PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The New South Wales Planning and Assessment Commission (PAC) has approved the second part of diversified miner Rio Tinto’s expansion plans for its Mount Thorley Warkworth coal project.

Rio was, in June 2014, forced to release a new planning application for the extension project, after the New South Wales Court of Appeal refused an appeal against the New South Wales Land and Environment Court’s decision to overturn a 2012 development consent for the extension of the project.

Instead of a single development approval, Rio split the approval application into two separate developments.

While the PAC in March formally recommended that the Minister of Planning approve Rio’s expansion plans for the Mount Thorley Warkworth mine, Minister Rob Stokes in August requested the PAC carry out a second review on the project to include amendments to the State Environmental Planning Policy.

The Warkworth continuation project was approved for a second time by the PAC earlier this month, with the government agency attaching six recommendations for the project’s approval.

In its second approval for the Mount Thorley continuation project, the PAC made five recommendations relating to further Aboriginal stakeholder consultation, the management of noncompliances or exceedance of air quality and noise limits, and further considerations of the social-impact assessment.

The Warkworth continuation project would involve an extension of the mining time period and footprint of the existing Warkworth opencut mine, involving the extraction of an additional 230-million tonnes of run-of-mine (RoM) coal, over a 21-year period at a rate of 18-million tonnes of coal a year.

The Mount Thorley continuation project would involve the continuation of the existing opencut mining operations at a rate of up to ten-million tonnes a year RoM coal, with extraction expected to continue until 2022.

Both projects would now proceed to the Minister for further determination.