The proposed Watermark project, which sits on the fertile Liverpool Plains to the north of the state, has cost Shenhua $700 million in licences, land acquisitions and approvals on Watermark over the past eight years and will need another $1.2 billion to be fully commissioned.

Meanwhile Shenhua has limited its overseas project development budget to just $US100 million.

Australasian director of the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis Tim Buckley said: “I have no doubt the project doesn't make any commercial sense unless the coal price doubles.”

There is now speculation that the NSW Government would return Shenhua's original $A300 million exploration licence to allow the company to make a dignified retreat, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Former Independent Member and current candidate for the seat of New England Tony Windsor has joined farmer activists from the Liverpool Plains in a media campaign that seeks to pressure the new Turnbull Government to cancel the approval of Shenhua’s proposed Watermark coal mine.

In a television commercial Windsor attempts to warn his viewers of the dire potential impacts from mining.

“They are mega mines over the top of the biggest water system in the Murray darling so the risks in terms of those groundwater systems could be catastrophic,” he says in the video.

The Watermark open cut project is targeting up to 10 million tonnes per annum run of mine over 30 years with about 84% of the saleable coal to be of a metallurgical grade.