RESOURCES players in the Mid West are jostling for position ahead of an expected shake-up at the Oakajee project near Geraldton, with an infrastructure subsidiary of the Karara iron ore joint venture staking a claim on a southern transport link skirting the city’s eastern boundary.
In early September, Karara, a joint venture between ASX-listed Gindalbie Metals and China’s AnSteel, applied to the Department of Mines and Petroleum for a miscellaneous licence over a 4,323-hectare area that forms a corridor between the proposed Oakajee port and the Narngulu industrial area near Geraldton airport.
The move is viewed as controversial, in part because it came as a surprise to landowners and the shires involved. It is also seen as further posturing by the main Chinese-backed player at a time when the existing port proponent Oakajee Port & Rail is struggling to meet the state government’s December 31 deadline to complete key project implementation agreements.
“Given the significant uncertainty around the development of Oakajee, Karara has recently started looking at options that will allow growth to our long term plan of 30Mtpa,” a spokesman for Karara said. “These options have involved applications for potential transport infrastructure land between Geraldton and Oakajee.
“As with all of our project developments, if any plans are progressed they will involve full consultation with all stakeholders.”
Japan’s Mitsubishi and ASX-listed company Murchison Metals – which has acknowledged it is unlikely to be able to fund its share of the project and is seeking to restructure the project’s ownership – are the backers of OPR.
Under the existing plan, ore from mines to the south of Geraldton, such as Karara, would join the OPR line at a junction near Mullewa, about 100 kilometres inland.
It is believed that the OPR agreement with the state government precludes alternative rail links into Oakajee, ostensibly to minimise ore going near Geraldton and also to maximise the traffic on the new rail line to provide the best possible infrastructure at the start of the project.
This would require miners that want to access the Oakajee port, such as Karara to use about 100km of the new 540km rail line required to service the northern mines, including the Jack Hills project owned by the consortium currently behind OPR.
But there have been some objections to the proposed cost of using this line, with the view that miners outside the consortium are underwriting rail links they won’t use or don’t need.
Karara, for instance, has already negotiated with WestNet Rail owner Brookfield to upgrade the existing line from near Mullewa to Geraldton’s operating habour.
The Narngulu-Oakajee transport corridor would require just 25km of new line from the existing railway.
