Colombia is expected to produce just over 2% less coal in 2012 than estimated after labor unrest, newswire Reuters reported on Tuesday.
A strike of the managers of Colombia’s main railway lasting five weeks was followed by a three-month-long strike of workers in the Glencore International Plc, a multi-national mining company.
The strikes affected the industry to the extent of slashing coal production to 8% in the third quarter of 2012 to 21 million tons compared to the same period in 2011.
Reuters reported Colombia’s mining agency as claiming “If [the mining agencies] reach the average level of production of the first two quarters, output may arrive at 91 million tonnes (in 2012), which is below the budgeted projections,”
In October the government lowered its annual expectations to 93 million tons from 97 million tons after the strikes, however the predictions are still higher than total production in 2011, when the country only reached 85.8 million tons.
