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Russia’s Elginskoye coal deposits are one of the world’s biggest coking coal deposits, with JORC-compliant reserves of about 2.2 billion tonnes. Located in Yakutia, the Elga coal company, which operates the mine, is also building a private, ‘Pacific Railway’ which will start operations in 2025, according to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
He was speaking at the plenary session of the Russian Energy Week on Thursday (September 26), saying that “The Far East’s coal mining centre’s capacity is expanding. Incidentally, the Pacific Railway will start operating next year. This is a private route from the Elginskoye deposit in Yakutia to the port of Elga in the Khabarovsk Territory.”
Elga’s railway will export coal from the Elgnskoye deposits through the Elga port on the coast of the Sea of Okhotsk, which the company is also building itself, with capacity of 30 million tonnes. Most of these exports will be to Asia. In 2022, China imported some 345 million short tons of coal, thus making it the world’s largest coal importing nation. India came in second, with coal imports amounting to 234 million metric tons that year. These are followed in the top five importers by other East Asian destinations, being Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Vietnam and the Philippines are also among the world’s top ten coal importing countries.
Russia ranks third globally in coal reserves (182 billion tons) and is the sixth-largest coal producer in the world (accounting for 4.5% of global coal production). Russia’s coking coal is typically used in metallurgy production such as steel manufacturing.
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