If you care about the Great Barrier Reefs future, ABC Radio National (look up programmes - Background Briefing - the airing today was at 8.a.m.) provides and extremely well investigated broadcast (repeated next Tuesday at 2 p.m., and a transcript will be available then) re many issues - especially the approvals for the dumping of dredgings from the mines etc. (one statement about the environment ministers saying it would be all right as nonsense)...and the associated issues of which we should all be aware if this national treasure is to be protected. What follows is just a brief summary of some of the extremely important points: ABC Radio National Background Briefing The Abbot Point gamble Listen or Download audio Transcript will be available by Tuesday 11.3.14. Sunday 9 March 2014 8:05AM Under the proposed development at Abbot Point, there will be three more terminals built which together will make one of the largest coal ports in the world. (Jess Hill) On the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef, Abbot Point is set to become one of the world’s biggest coal ports. However the yet-to-be-developed coal mines its supposed to service look increasingly unviable and the environmental risks are enormous. Jess Hill investigates. Australia has never seen anything like what’s being planned in the Galilee Basin. One mine alone, the Carmichael mine, is 40 kilometres long, and will produce 60 million tonnes of coal per year. Thats twice the size of Australias biggest coal mine. If they were to dredge that material, and dump it out onto the Reef, its only going to make the situation worse. If that material was dumped on land it would be classed as a regulated waste dump and you wouldnt be able to do anything with it. John Broomhead, former John Holland employee Its also one of the most remote. The Galilee Basin is 500 kilometres inland, and theres virtually nothing there. The Indian companies racing to mine it, Adani and GVK Hancock, will have to build almost everything from scratch: a new airport, new roads, new power and water infrastructure, and 300 kilometres of rail. Theyll also have to build the worlds largest coal port. Thats what theyre doing at Abbot Point, on the shores of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. Adani and GVK, which are both carrying billions of dollars in debt, have little to no experience in coal mining. But when they bought into the Galilee, back in the heady days of the boom, everything seemed possible. Prices were sky high, and everybody thought the good times were here to stay. But in 2012, the coal price crashed, and it hasnt recovered. A lot of assumptions that the industry made about thermal coal five years ago are no longer true, says Goldman Sachs analyst, Christian Lelong. The years of very high demand growth for thermal coal are probably gone for a long time. Thats why many of the worlds leading investment banks are saying the Galilee Basin mines simply arent viable anymore. One of them is UBS, whose commodities analyst Daniel Morgan says that for the Galilee Basin to be profitable, the coal price would have to be around AU$110 per tonne. Our long-term estimates for thermal coal prices are US$80 per tonne, he says, so even on our long-term prices it doesnt look like a compelling project to us. Adani seems to share his opinion. Late last year, in a move that went largely unreported here in Australia, Adanis Indian house broker, Morgan Stanley, reported that Adani had no intention of developing its Carmichael mine until the coal price improved. Nonetheless, both Adani and GVK Hancock are pressing ahead at Abbot Point. If everything goes ahead, theyll be paying North Queensland Bulk Ports (NQBP) to dredge three million cubic metres off the sea floor at Abbot Bay, which will then be dumped into the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. NQBP spokesperson, Mary Steele, says Adani and GVK will decide when that dredging begins, but that it probably wont be before 2016. NQBP insists that the impact from dumping dredge spoil in the marine park will be localised, and temporary. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) would say that we know that site better than anyone else, says Steele. Weve dredged 22 times at our ports since 2002, so our experience and our observations—not just our modeling—will tell us how that plume will travel. This article represents part of a larger Background Briefing investigation. Listen to Jess Hills full report on Sunday at 8.05 am or use the podcast links above after broadcast. GBRMPA, the agency tasked with protecting the Reef, granted the dumping permit to NQBP in January. But last week, a draft report obtained by Greenpeace under Freedom of Information revealed that initially, GBRMPA recommended that the port authoritys dumping permit be refused. It cited the long-term, irreversible harm that could be done to the reef, and said that modeling provided by NQBP was found to be of limited value, deficient and unreliable. Its not the first time Abbot Point has been the focus of environmental scrutiny. In 2010, the construction company John Holland, which was contracted to double the capacity of the port, was charged with dozens of environmental violations. Faced with a maximum penalty of $69 million, the court eventually fined them $195,000 for releasing contaminants into the water at Abbot Point, and at another port in Dalrymple Bay. John Broomhead, who was John Hollands regional coordinator at the time, says that for several months, the company was letting regulated waste from sandblasting, including paint, fall into the ocean at Abbot Point. Now this paint has got zinc, chromium and all sorts of heavy metal contaminants in it, says Broomhead. When that paint falls into the water, it can affect the sole of the molluscs—the little shellfish—it actually burns the sole of the little molluscs. He says the fine John Holland received was woefully inadequate. I honestly believe it should have been something around $20 million, he says. Because it was a serious offence. They continued to break the law, not once or twice, but thousands and thousands of times. They caused willful damage up there unnecessarily. John Holland was never ordered to clean up the contaminants they dumped into the water at Abbot Point. Broomhead says there could be thousands of tonnes of it still sitting on the sea floor. Now if they were to dredge that material, and dump it out onto the Reef, its only going to make the situation worse. If that material was dumped on land it would be classed as a regulated waste dump and you wouldnt be able to do anything with it. But because its in the water and its out of sight, its acceptable to do things with it. NQBP says theres no risk that toxic material will be dumped in the marine park, because the sediment that will be dredged at Abbot Bay has already been tested. But no matter how you look at it, the projects in the Galilee Basin and at Abbot Point are an enormous gamble. Is it worth risking the health of the Great Barrier Reef for coal mines that could turn out to be unviable? Adani EIS, Report for Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail ProjectReport of the Committee for Inspection of M/s Adani Port & SEZ Ltd. Mundra, Gujarat: Alpha Coal Project Supplementary EIS Vol 1 2011Coal Plan 2030: Queensland State Government Report: The window for thermal coal investment is closing: Report by Goldman SachsSecret documents reveal Abbot Point dredging should not have been approvedFOI documents released to Greenpeace AustraliaHunkering Down: Waiting for Resolution on Adani Power: Report by Morgan StanleyThe Unimaginable: Peak Coal in China: Report by CitiQueensland government statement on John Holland court rulingRemote Prospects: A financial analysis of Adani’s coal gamble in Australia’s Galilee Basin’ – report by IEEFAStranded: A financial analysis of GVK’s proposed Alpha Coal Project in Australia’s Galilee Basin – report by IEEFAStranded Down Under? Report by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford Credits ReporterJess Hill ResearcherAnna Whitfeld Supervising ProducerLinda McGinness Sound EngineerRussell Stapleton Executive ProducerChris Bullock Comments (4) 07 Mar 2014 1:17:56pm If we are to avert cataclysmic climate destabilisation (although it is almost certainly already too late)then the coal must stay in the ground. That means that all the moneys invested and all the putative assets on the fossil fuel industries books must be reduced to zero. The laws of physics cannot be denied out of existence nor bullied into silence. No amount of vilifying abuse in the Murdoch media will make them change their ways. They will not be Shock and Awed into disappearing. So the Right really has no clue what to do, but they know that their money and power is their Precious which they value more, plainly, than the lives of their own descendants, and they know that if the hated Left support climate destabilisation science, then that is enough for them to be against it. Anthropogenic climate destabilisation Holocaust (and it will, quite possibly, kill 100 times as many as all the horrors of WW2)denialists are, I would say, by far the most dangerous zealots ever to afflict humanity. And as long as the Right totally dominates the planet, then we are on the road to near term extinction. Peter : 08 Mar 2014 7:13:32pm I guess that todays crop of right wingers and social conservatives are just evolution taking its course. If our species proves unable to work cooperatively and rationally to safeguard our habitat, well just suffer the fate of countless other species who destroyed their own habitats. Inevitably well have to either die out or evolve into a more progressive species. Its such a banal and obvious truth that Im a little surprised more than half of us just refuse to face up to it and pretend the world is a magic pudding. 08 Mar 2014 11:49:25pm Peter, the biggest denialists of all and the most morally gutless are all the polite, liberal, progressive bien-pensants who pretend to themselves that our sham, farcical, democracy can cope with the increasingly deranged and omnicidal psychopathy of the Right. As the Abbott regime destroys every single environmental gain made in the last forty years, driven on by the visceral hatred that spews out of the Rightwing MSM towards Greens, because they threaten the Masters money and power, the do-gooders sit impotently, like eunuchs wringing their hands in frustration, or like rats mesmerised by a poisonous snake. Being forced into the global equivalent of a gigantic genocidal gas-chamber, the destabilised atmosphere, with scarcely a whimper. Truly stupefying. Glen Schaefer : 09 Mar 2014 8:59:08am This ABC article is an excellent resource containing a lot of the background information for this project. abc.net.au/environment/articles/2013/12/11/3909685.htm Right across Australia we are seeing the same scenario play out. Santos only got fined $1,500 for contaminating an aquifer that feeds into the great Artesian basin. John Holland gets fined just $195,000 for breaking the law and causing willful damage that has caused massive damage to the great barrier reef marine park. Why are we allowing multi-national corporations to this to our country? John Broomhead has 40 year of experience and should be congratulated for being brave enough to speak out. If anyone else has any inside information or evidence that shows of the poor practices of Adani, John Holland or collusion by Queensland Bulk Ports Corp then please contact us via our the mining leaks website. Sunday 8am, as part of Sunday ExtraRepeated: Tuesday 2pm Presented by Jonathan Green.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 00:03:14 +0000
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