Glencore is making sense in one way today, from The Australian:
One of Glencore’s top executives has issued a veiled swipe at Adani’s planned multi-billion-dollar Carmichael coal project, saying “unprofitable” taxpayer-backed mines would simply further pressure a sector already grappling with oversupply.
Even with the industry under a financial squeeze from a collapse in coal prices, Mr Freyberg — who oversees Australia’s biggest coalminer — said all new projects must stack up on their own merits. “Bringing on additional tonnes with the aid of taxpayer money would materially increase the risk to existing coal operations,” Mr Freyberg, Glencore’s head of global coal, said.
“We are strong believers that if a project can’t get away on its own economic merits, it shouldn’t be developed.”
…Former prime minister Tony Abbott expressed strong support and was considering providing loans to finance the infrastructure for the proposed $16.5 billion mine in Queensland’s coal-rich Galilee Basin.
Former prime minister Tony Abbott was a complete dill. As argued many times, the Adani coal monster is an uneconomic boondoggle that is at the wrong end of the cost curve and would only serve to close other more efficient mines, including those of Glencore, in the name of bizarre and somewhat dodgy Indian resource nationalism.
I don’t often agree with Glencore but this is spot on.
