COAL remains the world’s fastest growing fuel for the sixth consecutive year with global consumption rising 3.1% last year, according to British Petroleum’s annual statistical energy review released this month.

Total world production, including hard coal and sub-bituminous coal, was 3.32 billion tonnes of oil equivalent, 5.3% higher than 2007, with China producing 42.5% of that amount at 1.41Btoe.

US coal production last year was 596.9 million tonnes of oil equivalent, 18% of world production, while Australia accounted for 6.6% with output of 219.9Mtoe.

India reached 194.3Mtoe, 5.8%, Russia produced 152.8Mtoe, 4.6%, and Indonesia was the fifth-largest producer with 141.1Mtoe, 4.2% of global production.

For consumption, China used 42.6% of total coal output at 1.41Btoe, 6.8% higher than 2007.

US consumption shrank 1.7% last year but its credit-crunched economy still accounted for 17.1% of world coal demand.

India was the other standout with coal consumption growth of 8.4% last year to take its share of the global pie to 7%.

For the nations who rely on coal imports, Japan consumed 3.9% or 128.7Mtoe, up 2.4% from 2007, while South Korea consumed 10.4% more coal last year at 66.1Mtoe, 2% of the world’s total.

BP also provided figures for proved reserves at the end of 2008.

With 28.9% of the world’s proved reserves, the United States had a total of 23.83 trillion tonnes with 10.89 trillion tonnes of anthracite and bituminous coal and 12.94 trillion tonnes of sub-bituminous and lignite coal.

Russia had 19% of total proved coal reserves, China had 13.9%, Australia had 9.2%, India had 7.1%, Ukraine had 4.1%, and Kazakhstan had 3.8%, while no other nation had more than 1%.

From the report, BP group chief executive Tony Hayward said the date confirmed the world had enough proved reserves of coal, oil and natural gas to meet the world’s needs for decades to come.

“The challenges the world faces in growing supplies to meet future demand are not below ground, they are above ground,” he said.

“They are human, not geological.”

BP used McCloskey Coal Information Service and Platts for the coal data.