Coal mine owners walk away and leave rehabilitation to state

A central Queensland mine has been abandoned and will now be managed by the state government.

Owners of the Bluff coal mine, Bowen Coking Coal (BCC), went into voluntary administration in July last year, with McGrathNicol's Mark Holland and Shaun Fraser appointed as administrators.

The open cut mine is south of the township of Bluff, located 20 kilometres east of Blackwater and 174km west of Rockhampton.

The Department of Natural Resources and Mines confirmed the liquidators had "disclaimed" the mining lease, associated environmental authority and exploration permits for the mine.

"This means the mining lease has ceased, the site is now an abandoned mine and will be managed by the Queensland government," a department spokesperson said.

"The department has secured the site and is working with relevant agencies to ensure risks to public safety and the environment are appropriately managed."

Bowen Coking Coal purchased the Bluff coal mine from Carabella Resources in 2021.

Carabella Resources was granted the original 15-year mining lease over the site by the state government in 2016, for up to 1.8 million tonnes per annum of metallurgical coal.

It began mining on the site in 2019.

The following year, coal prices fell and Carabella Resources went into voluntary administration in November 2020. At the time, the coal price was $US72 per tonne.

The mine was placed into care and maintenance in December 2020, before Bowen Coking Coal restarted operations, and it mined its first coal in the first quarter of 2022.

At the time, the managing director said the company was planning on mining 5 million tonnes of product across all its operations by 2024.

On September 14 this year, a notice was published on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission website to formally wind up the overarching Bowen PCI Pty Ltd company.

State takes on rehabilitation works

Rehabilitation works at the Bluff coal mine site will now be managed through the department's Abandoned Mine Lands Program.

Lock the Gate's Central Queensland coordinator Claire Gronow said this created a number of concerns.

"This is kind of uncharted territories. Although there's heaps of abandoned coal mines around Queensland, including the notorious Mount Morgan gold mine, that the government is required to manage, this is a relatively recent occurrence for a coal mine to simply walk away," Dr Gronow said.

Most mines are moved over to the program after they reach their end of life and have rehabilitation works done. In the case of the Bluff coal mine, it was still an active mine site when it closed.

"Obviously, the mine didn't go its full life," Dr Gronow said.

"The rehabilitation plans would probably need to be redrawn to deal with the fact that they're halfway through the mine."

Money for the rehabilitation works comes out of the state government's financial provisioning scheme, which is also currently under review.

"The Queensland government holds a certain amount of money in a kind of a trust to cover these situations and that's contributed to by the mining companies," Dr Gronow said.

The department or the Queensland Treasury were unable to disclose what funds were paid to the state for the rehabilitation.

The environmental permit for the Bluff coal mine, published on the Queensland government's website, shows an estimated rehabilitation cost of $12,251,470.50, as of November 6 last year,

"That seems a little low possibly, particularly since it hasn't been actively managed for the last year or two," Dr Gronow said.

She said there appeared to have been some earthworks done but aerial footage showed a large hole in the ground and ponds of water.

The site also needed ongoing environmental management, Dr Gronow said.

"Even when it's not operating, it's a source of dust, every time the wind blows, particularly in the dry weather that we've been having, there's a dust cloud," she said.

"One of the requirements is that they're supposed to have someone on standby who can get to the site immediately in the case of rainfall, for pumps and things like that to manage the water and stop unauthorised overflows of water.

"We don't know who's doing that now, we don't know who's covering the cost, we don't know who's going to cover the cost of dust management on the site and it's quite difficult with around 500 hectares of bare land just sitting there."