The JSE’s coal index shed over 10% on Thursday morning, after the fuel’s prices dropped.

Coal prices had surged up to trade at around the $200/t mark this week, but a South African coal analyst said that these levels were "anomalous", and a correction would come.

Johannesburg-based Coal Of Africa Limited slid 14,26% to trade at R24,00 a share by 11:27, while South African Coal Mining Holdings only lost 0,54% to trade at R3,65 a share by 11:28.

Black-owned Exxaro Resources, which is the biggest supplier of coal to State-owned Eskom, shed 8,9% by 11:29 to trade at R122,08 a share.

AltX-listed Wescoal was trading 13% down on Johannesburg’s bourse for smaller companies, at R2,00 a share by 11:05. The company also announced that it had sold shares for R80,5-million.

Late on Wednesday, North American coal stocks fell sharply as coal prices declined in Europe and the US.

Reuters reported that European benchmark coal slid as much as $25 a ton during the day, to below $200, prompting a $20/t decline in US benchmark coal.

Fording Canadian Coal, which has a majority stake in the world's second-largest metallurgical coal exporter, the Elk Valley Coal partnership, fell 16,2%, to C$81,70.

Wood Mackenzie senior coal analyst Xavier Prevost told Mining Weekly Online on Wednesday that prices "need to go down now".

This came after Reuters reported that coal prices were “within days” of scaling the $200/t level.

Prevost said that in the third quarter of this year, he believed there would be a definite decrease in the Richards Bay Coal Terminal FOB prices.

"By the end of the year, they might reach the price levels of the beginning of the year," he stated, giving a figure of around $120/t.