Australia
Rail projects proliferate in the Galilee Basin
The Galilee Basin is one of the Queensland’s last remaining undeveloped coal resources and has the potential to become the largest coal producing region in the state. But as Mark Carter discovers, competing and conflicting proposals to build new lines to move the coal to port have forced the Queensland government to limit them to two main corridors.
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T the beginning of the year there was a major disconnect in the Central Queensland
coalfields with no less than four projects for new lines to link coal mines in the expanding Galilee and Bowen Basins to the export ports on the Queensland coast, principally Abbot Point. These projects have brought together some of the biggest names in Australian mining along with a number of global industrial powerhouses that at times led to some amusing discourse between the proponents. With up to 200 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) of coal on offer, the proposed mines could see Queensland’s coal exports double over the next five years.
Waratah Coal’s China First Project
near Alpha in the Galilee Basin, proposed by the company’s executive chairman Professor Clive Palmer, has been on the drawing board since 2008 and could generate 40mtpa of export coal. The project includes a planned 471km standard-gauge heavy-haul railway to the expanding export coal facilities at Abbot Point, near Bowen. Indian business house GVK owns 80% of the nearby $A 10bn ($US 10.5bn) Alpha Coal project in association with Ms Gina Rinehart, an Australian who is reputed to be the world’s richest woman. This project has a 495km, 60mtpa standard-gauge heavy-haul railway linking its Alpha and Kevin’s
Corner mines to Abbot Point as the core of its fully-integrated mine to port scheme.
The GVK route more or less duplicates the Waratah Coal link, though it does make a deviation through the heart of the Bowen Basin, no doubt with a view to picking up third-party traffic along the way. For the northern half of their length,
both routes duplicate a third route to Abbot Point proposed by BHP Billiton. This line would be 250-290km long and would serve a number of potential new mines and expansion projects planned by BHP Billiton and its associates in the Bowen Basin.
While the first two proponents seem IRJ November 2012
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