(Bloomberg) -- Chinese demand for coal to produce electricity for the world’s fastest-growing major economy is creating traffic jams lasting as long as nine days on roads connecting mines in the nation’s hinterland to its eastern ports.
Thousands of trucks were stuck along the Beijing-Tibet Expressway for as many as nine days, China Business News reported today. The blockage, which began to ease yesterday, was created by a surge in trucks carrying coal from the province of Inner Mongolia, the newspaper reported. Road maintenance since Aug. 19 has been a major cause of the congestion, the Global Times newspaper said today.
Inner Mongolia passed Shanxi province last year to become China’s biggest coal supplier after the government closed mines on safety concerns following a series of deadly accidents in Shanxi. A dearth of railway capacity connecting Inner Mongolia to port cities such as Caofeidian, Qinhuangdao and Tianjin, where coal is shipped to power plants in southern China, has forced suppliers to rely on trucks.
“The situation may ease in three or four years, when rail capacity from Inner Mongolia to Caofeidian gets upgraded and the new rail line to Liaoning province starts,” David Fang, a director at the China Coal Transport and Distribution Association, said by telephone today.
China plans to build a 300-kilometer (190-mile) railway from Inner Mongolia to Huludao city in Liaoning, the official Xinhua News Agency reported in March.
Police Dispatched
About 400 police officers have been deployed to guide traffic along the Beijing-Tibet Expressway until the problem is resolved, the Global Times reported, citing an unidentified official at the Beijing Traffic Management Bureau.
Inner Mongolia became China’s largest coal producer last year after China’s central government shut all mines in Shanxi with less than 300,000 metric tons of annual output. Mines in Inner Mongolia produced 617 million metric tons of coal in 2009, accounting for 21 percent of total output, while Shanxi accounted for 18 percent of production, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
The number of coal mines in Shanxi was reduced to 1,053 from 2,600, the National Development and Reform Commission said in January.
China has the world’s worst coal-mine safety record, with an average of seven deaths each day in accidents last year. That compares with 18 deaths for an entire year in the U.S., the second biggest coal producer after China.
An explosion at a mine in Shanxi’s Gujiao city killed more than 70 in February last year, the official Xinhua News Agency reported at the time. More than 100 miners were killed at Xinyao Coal Mine in the province in December 2007, according to Xinhua.
Electricity demand in China grew 22 percent in the first half from a year earlier as economic growth rebounded to 10.3 percent in the second quarter and 11.9 percent in the first three months of 2010.
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