verystormy

Might as well put my tuppence in.

I will first say i know very little about coal. I am gold / copper and hard rock guys tend to stick to it, but i try to keep abreast of the industry generally.

Now, Australian coal is the most expensive to produce in the world. So, with that i see similarities with my own areas.

I work for Australias largest gold miner. We are an Oz company. But, we have already late last year gone on record as saying that we will no longer make capital investment in Australia. Why? Because it simply become to hard and too expensive to bother. A decision that i support. I run an exploration team. Do i spend $230 a meter for drilling or $110 a meter? Its fairly simple economics. Add in that most of the larger companies now view the soverign risk profile of Oz pretty negativly - my last company, one of the worlds biggest, now ranks risk in Oz about the same as South Africa, which is below most of the African nations.

The other issue is resource. You gave some interesting figures. However, i always have issues when people say that a deposit only has x life left. The reason is that that is based on current resource. But, no company ever puts all the goodies in the resource at once. The reason being is takes time and money to drill, so its an ongoing process. If for example you look at my own mine, it has a resource which gives a 8-10 year mine life. But, it has had that since the 1970's and will have it in another 10 years. We know where the goods are, we have drilled, but not close spacing drilling required to add to proved or indicated resource (Have a look at JORC to see how this works). So although Indo, might only have 4 years of resource. It doesnt mean they only have 4 years of coal. The two are not linked in anyway.

renth

That's interesting, is it because they are worried about the govt. tapping them for more and more taxes?

IvanM

Look at the NSW ICAC enquiry into the corruption of mining license issuing. Property rights give certainty. Corruption gives risk.

verystormy

Yes. Its not the tax per se, but the uncertainty of the way it has been introduced and the way it has been drafted allow for a lot of uncertainty., and as Ivan says, the NSW corruption makes people nervous.

Also, hertiage and environment in Oz is done poorly. First the onus is on the company to do its own surveys. As miners, its not our expertise and not good for the public as it can be too easy in the early stages to simply say "alls well" and start intrusive work such as drilling. But then when a mining lease is applied for the independant people come in (at a fee) to survey. The issue i have with that is that the companies already pay a fee to the deptartment, but get nothing for it. Most other jusisdictions, the surveys are carried out by the goverment, then the miner applies accordingly.

Some of the decisions made recently have made people nervous. For example, the coal project in Margaret River. It is irrelervant as to if i favour it or not. But it worries companies when a project was stopped for political reasons rather than law.

pomikev

we could just melt down gina reinharts excess fat and export that for a couple of decades.

bcworld

...and keep Clive Palmer for ourselves & be self sufficient for lifetimes!

odyssey

Ive been doing some projects with a large mine owner in Queensland and NSW. Internally there is a lot of debate with huge cuts having to be made due to the decrease in the price of meteorological coal / strong Aussie dollar

Cost of safety measures, labour and the difficulties in getting any sort of decision passed by the Australian government are heavily discussed topics. The feeling is definitely its all too hard, easier to go do business somewhere else. Not to say that large companies will stop operating in Australia but I think most are hedging their bets.

Chortlepuss

Time for a change
http://www.solarroadways.com/main.html

GarryP

Here's an idea. How about, rather than putting these on the road, where they have to survive getting driven over by 18 wheelers, we instead put them on roofs - where there is no one driving on them, there is no shading, where they can be tilted towards the sun, and where the power can directly be fed to the people using it?

pomikev

We could call them "solar panels" can't believe no one has thought of this before.