UPDATE 1-China top power cos sign regional coal deals

By Rujun Shen and Tom Miles

SHANGHAI, June 11 (Reuters) - China's top five power generating groups have signed 2009 coal supply contracts with miners in Guizhou and Xinjiang, with prices up 4 percent on the year, or flat after tax effects, sources said on Thursday.

The price increase is in line with deals signed earlier in Shandong and Henan provinces, said the sources, including an executive at one of the power producers and a power industry official, both with knowledge of the negotiations.

The tonnage contracted so far, estimated at more than 100 million tonnes, accounts for up to 20 percent of the total annual coal consumption at these companies, the sources said.

"We've signed some contracts in certain regions, but deals with most of the expected regions are still up in the air," said the power company executive.

The industry official said the top five firms might sign annual deals for 200-300 million tonnes in all.

The top five state-owned power groups -- Huaneng, Datang, Guodian, Huadian and China Power Investment -- have been in talks with coal producers since December last year to try to agree contract prices.

The absence of a deal within China and the slowdown in demand overseas helped drive Chinese imports of coal to a record high in April, the last month for which data is available.

After the Henan and Shandong deals, analysts at Nomura said they expected the price to spread to the rest of China.

"We believe the rest of the coal miners in China may take the prices they have negotiated as benchmarks to finalise coal contracts in other provinces," Nomura analysts Ivan Lee and Evan Li Nomura said in a note to clients on June 5.

They said if the trend continued, it would improve earnings forecasts for the power firms' listed units: Datang Power (0991.HK), China Resources Power (0836.HK), Huaneng Power (0902.HK), Huadian Power (1071.HK) and China Power (2380.HK).

Last week Chinese miner Yanzhou Coal (1088.HK) said it had struck deals for 7.84 million tonnes with an average benchmark price of 502.62 yuan per tonne, including 4.29 million tonnes for power producers at 463.86 yuan per tonne, a 4 percent increase from 2008.

The provincial deals involve local coal mines, not top Chinese miners such as Shenhua (1088.HK)(601088.SS), which has insisted this year's contract price for coal with calorific value of 5,500 kcal/kg (NAR) should rise to 540 yuan a tonne, or 17 percent higher than last year.

The power firms have so far rejected Shenhua's price, citing deep losses last year due to rising coal costs and lower power demand amid the economic downturn.