Equally owned by Aquila and Vale, the Eagle Downs hard coking coal project is located 7km south of the Isaac Plains coal mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin.
If given the go-ahead, the underground mine will target 4.6 million tonnes per annum of hard coking coal from a single longwall and up to 8Mtpa once a second longwall is installed.
At feasibility study stage, Vale ordered an independent review of the project and concluded it “required a good deal more study” before it could progress through to the next stage of development.
Vale Australian coal operations director Michael Mapp said that while Vale had agreed to fund the Eagle Downs project budget to January next year for the required extra work, it had not approved spend beyond that time.
He said Vale felt the project had not been sufficiently proved to justify expenditure on the final feasibility study stage until the results of the additional geological modelling were known.
