Vietnam May Phase Out Coal Exports  

Bloomberg is reporting that Vietnam is considering limiting coal exports in order to reserve local coal production for soon to be commissioned coal fired power plants. The intersection fo resource nationalism and the export land phenomenon, in action.

Vietnam, China's largest coal supplier, plans to reduce exports by 32 percent this year and gradually eliminate the sales to meet rising domestic demand, a government official said.

Coal exports may drop to a forecast 22 million metric tons from 32.2 million in 2007, Nguyen Khac Tho, vice director of the Ministry of Industry and Trade's energy and petroleum department, said yesterday in an interview in Hanoi. The ministry will recommend Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung halt overseas shipments by the world's eighth-largest exporter of energy coal after 2015. ...

``Coal is a resource that can't be renewed,'' the ministry's Tho said in a phone interview. ``Our most important task is to meet domestic demand to ensure national energy security.''