Mega-projects provide state with major opportunities

Tuesday November 3

4am

Arrive at the Bristow charter terminal at Perth airport for the 5.50am flight to Barrow Island. The terminal is already filling up with oil workers heading to Barrow and nearby Thevenard and Varanus islands. You think the post September 11 security is tough? Try the quarantine restrictions for Barrow. Thongs are pulled out of my bag and scoured for any potential contaminants. Sure enough, a scrap of garden weed is prised from a tiny split in the sole.

I am given a friendly but firm ticking off, and warned against doing it again. All good news for Barrow’s ecology. And at least I didn’t need to be shrink-wrapped, like almost everything else that is brought onto the island.

8am

Land at Barrow. It’s not my first trip here, but it’s a thrill to be back so soon after the go-ahead for the $43 billion Gorgon LNG development. It’s a pity more people don’t get the chance to see it – it’s definitely not what most would expect of “Australia’s Ark”. In fact, its appearance is pretty unremarkable. Undulating spinifex-covered red dirt, dotted with hundreds of “nodding donkey” oil wells. Spend a day here and you’re guaranteed to see some pretty amazing wildlife. Unfortunately, I only have a couple of hours and apart from the odd turtle and osprey, the wildlife is lying low.

What I do discover is how working life on Barrow is changing to make sure the island’s excellent 50-year record of conservation is maintained as Gorgon advances.

Barrow’s 200 or so fly-in, fly-out oil workers have always proudly acted as personal custodians of the island ecology, in turn earning access to designated areas to fish and surf in their free time. But with the imminent arrival of 3,500 construction workers, who will be restricted to the construction site and camp, Chevron is assessing similar restrictions for all workers. All Gorgon activities must be contained within a 300-hectare envelope (1.3 per cent of the island’s land mass). That is some feat for a project that requires construction of a 500-bed “fly camp” just to house workers building the 3,000-bed accommodation camp used by the main construction workforce.

12.15pm

Arrive at Karratha for a quick peek at Woodside’s North West Shelf and Pluto LNG plants. Our arrival is greeted by a puff of black smoke from the main flare tower at the Shelf gas plant, when a minor electrical glitch briefly shuts down LPG processing. We head for a vantage point overlooking the new Pluto development, now almost 80 per cent complete. It’s staggering to think this $12 billion meccano set was not even a glint in Don Voelte’s eye until April 2005, when the Pluto field was discovered. Yet when first gas is produced late next year, it will set the record for the world’s fastest LNG development.

2.30pm

Back on the plane for the 80-kilometre hop south to China’s most substantial investment in WA – Citic Pacific Mining’s $5 billion Sino Iron magnetite project at Cape Preston. Not only will this be WA’s first magnetite iron mine, it will also rival the biggest iron ore operations in the Pilbara when production starts next year.

Magnetite contains half the iron of conventional Pilbara hematite, so Citic will have to mine over 80 million tonnes of rock to produce 28mt of iron concentrate and pellets annually. Nonetheless, it plans to double output within a few years.

3.45pm

The scale of works is incredible. Citic’s 450 megawatt gas-fired power station alone will almost double the Pilbara’s generation capacity, while the nearby 51-gigalitre desalination plant will be bigger than that at Kwinana. These two facilities have singlehandedly underwritten Apache’s $1 billion Devil Creek domestic gas project.

Large-scale mining is also well under way to strip the 40 metres of waste rock overlying the ore body. When complete, the pit will measure 5.5km by 3km and extend 600 metres below sea level. The ore will be hauled out by 360-tonne Terex trucks, just about the biggest available in the world today.

About 2,500 workers are now working at the site, and 600 full-time workers will be required when it is operational. Given the level of direct Chinese involvement, it’s surprising to hear that Citic employs only 50 Chinese workers.

5.30pm

We head back to Karratha, which is bursting at the seams, making $2,000 a week rents commonplace despite the modern estates springing up. Nor is change likely anytime soon, given the slow rate at which LandCorp has been able to develop new residential lots.

Wednesday November 4

7am

Another early flight, this time to the most remote mine in WA – Newcrest Mining’s massive Telfer gold mine on the western edge of the Great Sandy Desert.

9am

After 600km of emptiness, we emerge over one of the biggest man-made holes in Australia. Opened in 1976, a $2 billion redevelopment in 2004 has Telfer vying for the title of Australia’s biggest gold mine at more than 700,000 ounces a year.

Telfer’s scale only becomes apparent when you disembark and see how the massive waste dumps tower over the site. The heat is phenomenal – gold mining doesn’t get tougher than this, with workers regularly having to cope with 50-degree heat as they extract the 22mt of ore that is processed each year.

Instead of the usual facts and figures, we are briefed on the mine’s close relationship with the local Martu community aimed at improving living standards. The holistic “healthy living” approach, supported by various government agencies, starts with diet and exercise initiatives and extends to education and training programs.

So far, about 200 people from local communities have passed through Telfer’s skills training program, and around 80 indigenous workers are currently employed at the site. That represents a pretty sizeable portion of the 2,000-strong Martu population.

In May, the partnership opened a dedicated renal dialysis facility at nearby Punmu. The next objective is establishing affordable fresh fruit and vegetable supplies for communities which otherwise pay up to $2,000 in trucking costs for every delivery.

12pm

We take the hour-flight south-west to Paraburdoo, opened by Rio Tinto’s Hamersley Iron division in 1973 and the sole reason that its namesake town exists. Even today, more than 90 per cent of the 1,800 residents directly rely on the mine. The mine also boasts the only two-storey brick administration block in the Pilbara, making it look less makeshift than most sites.

With all but one of the original pits mined out, Paraburdoo is now a central processing hub. A 20km conveyor feeds 22mt of ore annually from the nearby Eastern Range and Channar mines, for railing to the Dampier port. With the Western Range mine also set to come onstream within 10 years, Paraburdoo should remain a Pilbara mainstay for at least two more decades.

6pm

We leave the Pilbara and touch down in Geraldton. From our hotel overlooking the harbour, you have to be impressed by the city’s improvement in recent years.

Modern residential estates, an emerging café culture and some of the best windsurfing in WA should help make Geraldton an attractive base for a new generation of mine workers.

Thursday November 5

9am

Before heading to the proposed Oakajee deepwater port site, we stop at the brilliant HMAS Sydney memorial, which also provides a great view of the Geraldton harbour.

11am

We turn onto an unmarked dirt track to visit the Oakajee port site. Standing in the middle of the 6,500ha state-owned Oakajee estate, Oakajee Port & Rail executive Dick Jupp points to where the 2km breakwater will jut into the pounding surf. A wave energy plant on the breakwater is one option to supplement local energy supplies.

Mr Jupp also points to where a quarry, 6km to the east, will provide the 2mt of armour rock that will hold the huge seas at bay.

Thirty years in gestation, Oakajee is a talisman for Geraldton and past failures have left a psychological scar on many locals. But government funding support has delivered real optimism that Oakajee’s time has come.

The Geraldton council is even seeking $1 billion for a heavy rail link to Perth to make Oakajee southern WA’s main import-export hub.

2pm

After 2.5 days and 3,700km, we touch back down in Perth, tired but with a better grasp of how the next boom will affect regional WA.