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Steelmakers in Linfen city in North China’s Shanxi province, one of the three key battlegrounds in China’s fight against air pollution, could find their production plans over the next five months being subject to local government pressure just like those of their counterparts making coke.
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Despite being ordered to do so weeks ago, hardly any steel re-rollers in Tangshan city, China’s largest steel producing city, have so far obeyed the local government directive to curb their production starting this month, market sources disclosed on Monday. A government announcement warns such companies will face ‘serious punishment’, nonetheless.
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Hebei, the top steel producing province in North China, will remove 14 million tonnes/year of steel capacity this year as part of its efforts to combat air pollution over the province, according to a post from Hebei’s Provincial Ecology and Environment Department on April 11.
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China is in the process of clearing those idled small-sized iron ore mine sites inside the country to enhance the sector’s efficiency as well as to guarantee the safety and eco-friendliness among the existing and operating mines, an official from Metallurgical Mines' Association of China (MMAC) said on the phone on April 3.
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China’s real steel situation has been of great interest to the delegates of the 17th International Steel Market and Trade Conference on March 27-29 in Nanjing in East China’s Jiangsu province, with the seemingly abnormal high rises in the country’s steel production since 2018 and the steel exports in January-February.
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China’s steel industry should aim for high-quality and orderly development instead of blindly following the trend, Li Xinchuang, president of China Metallurgical Industry Planning Research Institute, told delegates attending the 17th International Steel Market and Trade Conference on March 28 in Nanjing in East China’s Jiangsu province.
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Vale announced to have suspended the operations of its Alegria mine in the Mariana complex of the Southeastern System on a preventive basis on March 20, and the mine is capable of producing up to 10 million tonnes/year iron ore.
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Vale has received the court ruling, allowing the mining company to resume the activities atthe Laranjeiras tailings dam and the Brucutu mine, but the final decision lies with the Environment and Sustainable Development to honor the ruling, according to a company press release on March 19 Brazilian time. A detailed
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The output restrictions which steel mills in North China’s Shanxi province had been observing since late February as part of measures to improve air quality have been strengthened and are expected to last until the end of March, or in some cases, even until mid-April, Mysteel’s latest survey across 13 local steelmakers published on Wednesday showed.
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Many steel re-rollers in Tangshan, China’s top steel producing hub, have halted production as ordered from March 6 on expectations that heavy smog will envelope chunks of North China’s Hebei province, Mysteel learnt from market sources Thursday.
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March may prove to be a tough month for many steelmakers across large swathes of China, as their operations – identified as major sources of air pollution – will continue to be restricted by local governments while nature persists in hampering smog dispersal.
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China can eliminate steel capacity and adopt other measures to help reduce the pollution clouding many of the country’s major cities, especially those in North China, but the comprehensive reduction of emissions is the “number one” measure to tackle air pollution, according to Liu Bingjiang, director of the atmospheric environment department in China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE).
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China has been progressing steadily in the shift towards eco-friendly energy consumption model by having further reduced coal proportion in energy consumption by 1.4 percentage points on year to 59%, according the latest statistics from China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
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China’s Premier Li Keqiang drafted a few economic development targets including a gross domestic product (GDP) growth at 6-6.5% and proposed a series of measures to support the domestic economic performance for 2019 when delivering his government report at the National People’s Congress annual session on March 5.
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Stricter operations restrictions are being imposed on steelmakers in North China’s Hebei province from the beginning of this month. New rounds of emergency curbs coincide with the start on March 3 of crucial national-level political sessions in Beijing, Mysteel noted, but market sources insist there is no causal relationship between the two.
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Handan city, one of the two largest steel producing hubs in North China’s Hebei province besides Tangshan, issued its first ‘red’ air pollution alert for this year on February 20, placing stricter controls on local steel producers to help reduce pollution, according to a government notice the same day.
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With severe air pollution expected to envelop large swathes of China this week and next, industries identified as major sources of pollution such as steel mills will likely come under close monitoring by local governments ready to slap emergency restrictions on production, steel sector sources warned Tuesday. But though stern official announcements and excited Chinese media reports have raised anxiety levels among affected enterprises up a few notches, steel market watchers counsel calm, maintaining that disruptions to production are unlikely to be any more severe than those the industry has already endured so far this winter.
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City government officials in North China’s Tangshan, the country’s major steel producing base, are celebrating its graduation in January from among China’s Top 20 cities with the worst atmospheric pollution, an achievement helped by the frequent cuts to steelmaking, sintering and coke production over the past few months, steel market sources said.
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Governments of Chinese provinces and cities are putting more emphasis on requiring enterprises to control emissions at times of heavy atmospheric pollution, formulating very detailed restrictive measures which heavy polluting industries including steelmakers are required to follow. The most recent, published by Changshu city in East China’s Jiangsu province on February 12, indicates such campaigns among local governments might be the new normal.
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Steel mills in Tangshan in North China’s Hebei province have yet assessed the situation and panned out how to adhere to the local authorities’ detailed requirements on curbing their sintering and blast furnace operations over April-September.
