General Discussion, page-7452

We’ve had another example of sovereign risk in Australia affecting multi billion dollar projects.

Woodside’s $16b Scarborough Gas project lost a court case re not having indigenous approval for it’s seismic program. This is similar to a decision to disallow Santos’ Timor Sea gas project last year for similar reasons. If the voice get’s up god help anyone wanting to start a new project in Australia.

Then there are all the capex blow outs in Australia (mainly WA), look at the Kwinana Hydroxide plant, more than double in cost not to mention the time blowout. As I type LTR announce a further capex increase to $951m + $63m in exclusions (ours US$318m - A$495m) for basically the same thing.

Yet we’ve just had $700m wiped off our market cap because we’re paying duty on items we’re suppose to be exempted from and have been (temporarily?) prohibited from carrying out DSO exports. Our woes are like mosquito bites compared to what Woodside & Santos have gone through in a so called tier 1 jurisdiction and the cost blow outs to projects under construction.

That table I posted yesterday already had Victoria & Tasmania below Mali, that data is > 12 months old, it won’t be too long before the rest of Australia is below Mali. No wonder the big mining companies are expanding in Africa.

Regarding DSO if I was Mali’s PM I’d ban it too - except for maybe a shipment or 2 to test logistics. With low prices, how much sense does it make to truck 1.6% ore 1000km then ship it to China. In LTR’s case it’s even worse, trucking 1% ore 700km then shipping to a place they apparently don’t do business with. Not a good look for a product that is suppose to making the World greener