Ambre was founded by Edek Choros, who made a fortune selling Millennium Coal to Excel Coal, and its CTL project at Felton is about 30 kilometres southwest of Toowoomba.
The project aims to produce unleaded petrol and LPG from coal to satisfy Queensland’s domestic demand.
The project consists of an open cut mine to supply 4 million tonnes per annum into a neighbouring CTL facility with a production capacity of 940 million litres per annum of high-quality unleaded petrol and 150MLpa of LPG.
The company, which might be floated down the track, intends to submit the environmental impact statement next year and aims to start producing fuel from 2014, to meet more than 20% of the state’s unleaded petrol market.
Ambre recently branded “media claims” that the project was in doubt because of the strategic cropping land (SCL) framework as nonsense.
“Based on the government’s high-level maps, our current assessments indicate that only a small percentage of the site may be specifically impacted, including land adjacent to the western boundary where disturbance will be minimal,” Ambre general manager of business development Neil McGregor said.
But like the coal industry, Ambre also needs to wait for the state government to complete its evaluation criteria for SCL to identify specific impacts of the policy.
Maps from the framework have earmarked land near Emerald, Rolleston, Moura, Clermont and Dysart for protection from mining development.
The policy framework is not yet law and the coal industry is still able to provide comments under the consultation process until September 30.
Excel Coal was later acquired by Peabody Energy, and Millennium Coal founding shareholder and director Michael Mewing serves as the president and chief executive officer of Ambre, while Choros is a CEO and managing director of the company.
Last month Queensland Mines and Energy Minister Stephen Robertson said developments would not be allowed to proceed on SCL if this prevented the land from being used for cropping in the future.
“Based on current technology at least, it would be difficult to see how an open cut coal mine could proceed on strategic cropping land, whereas well designed coal seam gas operations may be able to be accommodated under this policy without alienating the land,” he said.
Queensland Mines and Energy Minister Stephen Robertson said new legislation would be introduced, and trigger maps have been published to identify the exact location of the state’s quality farmland.
“Where a development is proposed in an area that is mapped as strategic cropping land, it will not be permitted to proceed if it permanently prevents the land being used for cropping in the future,” he said.
He added there would be a provision for “demonstrated exception circumstance” to this policy, but these would be “few and far between”, as proponents would need to prove there is a unique resource that cannot be found elsewhere in the state.
“Based on current technology at least, it would be difficult to see how an open cut coal mine could proceed on strategic cropping land, whereas well designed coal seam gas operations may be able to be accommodated under this policy without alienating the land,” Robertson said.
“This policy is in addition to the usual stringent environmental assessment process and conditioning – and all projects will still need to comply with other strict environmental and planning laws.”
Ambre’s CTL project is estimated to create 1880 jobs at peak construction and 530 operational jobs in Darling Downs.
The company expects the spin-off benefits to increase full-time employment Australia-wide by 1600 jobs.
