New Zealand too green, says Bathhurst boss
Bathurst Resources CEO Hamish Bohannan says overseas shareholders in the company believe New Zealand is “too green”.
Bathurst is currently facing resource management consent appeals over its proposal to develop a coking coal mine of the West Coast’s Denniston Plateau.
Speaking at the weekend on TV3’s The Nation programme, Mr Bohannan said the problem is that New Zealand has an open-ended loop for groups to keep appealing and appealing a deal until it goes to the final Supreme Court hearing.
“That isn't the case overseas,” he said. “Normally, once you’ve had a ruling that ruling is the ruling.
“There are obviously first opportunity for appeal, but not re-appeal and re-appeal.”
Mr Bohannan said Bathurst believed it was possible to achieve a balance between preserving “the delicate ecology" of the Denniston Plateau with mining operations.
The mine would be an open cast mine and that meant the company would restore the area once the mining was finished, he said.
“Open cast mining explicitly turns the soil, it's a bit like farming, the difference is once mining's finished you put it back.
“Farming goes on effectively forever and ever.
“And what we can do today is put things back pretty well as they were before, and make improvements.
“We can remove the weeds; we can re-establish wetlands and so forth.”
He said Bathurst was in a different situation to Solid Energy, which faces massive capital write-downs and possible mine closures.
"The unfortunate thing that Solid has large operations, a large workforce, prices have come up, returns have shrunk and they have to cut the cloth to suit the body,” he said.
“We're just in a different space at this moment.”
His company believed the West Coast had great mining potential.
"I think the West Coast has phenomenal opportunity, not only coal.
“There’s been a very good study by West Coast Development, West Coast Minerals on the potential there.
“Clearly, there is more coal in the south. We're active in Southland now, and that is good thermal coal that can work in the domestic market.
“And there's gold opportunities, there's ironsand opportunity – we have opportunities throughout the nation.”
Watch the full interview here.
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Comments and questions19
What part of "We are generating too much CO2 and may well kill the planet" do these mining companies not understand? Why are they allowed to mine tonne after tonne of fossil carbon when we know that burning it is the worst possible thing for the environment? I don't get it.
Not as if they are burning it here - what is wrong with you? What is wrong with NZ living standards rising as a result of exporting something the other side of the world sees value in. Gives NZ Inc jobs for the coasters, money into their local economy and more for NZ Inc in general.
Then we should make guns and bombs and things like that to sell to the mercenaries of the world. It would raise our lifestyle and, according to your logic, be perfectly acceptable. It is more important to be good global citizens and not simply exploit something because it is there.
Rubbish - we have to make money to look after ourselves. You should be grateful you get a job out of it. You probably don't even deserve the minimum wage and we could import better labour at just $5 an hour.
Mr Bohannan should pull out from any investment in NZ given the corrupt system that prevails. The environmental groups are funded and supported by Govt. NZ is doomed to Socialism and only Regional and District Councils will take over developement.
In response to Olliver isn't CO2 plant food?
CO2 is used by plants, but having reduced plant diversity and abundance hugely on this planet, and then pumped huge amounts of excess CO2 into the atmosphere, humanity has caused increased atmospheric retention of heat leading to the global problem of climate warming.
That mining contributes to this worsening situation is rather straightfoward to see?
Ha Ha Ha Ha! Nice one. Like anyone would expect the CEO of a mining company to say NZ isn't green enough.
The way I figure it, if green groups and mining / polluting interests are both complaining it probably means the environmental regulations are at more or less the right level. Although nothing is ever perfect, so there should always be a drive to make regulatory systems and controls better.
Appeal cuts both ways dude. If the opponents to a mining application win the first court battle the mining interest can appeal, and appeal, and appeal. Do mining companies really want to stifle the appeal process knowing that a wrong decision against them in lower court will stand, and become precedent? No, what they want is asymmetric justice.
And we all know how the land rehabilitation thing can go. Set up an arms length subsidiary to do the mining, and then after the minerals have been removed that subsidiary declares bankruptcy and the profit takes get to walk away from the land and let the public clean up the mess. Add a clean up levy to mining royalties and we can overcome that bit of corporate manipulation.
Ever heard of mining bonds Greg?
Any miner on public land has to put up a bond(or get the bank to guarantee the bond amount) to ensure restoration of the land after it is mined. And rest assured we are not talking peanuts here
The problem in this country is a hugely green newsmedia filling Auckland minds up with the sort of 'moonscape' images that might has applied 40 years ago but which are long gone. Coupled with a mad political movement espousing nil development and communism.
We can be as idealist as we like people but I'm afraid idealism will not fill our tummies. This Country,like a lot of places in the world, is staring down the barrel of economic reality and if we do not want to face the issues and use what we have been blessed with then it is going to be third world status for us rather soon.
I think we should go for broke. We already are nearly there. Mine it all, ever last bit. There is always Mars folks. C u there.
Some people quite obviously don't get it. New Zealand's coal, particularly West Coast coal, is some of the highest quality coal in the world. Without coal, many of the luxuries that you live with today would not be around. Why bother stopping the mining of a place that has already been mined by the old miners? Bathurst aren't going to make things any worse, they are going to make things better by restoring the Plateau to the way it was before the old miners came in and mined it.
You are wrong. NZ coal is mainly lignite with a very high moisture content. Lignite isn't really considered coal, but some where between coal and peat. The best coal is anthracite, which is not found here.
And to answer you about luxuries, small benefit if the world around you is a waste dump, polluted by mine tailings.
Clearly we should just mine anywhere businesses want to - shouldn't we? Who says open cast mines can't be attractive to tourists? Why shouldn't a business be allowed to do what it wants to? Shouldn't we get rid of all this green nonsense and just concentrate on making money? If an overseas company wants to invest in NZ shouldn't we do everything we can to help them?
Dear Hamish would have us believe "Open cast mining explicitly turns the soil, it's a bit like farming, the difference is once mining's finished you put it back"
One rather important difference is that this "turning of soil" is in designated conservation land where his "farming" destroys all life in that area - in return for coal that directly contributes to warming of the planet. Yes, CO2 is needed by plants, but not in the quantity that humanity has imposed on our planet. Climate sceptics, of course, who are often funded by mining companies, would contend otherwise.
True restoration of ecosystems is much more complex and time-consuming than most mining companies would care to evaluate - it's much more than just replacing some topsoil and planting some native trees.
Let's develop mining that doesn't add to climate change, that's not polluting, and that's outside of conservation land. Surely, humanity with our high intellect can succeed in this?
Can we get Hamish Bohannan to say this in an 'NZ 100% Pure' advert?
Would save a fortune on tourist marketing.
Perhaps Bathurst will restore the area geographically - in terms of restoring the land forms and rehabilitating some of the forest cover.. but this does nothing to address the fact that they will be heavily disturbing an already fragile ecology, one with species found no where else in the world. You can't complete disrupt this by creating a giant opencast mine(s) then expect the unique biosphere that exists in this region to return to normal.
Denniston is what can be considered an inland island - meaning that many of our endangered animal/insect species can survive on the south island mainland without being threatended by predators (one of the few places in NZ and the world where this occurs)
But this isn't really the point - We're percieved internationally as a "clean/grean" country (and benefit from this hugely as a result throught tourism), so our legistlation when it comes to climate change/environmental protection/resource extraction is seen as something that other countries measure up to/are influenced by. So although the whole "we'd only be a minor contributor to climate change so should just get on with it and make money while we can" argument makes sense on face-value - things are significantly more complex than that. In moving away from being "green" we're encouraging other, larger, more fossil fuel dependant, higher demand countries to keep pumping ridiculous amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, ignoring investing in more sustainable/long-term forms of energy production.
We're taking way more CO2 out of the ground than our current comfortable climate can cope. At current estimates we have a good chance in ensuring that the planet doesn't heat by more than 2'C by keeping the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere less than 565 gigatonnes by mid century. Warming above 2'C means a very different climate to the one we enjoy now - one threatened by food insecurity, unpredictable long-term weather patterns, millions displaced by sea level rise. Unfortunately at current consumption levels (which are increasing) we'll reach this "budget" within 16 years. This isn't idealism, this is wanting to live in an environment that is somewhat familiar to what i've grown up with, where we have enough food to feed the world's population, and where we don't see millions of climate refugees.
Scientists estimate that there are 2,795 gigatones of CO2 in the ground - four times the amount needed for a 2'C temp rise. The expectation that we will eventually mine this is what gives fossil fuel extraction companies their value - seems like this is a little more idealistic that merely wanting to preserve and extremely unique ecological region and a climate that is recognizable compared to what we have today.
There are other options - subsidising a high tech sustainablity based economy, that creates/develops and manufactures new technologies, while still benefitting from a good tourism industry.
Who cares about a few snails, earthworms and native birds. they get in the way on the mainland anyway and won't go extinct because we can just keep them on small islands. I say we mine all the coal while we can, and then use the money we make from it to invest in the new zealand economy - making sure that we get our moneys worth from our natural resources.
greeny scientists don't know anything - the whole climate change is still debated pretty widely, so there's no point taking action on something we don't even know is going to happen. money makes the world go round so lets keep making money, i dont want to give up my ute just because a few dumb "scientists" thought that things were getting warmer. who cares if it does anyway, those cold snaps are bad for people's livestock and it would be nice if it was hotter here.
And even if it is real - technology will find a way, and we will be more able to spend money on it if we make it through our coal resources.
And yeah other countries might look to us, but they should look at us for having a sound economic model that serves hard working people not appeasing some silly greenie hippys who just want some nice bush to hike through or are just paranoid about the fact that there MIGHT be some climate change happening.
Quite right. Why shouldn't overseas companies bring in cheap labour and make profits from us. They are doing the country a favour and all that bush and forest is a waste of productive land anyway.
Time to put your head back in the sand now.
If we weren't mining the sand people like you wouldnt have jobs and this country would be even more down the drain. leave business alone to get on with it.