Energy Publishing Introduces First of its Kind Coking Price Index

By Energy Publishing Co., PRNE
Sunday, February 28, 2010

KNOXVILLE, Tennessee, March 1, 2010 - On Feb. 26 Energy Publishing Co. broke new ground in the coal-marketing
industry when it began publishing three price indexes for coking coal. Coking
coal is the fastest growing and most volatile segment of the worldwide coal
industry and the indexes are the first of their kind.

"After months of discussions with coal producers, traders and buyers, we
have put together a suite of price indexes for coking coal," said Forrest
Hill
, president of Energy Publishing. "Indexes have been used to price steam
coal contracts and short-term sales and derivatives for about 10 years, but
coking coal has, in the past, proved resistant to indexing."

    Energy Publishing's three indexes are:

    - CCQ(c) , based on premium hard coking coal shipped from Queensland,
      Australia.
    - CCH-LOW(c), based on premium low volatile coking coal shipped
      from United States' east coast.
    - CCH-HIGH(c), a Type "A" high volatile coking coal, also shipped
      from the U.S. east coast.

"The difficulty in developing a coking coal index has been the
variability of coking coal and the view that value of a given coal varies
depending on where it is being used," Hill said.

Two factors have now made an index practical.

Foremost is the interest in short-term pricing by BHP Billiton and
several other large producers of coking coal. BHP Billiton has been pushing
hard to convert all of its sales to short-term pricing, and the world of coal
is rapidly moving in that direction. The second factor is the progress made
by Energy Publishing in developing a set of specifications that define three
coals generally agreed to be at the top of the market.

Energy Publishing has unique access to data on mine-by-mine quality
measures and historical prices that have made the development of a realistic
and usable index a reality. Building the index was done in conjunction with
Doyle Trading Consultants of New York, which helped develop the methodology.

"The negotiations now going on between the Australians and their major
customers in Japan are expected to result in a significant portion of the
total tonnage moving from annual to quarterly pricing," Hill said. "And, many
expect prices to move to even shorter terms in the near future. Short term
pricing will be difficult to administer without a reliable coking coal price
index, so the publication of the new indexes comes at a critical juncture for
coal markets."

To view the Coking Coal Indexes go to www.coalportal.com or
contact info@energypublishing.biz or jnorris@energypublishing.biz .

Energy Publishing(c) is a publishing company that reports on coal supply
and demand in the major producing countries of: Australia, Canada, South
Africa
, Indonesia, Colombia and the United States as well as all of the major
coal consuming countries. The company has offices world-wide and is staffed
by a reporting team of widely-experienced coal industry specialists. A copy
of the coal quality measures and the methodology used for calculating the
indexes will be available to subscribers to the index.

Jim Thompson, +1-865-588-0645

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