Tough times ahead for coal, says New Hope
New Hope chief executive Rob Neale says the downturn in the coal industry has yet to bottom out, adding that tough conditions are expected to remain for the next few years, according to the Australian Financial Review.
In a grim assessment of the coal sector, which has been hit hard by falling prices and the high Australian dollar, Neale also said Australia had lost its mantle as a low-cost producer, which would hamper its recovery when the coal market bounced back.
“Australia is no longer the low-cost producer, so we will come out of this downturn slower than others,” Neale told a Queensland Resources Council forum in Brisbane yesterday.
“There is a lot of pressure on the coal price, and supply and demand needs to come back into balance.
Coalworks team behind Mongolian coal venture
Ex-Coalworks team Andrew Whitten, Chris Hagen and Tony Teng have been putting together a new Mongolian coal play called Auminco and see a merger with Viking Ashanti, which has a gold resource in Ghana, as a way to get their company on the ASX, the Australian Financial Review reports.
Viking Ashanti is expected to confirm the deal and be released from a trading halt today. It is likely to involve an equity raising.
Auminco is expected to tell potential investors it has a mining licence for a project in southwest Mongolia. The company is finalising a JORC and low-capital cost surface mine with total costs of $US30 per tonne.
It plans to be in production within 12 months.
Bathurst receives all-clear
After a long period of uncertainty, Bathurst Resources has beaten the environmental movement’s opposition to its flagship Escarpment coking coal project, near Westport on New Zealand’s South Island, according to the AFR.
Monday was the final day to lodge an appeal against the NZ Environment Court’s decision to grant final consent to the project.
To Bathurst’s relief, no parties came forward. The company still must have 25 management plans signed off by the Department of Conservation, but it is confident this will happen by mid-January ahead of steady state production beginning in June.
The high-quality coking coal contained in the Escarpment deposits had many tipping Bathurst for big things. But the collapse of the market and protests from environmental groups upset its progress.
