Deloitte Access Economics partner Chris Richardson said in the firm’s report Business Outlook June 2015 that low world prices mean “neither coal nor gas will attract new construction for some time”

The analysis in Richardson’s report is centred on China “hitting the accelerator”, but questioned whether it would be enough.

“The Chinese authorities are growing more nervous as growth slows and cracks show, and so they are stepping more firmly on the stimulus accelerator,” Richardson said.

“Yet, even so, China’s slowdown has further to go, with its growth set to drop to the lowest in a quarter of a century.”

However, Deloitte’s national mining leader for the east coast Reuben Saayman told ICN that there were still plenty of opportunities to be snapped up.

Saayman, who suspects he could well be “the last coal bull left in Australia”, fully agrees with Richardson on the short to medium term picture, purely based on supply, which has been boosted with expansions like Boggabri and Rolleston.

“We’ve also seen people really sweating their own assets and getting more productive – which they need to because they need to drive costs down,” Saayman said. “Per tonne you’re going to be spending less because there’s going to be a fixed cost base.”

There has also been record production and exports for the last few quarters, as Queensland Resources Council data shows.

While some have rushed to declare the end of resources sector investment in Queensland, QRC CEO Michael Roche has asserted his belief that the state would – governments and courts willing – see final investment decisions on more coal, minerals and gas projects over the next 12 months.

The other reason why Saayman believes there will be less supply growth and investment in new projects is because it’s “very much a tale of two cities”.

“We’ve heard about the two-speed economy in Australia, but we have a two-speed economy within the resources sector, with the juniors on the one side who are simply stagnating,” Saayman said.

“There is no capital available, they’re sitting on wonderful reserves, but no financing available.

“They have to go through some very, very great projects with some truly bankable feasibility studies that prove they are absolutely viable, but the capacity for banks, investors to investors to invest in the mining industry, and especially juniors, has just dried up.

One obvious example is Bandanna Energy going into administration in September last year.

“On the other side you have the coal miners who have the cash; they have some problems with approvals but we’ve also seen two mines being approved,” he said. These were Shenhua’s Watermark coal mine in NSW and AMCI/Bandanna’s South Galilee coal project receiving federal environmental approval.

“Yes there has been some negative press about it, but they have been approved by the feds.”

The elephant in the room, Saayman believes, is India.

“I believe that on the demand side there is still India, and for me that is going to be the [major driver to drive an] increase in demand going forward in the medium to longer term that will cause the imbalance going the other way,” he said.

“The 300 million people that [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi wants to give electricity to … that’s only going to come from one source: coal-fired power stations.

“They’ve made it very clear: they have their own mines, but they don’t have the capacity to give power to 300 million people.”

This is the opportunity which Saayman believes miners will miss out on if they don’t take it now.

“There are some great assets that could be developed a lot cheaper than they were four to five years ago,” Saayman said – referring to mining more broadly, but certainly coal because “iron ore has now joined coal in the doldrums”.

“The prices are way down, you can get your equipment cheaper; Caterpillar and Komatsu are even organising financing. They [juniors] are keen to sell – washing plants, coal prep plants … prices have come down.”

The availability of contractors is also a positive at the moment, he added.

“You need to take a longer-term view,” he said.

“Adani wants to develop a coal mine, they have a much longer-term view in their horizon than seems to be the case for a number of companies currently. Whether they can flick that switch quickly, the caution that I have is that we’ll be back to a ‘production and volumes at all costs’ [mentality] – and you don’t want to be in that space again.

“You saw where that left us in the last boom.”

He believes that within three to five years “we’d be living in a different supply-demand environment, especially given India’s demand”

While there has been some doubt about Adani’s project after the Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that the Indian giant had suspended two major contractors on its Queensland coal project, Saayman said “the last that I heard was that both GVK and Adani are both rooted to those projects” in Queensland.

“There was an Indian Business Council dinner [recently] in Brisbane where High Commissioner appealed to government to approve the project and [appealed to the state government to] ‘work with us, because we need the coal, we want the quality coal from Queensland and we are committed to the project’,” Saayman said.

I’m not sure if I’m the last coal bull remaining in Australia, but there have been some people sticking their necks out talking about the bottom of the cycle and looking forward, so here’s hoping.

“In the longer-term I’m absolutely a bull on coal.”