Coal production in Russia's key producing area of Kuzbass stood at 178 million tonnes during January to October in 2023, declining 1.7% from a year ago, according to the Ministry of Coal Industry of Kuzbass.

Coal produced from opencast mines stood at 119 million tonnes, down 2.2% year on year, while that from underground mines increased 10.5% on the year to 59.0 million tonnes.

Production of coking coal reached 56.3 million tonnes, up 3.5% year on year. Thermal coal outputs decreased 3.9% on the year to 122 million tonnes.

During January-October, a total of 145 million tonnes of coal were delivered to end users, down 2.7% year on year.

Of that, 94.3 million tonnes of coal were exported, a year-on-year drop of 4.5%. Russian metallurgical companies received 27.4 million tonnes of coal, up 2.6% year on year, and coal shipments to local coal-fired power plants amounted to 14.6 million tonnes, rising 1.4% year on year.