Coal is Cool

For the last couple of days, I have been looking at a business proposal for coal transportation. It is interesting even though I have been doing few coal business plan last two years. There are few informations that I almost forgot and this exercise require me to revisit my informations. Among the pertinent point that I wish to highlight are:

• how Malaysia over the past few years reducing dependency on petroleum products for power generation. Currently this have been reduce from around 70% to 50% total electricity capacity. the gap have been taken by coal power generation.
• currently Peninsular Malaysia has 5 IPPs that using coal as fuel for power generation. these IPPs generate 7200 Mw of electricity.
• The total coal use for power generation stood at 19 million tonne per annum. It is to increase steadily and APEC in 2006 forecast that Malaysia would require around 34 tonne of coal by 2030.
• Malaysia coal are imported from Australia, Indonesia, South Africa and now also looking at China and Vietnam.

In shipping perspective, I can say potentially coal industry can benefit ship owner in Malaysia if we can take part in coal transportation. There are such players but their numbers are still small because our ship owner only interested to venture into less risk less headache industry such as O&G where vessel secured on time charter contract. I confidently can see that this industry will be here and stay for a very very long period. Let see how I can move from here!