The return of the problematic shipping queue comes despite two years of talks among government bodies, the coal industry and transport companies aimed at avoiding the bottlenecks that economists say have cost billions of dollars in lost earnings.

In its October performance report, Hunter Valley Coal Chain Co-ordinator Limited said coal companies were forecasting sales totalling 9.4 million tonnes for November, or 2 million tonnes more than the system's capacity.

"The queue is expected to be around 43 at the end of November based on this forecast," the report said.

This is almost double last night's queue of 22 vessels.

Co-ordinator chief executive Jonathan Vandervoort said even if the queue did hit the mid-40s as predicted, it was still well short of the June 2007 peak of 79 ships.

Mr Vandervoort said a slow start to the year meant exports were likely to total about 92.4 million tonnes this year, about 1 million tonnes more than last year.

He said October had been a record month for exports but the shipments were likely to be lower this month because November was traditionally a time of heavy maintenance on the coal-loaders and rail system.

He said Newcastle's third coal-loader was due to start handling coal early next year, meaning exports were set to easily top 100 million tonnes in 2010.

The long-term expansion deal signed recently with the State Government moves coal companies onto long-term take-or-pay contracts with the shiploading and rail haulage companies.

Mr Vandervoort said the Hunter's 14 coal companies had lodged bids by last Friday's deadline that indicated the amount of coal they expected to produce in the coming 10 years.

"The idea is that we will work with the coal-loaders and rail companies to see where the volumes of coal are coming from," Mr Vandervoort said.

"In the past, all we had were the company estimates of what they intended to do but now, the coal companies are contractually obliged to provide that coal for haulage, which gives a high degree of certainty to the planning procedure."