Kazakhstan doubled the supply of coal to the European Union after the start of the Russian war against Ukraine. In the first five months of this year, the country sent it more than the whole last year, the data published by the European Statistical Service Eurostat.
At the beginning of the year, monthly deliveries were 140-200 thousand tons, from March-300-400 thousand tons. A year earlier in April and May, Kazakhstan sent only 60-70 thousand tons to the EU
Basically, Kazakhstan supplies coal to European countries with sea by sea with a transshipment in the ports of Russia or the Baltic countries (782 thousand tons in this and 240 thousand tons last year), by rail (respectively, 635 thousand and 540 thousand. t) and on roads (90 thousand and 8.2 thousand tons). In total, last year, Kazakhstan exported 29.2 million tons of coal, the main directions were Russia (19 million tons), Switzerland (4.8 million tons) and Belarusian (1.9 million tons), follows from the data of the Bureau of National Statistics.
At the same time, most of the supplies to the EU Energy Coal in the first quarter were to Russia (51%). “Russian traders managed to achieve the largest share in the market, despite a significant decrease in the share (minus 19%) in relation to 1 quarter of 2021,” the Eurostat quarterly report said. In the same period, the share of coal supplies from Kazakhstan increased from 2 to 3%, from the US ports – decreased from 9 to 5%.
Earlier, European countries agreed on restrictive measures against the import of Russian coal, which were included in the fifth sanctions package of the EU.