A decision in the last week affecting our region was the state government giving the $1.4 billion MMG Dugald River zinc development “prescribed project” status.
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What this bit of officialese means, according to the government, is that the Coordinator-General will be able “to assist MMG to navigate processes and timely approvals through government.”
Why the Coordinate-General wouldn’t assist MMG as regular business may mystify some, but the Mines Minister Dr Anthony Lynham says this is a good thing.
The government says declaring a project a prescribed project overcomes “any unreasonable delays” in obtaining project approvals and it enables the Coordinator-General, “if necessary, to intervene in the approvals process in a number of ways to ensure timely decision-making for the prescribed project.”
The North West Star has concerns, especially if we cannot ensure that the new jobs are all locally created.
One of the things the Coordinator-General looks at is the FIFO make-up of the workforce and if the “timely approvals” means this aspect is not looked at, then this is not a good thing for the north-west.
Otherwise the benefits will flow elsewhere while the north-west is left only with reduced environmental controls.
Which would be a shame because Dugald River does look promising.
MMG says the Dugald River mine would “provide an important employment, economic and revenue contribution for Cloncurry and Queensland over more than 30 years”.
Based on one of the world’s highest-grade known zinc deposits, MMG announced an updated development plan for Dugald River in 2015.
The plan includes a mine production rate of 1.5Mtpa and construction of a mill and concentrator able to produce approximately 160,000 tonnes of zinc in zinc concentrate annually over an estimated 28 year mine life. This is expected to place Dugald River within one of the top ten zinc mines globally when operational.
Under the updated plan, construction of remaining surface infrastructure facilities will commence in 2016 with first production from a Dugald River concentrator expected during the first half of 2018.
