Coking Price, page-33

From my perspective - and to be clear this is purely my own conjecture - based on conversations about the resource I've had with others I think they are possibly struggling with the geology of Bluff - and the wet weather and port delays provide them just enough cover to explain away delays towards steady-state. The closest weather station that provides annual rainfall history is Emerald (95km west from the Bluff mine) there was clearly extremely adverse rainfall in October and January - but the other months are either in-line with monthly long-term averages (the light blue box) or slightly above. From here on the average monthly rainfall for the area is very low, and experts are saying La Nina has flipped to El Nino, so wet weather is unlikely to cause many issues from here. That will be the litmus test as to what is the cause of the delays at Bluff.