemed to be waiting for scoops from journalists on the latest quarterly price.

“I like the excitement and anticipation of the annual games; doing this four times a year takes the fun out of it,” he said.

Mongolia is steadily increasing its metallurgical coal exports to China, but Harrington said this would likely replace the domestic production feeding the western steel mills in the country.

He said it would not affect the high-quality Australian coal heading to the Chinese steel mills on the south coast in the near term.