Legal battles with environmental groups, falling coal prices and a significant delay in starting the project has led Indian mining giant Gautam Adani to slash its Australian coal mine project, AFR reports.
The Carmichael Coal Mine in Queensland was pegged as a $16bn project but last week, Adani Australia’s Chief Executive Officer Jeyakumar Janakraj told AFR that Carmichael's first phase would be contained to 25 million tonnes of annual capacity and that its cost had been trimmed to a much more digestible $US4 billion.
The original plan was to develop this mine at the cost of $16bn, produce approximately 60mn tonners per annum and be able to ship coal to Asia and India by 2017.
However, several litigations against the mine by environmental groups and falling coal prices forced the mining giant to delay the construction of their project, touted to be Australia’s biggest coal mining project.
The group now plans to start construction by late 2017 and ship coal to its plants in India by 2019. “The new first-phase target of 25 mtpa leaves Carmichael in a sweet spot of spending, volume and operating costs that mean the mine will operate in the first decile of the cost curve at best and the first quartile at worst,” Adani Australia’s Chief Executive Officer Jeyakumar Janakaraj told Australian Financial Review on last Wednesday.
