electricity needs

In yesterday's "News Review"in The Sydney Morning Herald there is an article pertinent to CDU and up and coming mines in the Queensland northwest.

It is well worth a read in its entirety as one element not yet ticked off is power supply to Rocklands.

Mt Isa is running out of electricity.

There are currently three proposals on offer:

1 A 1.5 billion dollar high voltage 720 kilometre transmission link by Copperstring from the national grid at Townsville to MtIsa. Julia Gilliard offered to spend up to $335 million in subsidies after last year's election.
This proposal involves building a dam on the Burdekin River using some of the water to generate hydro power with the balance to go to Charters Towers for irrigating sugar cane from which ethenol would produce 3 times Australia's current output and left over cane fibre would be burned during the night to fuel electricity generators while a 400MW solar concentrator would power the generators during daylight hours.

2 CS Energy , a Queensland Government owned facility at Mica Creek proposes to spend $200 million installing 4 new gas fired plants at its Mica Creek facility to boost capacity. The gas is supplied via a pipeline from the Cooper Basin by Carpentaria Pipeline.

3 The APA Group which operates the Carpentaria Pipeline announced it would build a new 240 megawatt power station to supply Xstrata's needs

It is now up to the MtIsa energy users to choose between the three proposals.

An insider has put it"Xstrata can't lose.The irony is that the ultimate winner will be one of the biggest,ugliest mining companies in the world".

CDU has some time leeway before we go into production. Neverless provision of power for the processing plant must be right up there as alternatively operating our own generating plant will require a decision shortly one would think.