Adani’s monster coal project gets go-ahead

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The Guardian is reporting that:

The Australian environment minister, Greg Hunt, has approved a $16.5bn resources project that will lead to the creation of the largest coal mine in Australia, and one of the largest in the world.

Hunt has imposed 36 conditions, primarily aimed at protecting groundwater, on the Carmichael coal mine and rail project, which will dig up and transport about 60m tons of coal a year for export.

The huge Carmichael project, overseen by the Indian mining company Adani, will consist of a network of open cut and underground mines in the Galilee Basin region of central Queensland.

This area is about seven times the size of Sydney harbour and will be the largest coal mine in Australia and possibly the world.

Coal will be taken via a new rail line to the port of Abbot Point, north of Bowen, where Adani already has approval to build a coal export terminal. Five million tons of seabed will be dug up and dumped within the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in order to expand Abbot Point for these exports, primarily to India.

There’s a long way to go on this yet. Community resistance is strong and has already turned Deutsche and others away from funding the port infrastructure.

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To be honest, it amazes me it’s going ahead at all. The era of these huge greenfields commodity projects is swiftly passing given the outlook for fading emerging market growth. The project is not low cost given the huge capital outlay yet the outlook for thermal coal is clouded at best. Even BREE can’t summon optimism for price prospects and this project would expand Australian exports nearly 30% in one hit.

Perhaps its an energy security play. Comments welcome.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.