A coking coal price that has gone stratospheric has been good for morale and even prompted a few optimistic operators to dust off plans that had been sitting idly on shelves for the last three years.

It has been good to see once bruised and battered mine executives crawl out of their shells and actually talk about new projects instead of being serial bearers of bad news on the job cutting front.

The miner that exemplified this more than any was Stanmore Coal, which after picking up the Isaac Plains open cut coal mine in Queensland from Vale for the princely sum of $1, is now producing decent tonnages and looking at mining underground and opening a new pit to the current open cut mine.

It remains to be seen whether this mood of optimism will continue if the coal price comes down to earth again.

But having said that, one of the benefits of the last few tough years is that many mining companies have got their balance sheets in to shape and have trimmed the fat that had built up around their arteries during the boom years.   

Even coal mining giants like Peabody Energy, which is under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US, has been busily getting its balance sheet in order and extracting the maximum value it can from its Australian and US operations.

The cost pressure of the last few years has instilled a discipline into the longwall operations around Australia that had not existed in the free and easy boom years.  

We have seen some longwall operations deliver exceptional results, with a few even hitting the holy grail of 10 million tonnes year.

In this elite group of mines, one can include Rio Tinto’s Kestrel and Anglo American’s Grasstree mines of Queensland and Whitehaven Coal’s Narrabri mine in New South Wales.   

One other development of note is the approval by the Queensland government of Adani’s $21.7 billion Carmichael coal mine and infrastructure complex in the Galilee Basin.

A project of this size – six open cut mines and five longwall mines producing 60 million tonnes a year over 60 years – would be truly transformative and would have a comparable impact on the local and national economy that the Snowy Mountains Hydro Scheme did in the 1950s.

Yet project has attracted unfair and continual criticism by some Greens groups as well as activist litigation designed to slow its progress.

One furphy by Greens groups that continues to wrankle with Hogsback is that approving the Carmichael mine would destroy the Great Barrier Reef.

The biggest contributor to the death of corals is the chemicals run-off from farms near the coast that is finding its way into the water near the reef. But you would never hear Greens group calling for cessation of farming in Queensland.      

The coal mining industry has survived another tough year and has deflected brickbats from the naysayers to produce some outstanding results. Hogsback can only hope that the industry can start to enjoy more of its labours next year.