By Angela Macdonald-Smith
Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) – Xstrata Plc, the world’s biggest exporter of coal burned in power plants, agreed annual calendar- year contracts for the fuel with Japanese utilities at lower prices, Citigroup Inc. said.
Contracts for coal to be delivered in the year starting Jan. 1, 2009, have been settled at $80 a metric [...]

By Jesse Riseborough
Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) — Coal exports from Australia’s Newcastle, the world’s biggest export harbor for the fuel, rose 59 percent last week while the number of ships waiting outside the port jumped to the highest in almost five months.
The volume shipped in the week ended 7 a.m. local time yesterday rose to [...]

By Ron Derby
Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — Eskom Holdings Ltd., South Africa’s state-owned power utility, will select the winner of a tender for the construction of a 120 billion-rand ($11.7 billion) nuclear power plant in the country by January.
“We will announce the outcome of the commercial process before the end of the year,” Fani Zulu, a [...]

By Jesse Riseborough
Nov. 11 (Bloomberg) — Coal exports from Australia’s Newcastle, the world’s biggest export harbor for the fuel, fell 8.7 percent last week and the number of ships waiting outside the port dropped.
The volume shipped in the week ended 7 a.m. local time yesterday fell to 1.97 million metric tons from 2.16 million tons [...]