Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). And we ask to please try and limit your self to one question and one follow-up. First we'll go to the line of Shneur Gershuni with UBS. Please go ahead.
Shneur Gershuni - UBS Securities LLC
Hi good morning guys.
Gregory Boyce
Good morning, Shneur.
Shneur Gershuni - UBS Securities LLC
Just had a quick couple of quick questions actually. I was wondering if we can kind of start on the guidance assumptions for the back half of the year. If I take sort of take out the first half of the year, it kind of seems like you're implying certainly on the low end that you expected the second half of the year to be more challenging than the first half of the year and I was just wondering if you can direct us as to what areas where you expect to see these challenges arising from?
Gregory Boyce
Sure, while I think as Mike indicated in his remarks, if you'd look at the back half versus the first half, obviously we see lower volumes in the U.S. as the full impact of our plant reductions come into effect in the second half of the year.
We'll see lower pricing for our Australian platform, the full impact of that for the second half of the year. We will be shipping more on met coal on the second half of the year but overall the pricing structure will come down and so those are really the two big impacts to the year.
We're also -- I think that our trading platform will be quieter in the back half of the year. There's been a numbers of counter parties that have left the market, the amount of trading activity has slowed, so as we look at the back half of the year, we think that area will be down as well.
Shneur Gershuni - UBS Securities LLC
Okay and I guess two more just tiding up questions on the quarter. I was wondering if you can try to give a breakdown of what shift with respect to met coal out of the Australian operation? What was roll over tons? What was new contracted PCI, semi-soft and so forth?
Richard Navarre
Sure, this is Rich. That's a lot of detail to go through by quality. We typically go and give it to you by quality but we did ship fleet, I mean we started to ship in significantly higher qualities in June and we still expect, I mean the ultimate number really is we're going to ship 6.5 million tons metallurgical coal for 2009 and.
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