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ABC News “explains” Shenhua’s Watermark coal mine in the Liverpool Plains in NSW – spot the omissions

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Just saw this – I am staggered that professional journalists can put out an article with such yawning gaps.
Hoping readers will spell out the facts about Shenhua’s Watermark coal mine that the ABC could not find.

13 thoughts on “ABC News “explains” Shenhua’s Watermark coal mine in the Liverpool Plains in NSW – spot the omissions”

  1. Warwick, have not read the article closely but have down loaded the EIS which is a very comprehensive document delivered under the Evidence Act and expert witness code of The Land & Environment court. The operation is spread over 30 years will mine by open cut three areas in separate stages. The total area involved is less than 4000acres but only a fraction of that is mined at any time. The area will be progressively rehabilitated but there is a final void of about 100 acres with a maximum depth of 80m and safe slopes which will hold water. The mining company owns all the land of which some is wooded, some is pasture for grazing and some is or has potential for crop growing. Class VI soil predominates. No black soil (class II) will be disturbed in the operation. Some 1000acres of soil including red soil will be rehabilitated to class II standard.
    The operation will mine the Hoskisson seam of 4m depth and the Melville seam below it of 3m depth. The estimated overburden ratio is 6:1. Raw coal (or run of mine) production is intended to be 10M tpa which will be washed to produce a 10% ash semi-coking coal (yield about 44%) with a secondary 18% ash steam coal (yield about 8.5%). (NB the yield would be higher if they produced a 15-16% ash steam coal only)
    Barnaby Joyce would be better to read the EIS and inform himself of the true nature of the mine.

  2. I don’t recall the ABC directing too many negative comments at the proposed 200 turbine, wind farm project that was to have been inflicted on the residents and bird life of King Island in Bass Strait. That project that was to have carpeted the island from end to end with huge turbines that would have been visible from every point on the island. It was to have been developed by the same Shenhua company currently involved in the proposed Watermark coal development.
    The idea that open cut coal mines and farming can’t co-exist is complete nonsense, in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley we’ve had coal mines and agriculture as neighbours for the best part of a century. The coal mines and the associated power stations in that region have provided thousands of jobs as well as reliable, cheap power to generations of Victorians.

  3. The only addition to cementafriend’s comments I would make is that the proposed mine plan at 6:1 strip ratio encompasses about a 40m maximum strip depth

    The important aquifers in the area are at several hundred metres depth

    From the viewpoint of fact, Tony Windsor was patron of the local “NO COAL MINES HERE” group when he sold his acreage to Werris Creek open cut which allowed the mine to continue operations rather than shut down. The local activist group was quite taken aback 🙂

  5. > Nobody has twigged to the big ABC omission yet

    Haven’t read it – the ABC holds no useful purpose for me.I regard it as marginalised to a Paddington demographic

  6. The ABC omitted to say that in 2008 Shenhua paid $300million to the NSW Govt for the Watermark coal project EL due to the coal resource being partly drill proven – I assume by Mines Dept. Then according to this press release the $300mill was ponied up to $670million by various subsequent payments, obligations and costs. Then google will tell you Shenhua has paid $130mill for land. They sure have done more drilling and must have spent big on “enviro” reports and have complained to both NSW and Fed Govt about compliance goalposts being moved against them. They have had to fight legal battles and still are. So by now they must be down well north of a lazy $Billion. Before I move forward to 2015 it is fascinating to ponder that the sale of Watermark took place exactly in and around the time several coal EL’s were disposed of in a process that was later examined by the NSW ICAC. You could not make this up.
    Fast forward to now and we have the Fed Minister for Agriculture saying the Watermark mine should not be approved. – He suggests that NSW should stop the mine.
    Nothing would surprise me re future of the Watermark project.

  7. It is interesting to note that the concept of “selling” an exploration licence , supposedly under auction although the various State Mining Acts allow the Minister to dispense with that if he wishes, was generated and refined by various NSW State ALP Govts (and interceding LNP Govts did not change it)

    In other States, all that is required is a nominal fee to purchase earlier Govt’l exploration records. Assessment of applications then takes place on the usual criteria of financial, technical and marketing abilities …

    So “selling” exploration licences in the NSW sense actually includes such *possible* factors as the successful bidder providing infrastructure of some kind in the Minister’s electorate that he can boast about

    This somewhat unclean process actually works, and would also work in other States if they so wished, because the various Mining Acts give mineral ownership unequivocally to the Crown (defined under the Act as the State Minister) and carriage of exploitation of mineral resources is “at the Minister’s pleasure”

    I might add for the benefit of any lay people reading this that Shenhua has complied (put up) with the financial demands of the State for the relatively small coking coal fraction in the Hoskisson seam. China has very little coking coal deposits of its’ own

  8. Warwick did not notice those sums but they sure did a lot of surveying, drilling and soil sampling for the EIS which is very comprehensive on the social side. The EIS is a bit weak on the technical side , product cost and revenue estimates but I suppose the latter is more for a feasibility for board and investor purposes.
    I used to respect Barnaby Joyce but his objections are purely aimed at his perceived politics. I am sure he has not read the EIS or bothered to contact the people involved. The Gunnedah area needs this project and so does the NSW Government need the royalties, the rail freight and the port charges.

  9. I lived and worked in the Gunnedah area during 1980s and was also involved in assessing the Watermark coal tender area and the earlier Caroona offering. We were somewhat surprised when BHP paid $100 m for the Caroona area considering we did not even bother with a bid and thought somewhere around $10 m should have been more than enough. When Shenhua paid $300 m for Watermark most were staggered.
    Not surprisingly the ABC conveniently side steps the fact that the planned operations are not within the black soil plains. Tony Windsor also sold a property near Werris Creek to a coal company, now using the excuse that it wasn’t prime agricultural land on black soil.

    Yes the Watermark tender was at the same time as several smaller areas in the Upper Hunter were put out to tender. Significant mining companies were excluded from bidding for these smaller areas for reasons we did not understand at the time. These became very clear when examined by the NSW ICAC.

    As Ianl8888 states the “selling” or tendering of exploration licences in NSW has all sorts of issues. Up until at least 2009 anyway (haven’t worked in NSW since then) this only applied to coal exploration within the Sydney-Gunnedah Basins and was partly to enable the department to recover some of the cost of their greenfields exploration. The other way was to “apply” to the Minister for special permission to apply for exploration lease, yep I know. If you did this it was possible for the Minister to then tender the area. Not a great incentive to encourage new ideas.

  13. Pingback: Will the NSW Govt ever approve the Shenhua Watermark coal mine? | Errors in IPCC climate science

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