Matt Chambers From: The Australian February 20, 2010
WEST Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart is planning a $2.2 billion private Queensland coal railway that will offer third-party haulage from the state's Galilee Basin and will be able to haul well beyond the capacity of the mines she is planning.
The move comes as Mrs Rinehart competes with mining magnate Clive Palmer to progress plans to build the nation's biggest coalmines near the small Queensland town of Alpha at a cost of more than $7.4bn each.
Mrs Rinehart's plans to build a railway that can take coal cars more than twice the size of Queensland's current coal network have fuelled speculation she is positioning herself to bargain with Mr Palmer on sharing infrastructure.
Both mines, Mrs Rinehart's Alpha and Mr Palmer's China First, are targeting first exports in 2013 -- a timeframe analysts describe as highly ambitious. They also say it does not make sense to build two separate railways to ship coal to and from the same place.
"The logical economic scenario is to have some sort of shared infrastructure," Wood-Mackenzie senior coal analyst Steve Hulton said. "It's very hard to believe two such huge projects could be developed side-by-side and build their own rail."
If the plans by Mrs Rinehart's company, Hancock Prospecting, go ahead, they would mark development of Queensland's first private coal export railway. The planned 495km railway, which would go from Alpha to Abbott Point near Bowen, would be standard gauge, meaning it could haul more coal than Queensland's current narrow-gauge.
Queensland's coal network carries 10,000-tonne cars, whereas the standard gauge railways used in the Pilbara can carry 25,000 tonne cars. The line would be able to carry more than the 60 million tonnes a year Hancock has planned under a second mine, known as Kevin's Corner.
Premier Anna Bligh wants to float the coal railway assets, but miners are worried an initial public offering would leave the railway in hands not keen to spend on long-term expansion.
