JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Environmental activists have lodged a fresh appeal against the $16.5-billion Carmichael coal mine, which Indian group Adani is seeking to build in northern Australia.
Queensland Resources Council (QRC) CEO Michael Roche said on Monday that activists lodged an appeal against the Carmichael mine’s mining lease late on Friday, bringing the number of appeals pending against the project to four.
“Green activist lawyers must be having the world’s biggest picnic lately after a slew of recent litigation against resources projects,” he said, highlighting that two appeals had been lodged against Adani in the past couple of weeks.
Roche stated that Adani’s project had been wading through approval and court appeals for 68 months, while GVK Hancock’s Alpha project was in its ninety-third month. “Both [projects] have been held up by a relentless barrage of ‘lawfare’,” he said in a statement.
Roche has once again urged the Queensland government to overhaul the process that enabled environmental activists to delay projects.
The Queensland state government recently gave its backing to Adani to develop the Carmichael project with Minister for State Development and Natural Resources and Mines Dr Anthony Lynham approving the granting of three individual mining leases to Adani.
The three leases making up the project were estimated to contain 11-billion tonnes of thermal coal.
The proposed Carmichael project would comprise an opencut and underground mine, running for a period of 90 years and producing an average 60-million tonnes a year of thermal coal.
The Australian reported earlier this month that Indian billionaire Gautam Adani had said he might abandon the coal project if environmentalists continued to delay it in the courts.