European thermal coal prices slid again on Wednesday and the end of year lull kept sentiment decidedly negative, while South African export prices continued to defy fundamentals by being bid at much higher-than-expected prices. “It’s really a dead market this period, the first beginning of winter I’ve seen without any problems in Europe,” a European trader said. The source said although there had been some French nuclear outages, the disruption was not great enough to encourage much additional coal burn – and therefore spot demand – due to plentiful stockpiles, and natural gas was still running ahead of coal in the merit order.
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