Dongara plan pressures Oakajee

THE state government is facing renewed pressure to table its state development agreement for the Oakajee port near Geraldton in the wake of a rival iron ore port proposal at Dongara-Port Denison.

Oceanport Shiploaders managing director Stewart Graham believes a 30 million tonnes a year magnetite concentrate export facility could be established at Port Denison for as little as $150 million, a tiny fraction of the anticipated $4.3 billion cost of Oakajee.

Mr Graham has also approached the Gingin shire about establishing similar export facilities at Wilbinga and Breton Bay, south of Ledge Point, to serve miners in the Yilgarn and southern Mid West.

However, Mr Graham said his approaches had hit a wall due to exclusivity clauses in the state government’s confidential state development agreement with infrastructure developer Oakajee Port & Rail.

Government sources have confirmed the exclusivity arrangements prevent any formal consideration of rival port proposals along the entire Mid West coast until Oakajee is either operational or cannot proceed.

“I’ve been going through all the processes but keep getting told (nobody) can do anything about it until Oakajee is either delayed or goes ahead,” Mr Stewart said. “The coast is closed to business.”

Labor state development spokesman Mark McGowan said such exclusivity arrangements seemed reasonable to give Oakajee the best chance of proceeding.

But he believed Premier Colin Barnett had an obligation to table the Oakajee agreement, given the amount of public funding committed to the development.

“He absolutely should release all the information,” Mr McGowan said. “There’s more than $700 million of taxpayers money tied up in this, so the public has a right to know.”

Mr Barnett did not respond to questions from WA Business News about the Oakajee agreement, but has told parliament the agreement cannot be tabled because it contains commercially sensitive confidential information that is the intellectual property of OPR.

He has also said he hoped to eventually enact a state agreement act for Oakajee which would supersede the existing confidential agreement.

Mr McGowan said he did not believe commercial confidentiality was a sufficient reason for not disclosing the Oakajee agreement, especially as exclusivity arrangements limited any risk to Oakajee.

“If there aren’t any competitors, and the deal is stitched up in such a way that it’s going to happen, where would the problem be?” he asked.

Mr Graham said he was not opposed to Oakajee, which he hoped would proceed quickly, because “Port Denison would then see the light of day”.

Mr Graham said his port proposal would take advantage of a natural 14-metre deep basin sheltered by reefs, just 1.5km off Port Denison’s South Beach, that could cater for 90,000t Panamax bulk carriers using a conventional trestle jetty similar to Rio Tinto’s Cape Lambert port.

Onshore, the proposed storage facilities could be sited in an existing industrial buffer zone around the nearby Cockburn Cement lime plant, and were close to existing rail sidings and utilities.

Irwin shire president Stuart Chandler said no such plan had been put to council, though he noted a prior proposal by Mr Graham using a barge-mounted loading system had been viewed favourably.

However, he doubted the local community would support any development if it affected access to the popular fishing and recreation beach, and said relocating the newly sealed airstrip nearby could also pose a problem.