Adani set to ship coal from Australian mine

Adani Group is preparing to ship the first coal cargo from Australia’s most controversial mine, after battling a seven-year campaign by climate activists and defying a global push away from fossil fuels.

The Carmichael mine in outback Queensland state is likely to be the last new thermal coal mine to be built in Australia, the world’s biggest coal exporter, but will be a vital source of supply for importers such as power plants in India.

“The first shipment of high quality coal from the Carmichael mine is being assembled at the North Queensland Export Terminal in Bowen ready for export as planned,” a spokesperson for Adani’s Australian subsidiary Bravus Mining & Resources said in a statement.

The statement did not say where the shipment was headed, except that “we have already secured the market for the 10 million tonnes per annum of coal that will be produced at the Carmichael Mine”.

When Adani bought the project in 2010, it envisioned building a 60-million-tonne-a-year mine with a 400-km (250-mile) rail line for around A$16 billion ($11 billion), one of several projects planned in the then untapped Galilee Basin.

It shrank the mine plan in 2018 to 10 million tonnes a year following a sustained “Stop Adani” campaign by green groups which scared off lenders, insurers and major engineering firms.

“That sharpening of the plan has kept operating costs to a minimum and ensured the project remains within the first quartile of the global cost curve,” Adani’s Australian CEO Lucas Dow said in emailed comments. The company has not disclosed the cost of the smaller mine and a 200-km rail line it built tying into an existing railway, but the project has been estimated at A$2 billion ($1.5 billion). “It is quite a celebration because this is going to be the last true greenfield thermal coal mine in Australia,” said Lloyd Hain, MD of consulting firm AME Group.