Wilkie coal mine revived in ‘vast energy park’ plan
The Wilkie Creek thermal coal mine is coming back to life, almost 10 years after it was shut down by Peabody.
The Wilkie Creek mine has been re-opened. (Pic: New Wilkie Energy)
The mine, west of Dalby, is now owned by New Wilkie Energy after it bought the project last year.
The company said it would expand its workforce in coming months as it heads towards production, which is scheduled for the current quarter and move to about 6 million tonnes a year by 2025 and 10mtpa by 2028.
The company said it had sufficient reserves for 30 years.
It has forecast revenue by 2025 of more than $700 million.
The project is expected to generate 250 steady full-time jobs within its first 18 months of operation.
Since its closure in 2013, a lot of the old mine site has been rehabilitated and the company plans to use this land for solar and wind farms.
NWE said it intends to be a platform for broad energy production from coal, to solar, wind, hydrogen and potentially ammonia – ultimately creating “a vast energy park” through its projects and tenements in Queensland.
The Wilkie Creek site has 1.2 billion tonnes of resource when the adjoining Chinchilla tenements were included.
NWE also owns a stake in the Corvus metallurgical coal project, near Emerald, where it has proposed a 7Mtpa of run of mine coal with saleable production of 4.5Mtpa coking coal and 1Mtpa of thermal coal, a total of 5.5Mtpa over a projected life of 20 to 30 years depending on production levels.
The company is headed by Gary Williams.
