2Q26 US Production Is Updating — And Here's a New Way to Look at It

Hey Coal Traders!

We’ve begun populating second-quarter 2026 production in the US Quarterly Production Data Tool. The data is live now, but it is not complete, and we want to be explicit about that before anyone builds a thesis on it.

Where 2Q26 stands

As of this update, 2Q26 sits at 118.6 million short tons across 310 reporting mines, against 131.6 Mst in 1Q26.

That’s not a 10% decline in production or anything, though. MSHA processes Part 50 filings on a rolling basis for months after a quarter closes.

As of right now, 74 mines that produced in 1Q26 have not yet been updated by MSHA for 2Q26, and they represent roughly 7.8 Mst of prior-quarter output. Three of them account for most of it:

Nothing to see there…all three are running, MSHA simply hasn’t gotten to them.

Strip out the mines that haven’t filed and the residual quarter-on-quarter move is closer to −4%. That’s a plausible seasonal shape for Q1 into Q2, and the number we’d point you toward as the working estimate. We’ll firm it up as the rest of the filings land.

What we’ve flagged in the tool

Rather than hold the data back, we’ve published it with a provisional banner that shows, at the top of the tool, how many mines have been processed and how much prior-quarter tonnage is still outstanding. It names the largest mines we’re waiting on.

The banner is driven by the data itself. When coverage completes, it disappears on its own. If you don’t see it, the quarter is whole.

Every prior quarter in the tool (going back more than 20 years) is complete and unaffected.

New: subregion charting

The Subregion Series tab has carried a dense quarterly table for a while. It’s precise, but hard to read at a glance.

To alleviate that, we’ve added an interactive chart beneath it.

At the table level, you can control both the length of the timeseries,what subset of the US market (and quality) you wish to view, and separate that out by surface vs underground production if you like.

Below that, the chart has two controls:

Stacked area or individual lines. Stacked shows composition — who makes up the total and how the mix has shifted. Lines unstack the series so you can compare levels and trajectories directly.

Below are charts of US thermal coal production over the last 5 years by basin – first stacked, then shown as individual lines.

Drill down by region. The default view plots every basin. Select a basin and it swaps to that basin’s subregions — NAPP into MD, NWV, OH, Central PA and the Pittsburgh 8 seam; ILB into Illinois, Indiana, Western Kentucky, and so on per the charts below.

The chart inherits every filter above it — time series, surface versus underground, met versus steam, and met quality grade. Filter the table to underground met coal and the chart follows. The two can’t disagree, because they’re drawn from the same filtered set.