European Prices Flat, Australia Mixed

• Newcastle price for Dec. down 25 cents to $64.35/tonne
• Newcastle price for Jan. inch up 15 cents to $64.75/tonne

European physical coal prices for December were flat on Friday afternoon, while Australian prices were mixed but still close to 2009 levels.

European coal for delivery in December to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp (ARA) was flat at $74.75 a tonne on the GLOBALcoal platform at 1426 GMT, with 50 lots traded.

Meanwhile, cargoes for delivery in December from Australia's Newcastle terminal were down $0.25 to $64.35 a tonne at 1327 GMT, while January cargoes inched up $0.15 to $64.75 a tonne.

"(Prices) are sitting at 2009 levels in the case of Newcastle," said analysts at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch in a research report on Friday.

"The main driver behind the recent price drop has come from the demand side, with Chinese coal demand notably weaker. To make matters worse, the Chinese government just imposed a 6 percent import tax in an effort to protect its domestic coal industry," they said.

However, Australia has said its coal will be exempt from the new import tariffs when it signs a free trade agreement with China, though the timing of the deal is yet to be finalised.

"The stronger U.S. dollar is providing relief to Australian coal producers who have yet to meaningfully cut back on production in light of bulging oversupplies and high stockpiles around the world," the analysts said, adding they do not see a price recovery next year in global thermal coal markets.

South African coal from its Richards Bay Coal Terminal had yet to trade on GLOBALcoal.

Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) has stopped publishing monthly operational updates detailing shipments of coal because it is "competitive information", its chief executive Nosipho Siwisa-Damasane said on Thursday.

The data that RBCT used to regularly publish included the amount of coal it exported each month and the tonnage of stocks it held -- information that traders and other market players watched closely.

Siwisa-Damasane said RBCT remained on track to meet its target of 72 million tonnes of coal exports in 2014, up from the 71 million shipped last year.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney, editing by David Evans)