[miningmx.com] — ANGLO American is mulling a $10bn to $15bn expansion of its coal operations in Australia’s Queensland state despite plans for “unfair” taxes on miners and jitters over the global economic outlook.
Australian miners are ramping up production of both thermal coal for power stations and coking coal used in steel production, betting strong demand from fast-growing Asian economies will continue even as debt-logged western nations struggle.
“We’re looking at the potential of investing between $10 to $15 billion, creating 3,200 jobs, all in Queensland in metallurgical coal, hard coking coal,” Anglo American chief executive Cynthia Carroll told reporters on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Business Forum.
Carroll said the company was looking to make a decision by the end of the first quarter of 2012 on the investment, which would treble Anglo’s output of Australian coking coal by 2020.
London-listed Anglo is Australia’s fourth-largest coal producer, producing a total of around 32 million tonnes a year of thermal and coking coal from its mines in Queensland and New South Wales.
Shares in Anglo rose 3% in a London market up 1.7%.
Carroll slammed Australia’s planned carbon tax and urged the Labour government to take a more consultative approach on setting climate policy, pointing to South Africa’s approach.
“The approach encourages companies to invest in reducing emissions rather than penalising them with a tax,” Carroll said of South Africa’s efforts to cut carbon emissions.
“Australia’s carbon pricing mechanism penalises the mining industry, particularly the coal industry, for problems that are not within its technological capability to solve in the short term,” she said.
She said it was unfair to tax “fugitive emissions” at coal mines when there is no technology available yet to capture those emissions.
Australia’s resources minister Martin Ferguson has played down industry concerns over the Labor government’s carbon and mining taxes, saying despite all the complaints, companies are going ahead with more than $150bn worth of projects.
