Rising Tide Australia

Newcastle currently has two coal export terminals, at Kooragang and at Carrington. With a combined capacity of around 85 million tonnes per annum, they make up the self-proclaimed largest coal export facility in the world. The coal companies operating in the Hunter are now implementing a major increase in exports, with their flagship the proposed third coal export terminal in Newcastle Harbour.

The new export terminal is the project of the Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group, spearhearded by BHP Billiton. The NCIG was formed to rival Port Waratah Coal Services, which runs the current two loaders and which is controlled by Xstrata, Anglo, and Rio Tinto – the other three members of the “big four” mining companies that dominate the NSW and Queensland coal fields.

The NCIG terminal would increase Newcastle's export capacity by 30 million tonnes per year at it's opening in 2009, doubling to 66 million tonnes later on – an incredible 77% increase in Newcastle's export capacity. This planned increase is utterly at odds with the urgent reality of global climate change, which requires global greenhouse pollution – and therefore coal consumption – to be radically reduced, starting now.

66 million tonnes of coal per year translates into about 160 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – the primary cause of anthropogenic climate change. The emissions from the coal exported through the new Newcastle terminal – were it to proceed to completion – would be comparable to the 268 million tonnes per annum currently pumped out from all Australian power stations combined.

Of course, the coal would have to be dug up from somewhere, and the poor old Hunter Valley, already creaking with the strain of 30-odd mines, would be further sacraficed to feed King Coal. New areas previously outside the clutches of open-cut coal mining are being billed as the new frontiers. The coal companies behind the NCIG – which include the big Australian coal miner Centennial and American giant Peabody – have explicitly linked the new loader to the development or expansion of mines in the Hunter and beyond. These include Centennial's controversial Anvil Hill proposal near Denman, and Felix Resource's massive proposed Moolarben mines near Mudgee, which would 2 of the biggest coal mines in NSW if developed. BHP Billiton have recently won the much-publicised exploration rights for the Caroona coal field in the Gunnedah Basin, containing an estimated 500 million tonnes of coal.

Despite frequently admitting that the proposed new coal loader is essentially the same project as a range of specific coal mining proposals in NSW, the coal companies and the NSW Government insist on assessing the project piece by piece, with no regard for the cumulative impacts on NSW. Not to mention the planet.