With shipments of oil and natural gas trapped behind Hormuz, desperate nations are turning back to reliable, plentiful, dirty coal. That means big profits for America’s biggest coal miner.

“You can’t just turn on the spigot,” says Jim Grech, chief executive of Peabody Energy, America’s biggest coal miner. Customers in Japan, Korea and Taiwan are pleading with Peabody for additional shipments, Grech says, so they can avoid energy shortages by switching more power generation to coal instead of natural gas..

While he says he’d love to help all the power plant operators in Asia looking to replace missing cargoes of liquefied natural gas trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz, Peabody is already running its mines in New South Wales, Australia at full tilt. “You need more crews, more equipment digging,” he says. “There’s no quick upturn in production.” A multi-year expansion is already underway at Wilpinjong Mine where it’s doubling production to 10 million tons per year by 2030. Peabody also produces 3.5 million tons a year at the Wambo mine JV with Glencore, and is ramping up its Centurion metallurgical coal mine. (Nearly all the Aussie coal is sold to power plants in Japan, India, Philippines, Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam.)

Northeast Asia had been reducing reliance on coal in favor of shipments of cleaner burning natural gas in recent years. But suddenly they are in the market for millions of more tons per year. “The world, as they run into energy security problems, turns back to coal,” says Grech, 59, who was named chairman of President Trump’s National Coal Council, in January. “There’s no other options.” Japan is moving to relax restrictions on coal generation; Taiwan is set to restart its Hsinta coal plant; Korea lifted anti-pollution caps; and India has ordered coal plants to hurry up and finish spring maintenance so they can be ready for a heavy load when the gas runs out. Even Europe is considering resurrecting mothballed plants.

With Qatar warning it might take years to get its LNG exports back to normal, traders have bid up coal prices by 20% in the past month to $150 a ton for Australia’s benchmark Newcastle export grade. How high could it go? “If this conflict continues longer than May, the stars could align for $200 a ton coal,” says Tony Knutson, head of thermal coal research at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. Even at that price, coal would still look cheap. Global LNG prices have doubled in a month to $20 per million British thermal units, which, says Knutson, is like paying $460 a ton for Newcastle coal. 

“We don’t sell it out six months or a year. Most of the cargoes we have are unpriced. So as the prices go up our cargoes get higher revenue back to us,” says Grech. Grech thinks the Hormuz blockade “domino effect” will also spur domestic demand for Peabody’s landlocked Wyoming coal. 

St. Louis-based Peabody reported revenue of $3.8 billion and EBITDA of $455 million in 2025. This year, according to analyst Matthew Key at Texas Capital in Dallas, Peabody’s sales could rise to $4.6 billion or more, while EBITDA could jump to $870 million. Earnings per share are predicted to hit $2.39, up from a 46 cent loss last year. With the stock trading at $35.70, that’s a forward P/E of 15. 

Not bad, but new investors already missed out on a huge 130% run up in Peabody shares in the past year, and 400% since Grech took over in June 2021. He previously served as CEO of Utah-based coal company Wolverine Fuels and as president of Nexus Gas Transmission. When he joined Peabody, it was still a giant operation but one that had been battered by a decade of competing against both green energy and shale gas, not to mention massive debts (since paid off). Peabody emerged from Chapter 11 in 2017 only to get whacked by Covid, which destroyed demand and drove shares down to new lows by late 2020. 

Since arriving, Grech has focused on expanding high-profit metallurgical coal mining in Australia. He tried to buy coal mines from Anglo American in 2024 for $3.8 billion, but a fire at one of Anglo’s mines caused the deal to fall through. 

For all its bad P.R., dirty old coal never went away. In fact, global coal consumption was a record 9 billion tons last year, according to the IEA. It’s the great culprit of global warming, admits Peabody in its SEC filings, and yet humans just keep using more of it. While China, which has lately been pushing into alternative energy production, still uses more than half of that total, U.S. coal combustion is down to just 500 million tons per year, half of what it was a decade ago, but up 13% last year thanks to Trump policies. 

The shale gas revolution is the main reason behind coal’s decline. Fifteen years ago coal provided 47% of U.S. electricity; today it’s down to just 16%, only slightly more than wind and solar. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2026/04/03/the-american-miner-peabody-energy-behind-coals-comeback/

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices