Left unchecked the gas & coal mining sectors will be the death of the Great Artesian Basin and what is left of the Great Barrier Reef

According to an August 2016 Report Commissioned By The Australian Government And Great Artesian Basin Jurisdictions Based On Advice From The Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) is one of the largest underground freshwater reservoirs in the world. It underlies approximately 22% of Australia – occupying an area of over 1.7 million square kilometres beneath arid and semi-arid parts of Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory. Approximately 70% of the GAB lies within Queensland…..

The first people to make use of GAB water were Indigenous tribes for whom it was critical to survival. Indeed, there is evidence that the GAB sustained Aboriginal people for thousands of years prior to European settlement.

The natural springs of the GAB provided a critical source of fresh water, and supported valuable food sources including birds, mammals, reptiles, crustaceans and insects, creating an abundant hunting ground for local tribes. The plants and trees around the artesian springs were used for food, medicine, materials and shelter.

The springs provided semi-permanent oases in the desert and supported trade and travel routes which evolved around them. The springs also played a key part in the spiritual and cultural beliefs of Aboriginal people. Ceremonies and other events were held at spring wetland areas which remain precious cultural and sacred sites. Numerous Creation stories feature a connection to groundwater.

This underground freshwater reservoir holds 65,000 million megalitres much of which fell as rain 1 to 2 million years ago, but not all of this water is in accessible layers.

For assessment purposes the GAB is divided into four regions – Carpentaria, Central Eromanga, Western Eromanga and the Surat Basin.

In 1878 the first bore was sunk to draw water from the Great Artesian Basin.

In modern Australia its economic values are shared by towns, agriculture, cattle & sheep grazing and industry/mining across the four basin regions.

The Courier map based on a 22 August 2016 report

Economic output of groundwater dependent sectors in the Great Artesian Basin 

                                                                                                                                              

The report points out that Water has historically been extracted from the GAB at a greater rate than recharge and this creates a problem for 21st Century Australia.

Professor of Environmental Sciences Derek Eamus, University of Technology, 18 June 2015:

As the pressure in the GAB has declined and the water table drops, mound springs (where groundwater is pushed to the ground surface under pressure) have begun to dry up in South Australia and Queensland. Associated paperbark swamps and wetlands are also being lost and it gets more and more expensive to extract the groundwater for irrigation and other commercial applications.

On average, rates of groundwater extraction across Australia has increased by about 100 per cent between the early 1980s and the early 2000s, reflecting both the increased population size and commercial usage of groundwater stores.

Despite the strain on water resources, the gas and coal mining industries are allowed virtually unlimited water extraction from within the Great Artesian Basin and where the few limits are placed on extraction it is poorly policed by government agencies.

This is a graph of coal seam gas, conventional gas and petroleum industry water use 1995-2015:

Source:.DNRM 2016, p. 62.

The Adani Group’s most recent water licence for the Carmichael coal project issued in April 2017 allows it to take a virtually unlimited volume of groundwater each year for the next 60 years, plus surface water – with minimum oversight.

The Environmental Defender’s Office (Qld) states that: It is expected that Adani may require up to 9.5 billion litres of groundwater every year for the Carmichael project.

Poor management by Adani of its Abbot’s Point coal waste has already led to a smothering of the vibrant, nationally important Caley Wetlands with run-off via its estuarine system expected to reach adjacent waters of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

Satellite image of Caley Wetlands after emergency water release by Adani - now covered in coal waste.

A picture of the Abbot Point coal loading facility showing coal water run-off moving north-west into the wetlands and coal dust on the beaches. The Age, 12 April 2017, Photo: Dean Sewell

Coal dust on the beaches next to the Abbot Point coal loading facility  Photo: Dean Sewell/Oculi

Great Barrier Reef Blog

On 10 March 2015 ABC News reported:

Hundreds of square kilometres of prime agricultural land in southeast Queensland are at risk from a cocktail of toxic chemicals and explosive gases, according to a secret State Government report.

A study commissioned by Queensland's environment department says an experimental plant operated by mining company Linc Energy at Chinchilla, west of Brisbane, is to blame and has already caused "irreversible" damage to strategic cropping land.

The department, which has launched a $6.5 million criminal prosecution of the company, alleges Linc is responsible for "gross interference" to the health and wellbeing of former workers at the plant as well as "serious environmental harm".

The 335-page experts' report, obtained by the ABC, has been disclosed to Linc but not to landholders.

It says gases released by Linc's activities at its underground coal gasification plant at Hopeland have caused the permanent acidification of the soil near the site.

Experts also found concentrations of hydrogen in the soil at explosive levels and abnormal amounts of methane, which they say is being artificially generated underground, over a wide area.

The region is a fertile part of the Western Darling Downs and is used to grow wheat, barley and cotton and for cattle grazing, with some organic producers.

Other documents, released to the ABC by the magistrate in charge of the criminal case, show four departmental investigators were hospitalised with suspected gas poisoning during soil testing at the site in March.

"My nausea lasted for several hours. I was also informed by the treating doctor that my blood tests showed elevated carbon monoxide levels (above what was normal)," one of the investigators said.

High levels of cancer-causing benzene were detected at the site afterwards.

On 9 February 2017 ABC News was still reporting on the contamination:

Flammable levels of hydrogen have been found at a number of locations near the site of a controversial gas project that has been blamed for contaminating huge swathes of prime Queensland farm land.

The ABC understands an ongoing Environment Department investigation has confirmed that the contamination is much more widespread than previously thought.

The Queensland Government has dispatched Environment Department officers to the Hopeland community, near Chinchilla in the state's south, and is setting up a call centre to help explain the situation to landholders…..

Due to fears about possible hydrogen explosions, the Government has been enforcing a 314-square kilometre "excavation caution zone" around the Linc plant, with landholders banned from digging any hole deeper than two metres.

The ABC understands further investigation by the Environment Department has now found flammable levels of hydrogen at locations outside the current caution zone.

The hydrogen has been detected underground and the department says it dissipates quickly in the open air.

Government sources have stressed the gas is not of an explosive concentration but landholders will be encouraged to exercise caution.

Left unchecked the mining industry will bring the Great Artesian Basin closer to collapse.

It is not as if either federal or state governments ever fully realise the supposed financial gains allowing this environmental degradation was supposed to bring to their treasuries.

In 2007-08 the Australian Taxation Office released taxation data which showed that 68.8 per cent of all mining companies on its books paid no tax in that financial year. In 2009-10 the percentage of mining companies paying no tax had risen to 73.1 per cent and in in 2010-11 the percentage of mining companies paying no tax was 72.2 per cent. By 2013-14 a total of 60 per cent of publicly listed energy and resources companies did not pay tax and again in 2014-15 60 per cent of all energy and resources companies paid no tax.

Add to this the fact that Adani in Australia in estimated to have paid only 0.008 percent in tax on their total income in 2014-2015 and is structured in such a way that its tax burden is artificially lowered and a significant proportion of its profits move offshore to the Cayman Islands tax haven.

It isn’t hard to see a pattern developing here.

Maximum environmental, cultural, social and economic risk for Australia with minimal financial return on risk.

Given its record it was inevitable that Adani would wreck a wetland

The foreign-owned multinational, the Adani Group, adds to its record of corporate environmental vandalism……………….

The Sydney Morning Herald, 10 April 2017:

The Queensland government is investigating water spills from the Abbot Point coal terminal into neighbouring wetlands as an expert predicts long-term environmental damage.

The Department of Environment and Heritage Protection was assessing whether there were any unauthorised water releases from the Adani-operated coal terminal into the wetland after Cyclone Debbie tore through north Queensland late last month.

Satellite images of the Abbot Point coal terminal and neighbouring wetlands. Before Cyclone Debbie on the left and post-cyclone on the right. Photo: Supplied

The EHP and Adani said early indications showed all spills were within guidelines.

But James Cook University professorial research fellow in water quality studies Professor Jon Brodie said coal had clearly spilled into the wetlands and environmental harm was "highly likely".

His comments came in the wake of the release of striking satellite imagery from before and after the storm, appearing to show coal-laden water spilling throughout the sensitive Caley Valley wetlands.

The Mackay Conservation Group said the 5000-hectare wetlands were home to 40,000 shorebirds in the wet season and more than 200 individual species.

The department allowed terminal operator Abbot Point Bulk Coal, owned by Adani, to more than triple its "suspended solids" release limits in the wake of Cyclone Debbie, under what's called a Temporary Emissions Licence.

A department spokeswoman said that licence did not authorise environmental harm but Professor Brodie said it was hard to see how the wetlands could emerge unscathed.

"Obviously wetlands depend on light," he said, calling for a full examination.

"Those plants at the bottom, there won't be too much light there for a while.

"That will settle out of course and it will settle out to the bottom onto the plants that are on the bottom.

"There'll be significant damage from this but that should be quantified."

The most obscene sentence in Australian modern history

The Adani Group’s Carmichael Coal Mine complex will draw an estimated 26 million litres of water per day by 2029, up to 4.55 gigalitres of ground water a year and over the mine’s life it will use approximately 335 billion litres of water – with unlimited access to The Great Artesian Basin.

GAS SHORTAGE! GAS SHORTAGE!: Why on earth do you think we would believe you now, Malcolm?

“Santos now argues that its aim in CLNG was always as much about raising the domestic gas price, and therefore re-rating large parts of the portfolio outside of GLNG, as it was about the project…….What is more, with a ~0.8% drag on Australian GDP from every $2/GJ rise in the domestic gas price, this view certainly wouldn’t have been terribly popular with politicians who approved the project.” [Credit Suisse, Asia Pacific/Australia Equity Research: Santos, 11 March 2014]

The reality for Australian householders is that on on average gas cost the same or more than electricity by 2012.

After managing to artificial inflate the domestic price of gas still further and wanting to reserve as much LNG as possible for the larger export market, now the Australian gas industry is crying shortages in order to blackmail state governments into opening up more conventional and unconventional gas fields across rural and regional Australia.

The fact of the matter is that since at least 1975 domestic energy consumption has been lower than energy production and export, while current gas domestic consumption remains significantly lower that current gas production.

According to the Australian Dept. of Industry, Innovation and Science’s Australian Energy Update 2016:

Natural gas production rose by 5 per cent in 2014–15 to 2,607 petajoules (66 billion cubic metres). Western Australia remained Australia’s largest producer of natural gas, producing nearly two-thirds of total gas production in 2014–15. Queensland production grew 45 per cent to become Australia’s second largest producer, overtaking Victoria, where production fell by 11 per cent. Production of coal seam gas increased by 50 per cent in 2014–15, to reach 462 petajoules (12 billion cubic metres), as new wells were drilled in Queensland to support the start of LNG exports from Gladstone. Coal seam gas accounted for 18 per cent of Australian gas production on an energy content basis, and nearly half of east coast gas production.

This Australia Institute graph makes the relationship between 2016 gas production and domestic consumption levels clearer:

Graph retrieved from Twitter

So why the alleged gas shortage?

The gas industry in Australia ignored signs that domestic gas consumption would rise and, in an excess of greed made commitments to export markets which appear to have been predicated on the assumption that it would be able to easily and profitably make up the competitive squeeze between domestic need, client country needs and its own commercial aims - because it would still be allowed open slather to drill or frack every available square kilometre of land with gas reserves beneath it.

This can all be explained in one sentence. The gas industry has been deliberately manipulating and starving the domestic market for years.

Mainstream media is finally looking at this problem a little more closely and explaining how businesses and consumers are being played for fools.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 March 2017:

Let's be clear: there is no gas shortage. Not in Australia, and not around the world. In fact, there's the opposite: a global glut of the stuff. BHP has already admitted there's enough gas in Bass Strait to supply the east coast "indefinitely". And globally, by the end of 2015 the gas industry was capable of producing about 25 per cent more liquefied gas than the world wanted to import.

By 2020, production capacity looks set to increase another 30 per cent. Even if demand is increasing – and that's not absolutely clear – it's not keeping pace with that. The world's biggest importer, Japan, has been reducing its demand for several years, and according to its own government, will be buying 30 per cent less gas by 2030 as it turns its focus to renewables….

So it was all very encouraging to hear Turnbull boasting this week about the size of his constitutional stick. "We have a responsibility – which we do not shirk from"; the industry understands the gravity of its "social licence" to operate. Et cetera. But the government has steadfastly refused to use that stick previously. And when you have gas companies slugging Australians record prices while charging their Asian customers record low prices, it's a little hard to believe they stay awake at night worrying about the terms of their "social licence".

What's much easier to believe, though, is that the gas industry is desperate to get its hands on gas supplies that are off limits – especially controversial ones like, say, coal seam gas. And if they have to offer a little more domestic supply to do it – at a time when global demand is slowing anyway – then it's hardly a sacrifice. Oh, and as it happens, that's exactly what Turnbull would like to offer them, hence his condemnation of the states' bans on further gas extraction.

It's a neat trick, really. Take a country with enough gas to supply itself "indefinitely", send the vast majority of it overseas, refuse to sell locally at a fair price, create a domestic shortage, then demand access to some of our most environmentally sensitive resources as though it's an emergency measure.

The Australian, 18 March 2017:

According to a report compiled by Energy Edge, the $US18.5 billion ($24.1bn) Gladstone LNG project, run by Santos, has at times been buying the equivalent of up to half of the whole east coast’s energy demand to meet a shortfall of gas to put through its two LNG production trains.

It is little wonder then that high up in the gentlemen’s agreement struck on Wednesday were commitments to supply, rather than deplete, domestic gas markets.

It is also clear that only two of the three Gladstone projects could agree to being net domestic gas contributors “as part of their social licence”.

The GLNG project has had to “take the matter on notice”, the agreement said.

The other two LNG projects — Queensland Curtis LNG run by Shell and Australia Pacific LNG run by Origin Energy and ConocoPhillips — have been consistently providing gas to the market (and GLNG, sometimes) on top of their export commitments.

“QCLNG and APLNG are currently either net long or balanced to the market, whereas GLNG is significantly short on equity supplies and must rely on third-party contracts,” Energy Edge said.

That was known by most observers.

But, using a range of public sources, Energy Edge says GLNG has sometimes bought a staggering 500-600 terajoules a day of gas on top of its own production.

Illustrating how substantial that volume is, the combined domestic demand from the pipeline-connected eastern states of Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania is about 1250 terajoules a day.

GLNG appears to already be averaging the use of about 300-400 terajoules a day of third-party gas — that is, gas outside the coal-seam gasfields it has developed specifically to feed its LNG project — for its LNG export.

With APLNG and QCLNG ­already fulfilling the demand, any short-term change will need to come from Santos and its GLNG partners Total and Kogas, although it might pay the rest of the industry to somehow provide some assistance.

After the meeting, Santos chief executive Kevin Gallagher, who was brought in last year to fix the problems, would not comment on exactly what the GLNG response could be.

“As an Australian company that has supplied the domestic market since its inception, we look forward to working with and supporting the government on this issue,” Mr Gallagher said.

“We are committed to working across all of our joint ventures to free up gas as well as continue to identify and develop new resources for the domestic market.”

As recently as December, at the company’s investor day, Mr Gallagher said the aim was to ramp up GLNG volumes to fill 6 million tonnes of the plant’s 7.8 million tonnes of annual LNG export capacity.

This could be potentially expanded by offering tolling services to other Australian gas producers who might want to export their gas but didn’t have the facilities, he said.

Enthusiasm for toll-treating has probably eased off in the wake of the meeting with Mr Turnbull and the current alarm around contract prices that Australian Competition & Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims said this week “are apparently being offered at $20 a gigajoule, if they receive supply offers at all”.

East coast gas contract prices were $3 to $4 per gigajoule before the export plants were committed to and are said to now average $8 to $10, except in extreme cases.

The $70bn worth of Gladstone gas freezers and associated coal-seam gas wells have rapidly tripled east coast gas demand and opened the market up to international buyers.

This has ended an era of cheap Australian domestic gas supply, although the industry says this would have happened anyway because the cost of developing required resources was rising.

But the expected price hike has been exacerbated and come with shortages thanks to external factors and industry and government missteps, many of them flagged by observers before they were committed to.

Despite calls for industry to collaborate, three separate, almost identical plants were approved by Queensland and federal governments and, from 2010, built by the gas industry on Curtis Island.

This resulted in increased capital costs because infrastructure was not shared, cost blowouts as the remote construction market heated up and the building of six LNG production trains when the associated coal-seam gasfields could only really supply enough fuel for five.

To achieve efficiencies of scale, GLNG built two trains when it only had enough gas to comfortably fill one, admitting it would need to buy an unspecified amount of third-party gas to fill the second train.

After this, much that could go wrong has gone wrong.

Oil prices crashed, robbing gas developers of cash flow and investor funds that would have been used for extra LNG-related and domestic gas development, while community opposition to onshore gas production grew, resulting in bans or restrictions on new development in NSW, Victoria and now the Northern Territory.

At the same time, coal-seam gas resources did not perform as well as hoped at some Santos GLNG grounds, Santos’s Narrabri project in NSW (which was also hit by community opposition) and at the Bowen Basin ground of the Arrow joint venture between Shell and PetroChina.

It is not clear what the options are for GLNG, but Credit Suisse analyst Mark Samter has made repeated calls for it to close down one of its two trains — something Mr Gallagher ruled out last year.

Now an incredibly rich Liberal Party politician heading a Liberal-Nationals federal government – who was a failure as Minister for the Environment and Water, an abject failure as Minister for Communications and is a profound disappointment as Prime Minister of Australia – expects voters to believe that there is a genuine gas supply emergency which will leave local families and businesses going without unless the states allow indiscriminate gas mining.

Adani Mining Pty Ltd: allegations of "black money" and environmental degradation

“The Indian government’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) is currently investigating a number of Adani Group entities, including Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL), which is the ultimate holding company of Adani Mining Pty Ltd, the proponent of the Carmichael Mine, for illegally overvaluing imports of coal and capital equipment in order to siphon funds offshore, a practice that creates “black money.” A detailed report from a reliable media source also indicates that for more than a decade the DRI has also been investigating Adani Group entities for tax evasion and money laundering whilst trading in diamonds.”  

Major Reports, February 2017:

The Adani Brief

If it proceeds, the Adani Group’s Carmichael Coal Mine and Rail Project in the Galilee Basin in Queensland will be among the largest new coalmines in the world. The associated rail infrastructure and expansion of the coal export terminal at Port of Abbot Point adjacent to Queensland’s Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area would facilitate the shipping of coal through the Great Barrier Reef’s waters from the Carmichael Mine.

The Adani Brief: What governments and financiers need to know about the Adani Group’s record overseas suggests that governments and private stakeholders should give serious consideration to:

* the Adani Group’s global legal compliance record which demonstrates numerous serious breaches with adverse consequences for the environment and local people; and

* the possibility that if this track record continues in Australia, then supporting the Adani Group’s Carmichael Mine and the Abbot Point Port may expose governments and private  

  stakeholders to reputational and financial risks.

Read The Adani Brief (PDF, 1.53MB)

Read the Overview of The Adani Brief (PDF, 160KB)

View key source documents

Report/submission Type:  

Major Reports

Topics:  

Fossil Fuel Extraction

There would be a particularly nervous class of Australian investors right now - perhaps even Mr. Harbourside Mansion himself

The Guardian, 11 February 2017:

The founders of Mossack Fonseca, the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers scandal, were arrested in Panama City on Thursday as the country’s attorney general launched a probe into their alleged connections with Brazil’s sprawling Lava Jato corruption scandal.

Juergen Mossack and his colleague Ramon Fonseca, a former adviser to Panama’s president Juan Carlos Varela, were taken into custody and transferred to police cells in the capital overnight for further questioning on Friday, their defence attorney Elías Solano was quoted telling reporters.

Panamanian prosecutors raided the offices of Mossack Fonseca on Thursday. In a press conference on Kenia Porcell, Panama’s attorney general, said she had information that identified Mossack Fonseca “allegedly as a criminal organisation that is dedicated to hiding money assets from suspicious origins”. 

She said the firm’s Brazilian representative had allegedly been instructed to conceal documents and to remove evidence of illegal activities related to the Lava Jato case.

“Put simply, the money comes from bribes, circulated via certain corporate entities to return bleached or washed to Panama,” said Porcell. She explained charges had been formulated against four individuals, including the Mossack Fonseca partners. 

Porcell thanked the authorities in Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Switzerland and the United States for their part in a collaboration which she said began over a year ago.

The Panama Papers, which consist of millions of documents belonging to Mossack Fonseca and leaked in April 2016, provoked a global scandal after showing how the rich and powerful used offshore corporations to avoid paying taxes.

Australian Financial Review, 14 June 2016:

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's merchant bank Turnbull & Partners received an estimated $3 million in 1995 and 1996 from the sales of shares held through offshore companies administered by notorious Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca.

Turnbull & Partners received up to $7 million from share sales and advisory fees from Mr Turnbull's time as a director of a listed mining company, Star Mining, which had an interest in a Siberian gold deposit.

Documents obtained by The Australian Financial Review, which first revealed Mr Turnbull's link to a Mossack Fonseca company last month, show heavy selling of Star Mining shares by offshore companies in 1995 after a series of favourable decisions by Russian politicians and bureaucrats boosted the Star Mining share price.

One of the key figures who helped obtain Star's Siberian  mining leases, Ludmila Melnikoff, accuses Star director Ian MacNee, who died in 2008, of paying bribes of more than $US2 million to secure these decisions.

So why are the Turnbull & Andrews Governments giving, not loaning, almost a quarter of a billion dollars to Alcoa Corp?

Every blast furnace operator has exactly the same vulnerability - lose power and you lose your primary income producing asset.

But for some reason Alcoa Corp in Victoria was happily smelting along at 85% capacity with no back-up power supply when in early December 2016 along came a storm – a big bad storm like so many these days – and took out the power grid.

The pots that were operational when this happened ‘froze’ and the aluminium inside cooled and solidified.

When the power came back on the Portland plant was only able to work at one third capacity and has since been losing about $1million a day according to media reports.

The corporation stated that this plant will not come back online for at least eight months, that is August 2017.

The Age also reported on 6 January 2017 that:

The outage occurred with remarkable timing – just days after Alcoa's 30-year government-subsidised power contract ended and with power prices set to rise after the closure of the Hazelwood power station.

So it comes as no surprise that the Turnbull Government decided to give, not loan, this approx. 128 year-old New York based multinational company $30 million dollars to continue operating at Portland for another ten years.

The Victorian Government is handing over another $210 million to this corporation and AGL has agreed to a lower price electricity supply price for Alcoa.

Now as I write Alcoa shares on the New York Stock Exchange are $36.47 and rising, with company revenue for the last quarter at $2.5 billion, up 9 percent sequentially, reflecting higher volume in the Company’s rolled products business and higher alumina pricing and a cash balance of $853 million.

Meanwhile rumours are circulating that Alcoa is intending to close the Portland plant by 2020 regardless.

These facts got up the nose of one North Coast Voices reader and he discussed the matter with a mate.

This was the result……

“This was a predictable, preventable & foreseeable occurrence and all the damage was deliberately self-inflicted by management

Every telephone exchange, every ISP, every commercial Data Centre, even every mobile phone tower has backup power.
When the floods hit the Hunter Region of NSW & knocked out power in 2015/6 for a few weeks, the mobile phones kept working - because there weren’t just batteries, there were diesel generators and contractors signed up to refuel them. We know this because it was documented in the Telco community.

So do many more ‘ordinary’ businesses, even high-rise buildings. Not to mention airports & control towers, radio & TV stations and major plant like Oil Refineries.

Grid Power is not, and never has been, a 100% guaranteed service: if that’s a problem for your business, you need to mitigate that commercial risk.
Even if you’re a big factory or industrial site, there will be unplanned outages of the external power supply.
Even something as simple as a vehicle accident taking out a pole, an animal short-circuits

Good managers take out insurance against ‘threats’ to production/income, as an integral part of their formal Risk Management Strategy
This is not odd or extreme behaviour, certainly not in high-value industrial plant….

The Alcoa management right royally screwed over their owners and workers by failing to plan for the inevitable.
And somehow that is now the taxpayer’s responsibility?.....

If Alcoa are “losing $1M/day” from two thirds of its (electric) ‘pot lines’ being ‘frozen’ (the Aluminium set, or ‘froze’) how was unknown to the management?
Every blast furnace operator has exactly the same vulnerability - lose power and you lose your primary income producing asset.

The plant operators will know to the minute how long it takes to do orderly shutdown & startup of the entire production line.
This will be formally documented in fine detail, with many checks & contingencies included.

So why did the management deliberately decide to not ‘mitigate' against this extreme impact event and like thousands of large industrial plants around the country have enough on-site power generation to do a zero-damage shutdown?”

Remembering that Alcoa Australian Holdings Pty Ltd paid no tax and Alcoa Of Australia Limited paid minimal tax  in 2014-15, and probably paid even less last financial year, I think I agree with these two disgruntled men.

I don’t care that on 26 January 2017 The Australian reported that; The head of downsized US aluminium company Alcoa has given a commitment to finding a long-term power solution at its Portland aluminium smelter in the wake of Victoria’s $200 million power subsidy agreement, saying the smelter is “modern and competitive”. The comments were made in the company’s December quarter earnings call on Tuesday night, which discussed a strong result on the back of strong margins and sent shares of its Australian junior partner Alumina soaring 11 per cent to a two-year high.

Foreign-owned Alcoa Corp right royally screwed up and it’s not up to Australian taxpayers to take up the burden of smelter repairs in order to placate the company’s major shareholders.

I don’t care how many shares/units multimillionaire Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull or members of his cabinet might hold in investment companies and banks on that list.

Adani Group in hot water on two continents?

In debt for billions, refused additional finance, under investigation in India and still before the courts in Australia – the rather suspect Adani Group is not starting the year on a high.

The Hindu,  8 May 2016:

Adani group (Gautam Adani)

The billionaire Gautam Adani’s Adani group, with Rs 96,031 crore debt, is under pressure to sell its stake in the Abbott Point coal mines, port and rail project. The Adani Group’s debt stands at Rs. 72,000 crore. Last year, Standard Chartered bank had recalled loans amounting to $2.5 billion as part of its global policy of reducing exposure in emerging markets. Global lenders have backed out from funding the $10-billion coal mine development project. State Bank of India has also declined to offer a loan despite signing an MoU to fund the group with $1 billion. An Adani spokesperson declined to offer any comments on the issue.

Times of India, 13 September 2016:

DRI has been investigating 40 power generating companies and traders for the past couple of years. According to DRI, some prominent public and private sector companies inflated the import value of coal beyond that prevailing in the international market. Some companies are also being probed for allegedly inflating the value of imported capital goods. According to DRI, power tariffs were fixed based on the inflated values, which resulted in consumers paying higher charges.

DRI has alleged that Adani Group and Essar have imported capital goods through intermediaries in tax havens. It claims that the companies' objective was to siphon off money abroad while availing higher power tariff compensation based on artificially-inflated costs of imported coal or capital goods.

While the coal was directly shipped from Indonesian ports to importers in India, the import invoices were routed through one or more intermediaries based in a third country such as Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong and British Virgin Islands. These intermediary firms appear to be either subsidiaries of Indian importers or their front companies. This was the modus operandi used in the import of capital goods too. Investigations into overvaluation by other companies are still in progress.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has stayed an order of Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) that directed the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission to award compensatory tariffs to Adani Power and Coastal Gujarat Power (Tata group) based on power purchase agreements for their power plants in Mundra. APTEL has also disallowed compensatory tariff to Adani Group's power plant at Tiroda in Maharashtra and Kawai in Rajasthan.

ABC News, 7 December 2016:

Traditional owners are set to launch further legal action against Adani's Carmichael coal mine slated for central Queensland.

The Wangan and Jagalingou people claimed the $22 billion project impinges on their native title rights, and would extinguish their interests over 28 square kilometres of land if it goes ahead.

Spokesman Adrian Burragubba said the group was running four separate legal challenges to the project, and vowed to continue fighting.

"We will continue to pursue all legal avenues, Australian and international, and put a stop to this disastrous project," he said.

"Our rights are not protected, and we will test the limits of the law in this country if need be, including all the way to the High Court."

Courier Mail, 11 December 2016:

Questions remain over how the Carmichael project will be funded.

Mr Buckley says the Adani group is among the most highly leveraged companies in India with net debt across the group of about $15 billion.

More than a dozen major international financiers have ruled out providing funds for the project.

ABC News, 22 December 2016:

The business behind the planned Carmichael coal mine in North Queensland is facing multiple financial crime and corruption probes, with Indian authorities investigating Adani companies for siphoning money offshore and artificially inflating power prices at the expense of Indian consumers.

Companies under scrutiny for the alleged corrupt conduct include Adani Enterprises Limited — the ultimate parent company of the massive mine planned for the Galilee Basin.

Two separate investigations into allegations of trade-based money laundering by Adani companies are underway — one into the fraudulent invoicing of coal imports and the other into a scam involving false invoicing for capital equipment imports.

"They are very serious allegations and they are being conducted by the premier Indian government agency investigating financial crime," Australia's foremost expert on money laundering, Professor David Chaikin of the University of Sydney, told the ABC.

"The allegations involve substantial sums of money with major losses to the Indian taxpayer."

Adani denies wrongdoing.

The "modus operandi" of the claimed fraud is outlined in a circular issued by India's Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, which was obtained by the ABC.

"Intelligence obtained by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence indicated that certain importers of Indonesian coal were artificially inflating its import value as opposed to its actual value," Professor Chaikin said.

"The objective … appears to be two-fold: (i) siphoning off money abroad and (ii) to avail higher power tariff compensation based on [the] artificially inflated cost of the imported coal."

Five Adani Group companies are among a number of power companies named in the circular as under investigation.

These include Adani Enterprises Ltd, the ultimate parent company of the Adani entity, which holds the environmental approvals for the planned Carmichael Coal Mine and a railway to the mine.

Adani Enterprises Ltd has also been accused of involvement in large-scale illegal iron ore exports and bribery of public officials.

According to a 2011 report by the ombudsman of the Indian State of Karnataka, obtained by the ABC, police seized documents from Adani Enterprises in raids "which indicate that money has been regularly paid to port authorities, customs authorities, police department, mines and geology and even to MLAs/MPs".

The revelations come as the Federal Government considers granting Adani a $1 billion subsidy to build a railway from the Abbot Point Coal Terminal to the mine site 400 kilometres inland.

Just the sheer size and reach of the Trump Organisation's business interests has implications for U.S. foreign policy

For the last eighteen months in particular there has been media comment on the extensive business interests of U.S. president-elect Donald John Trump.

Since the November 2016 presidential election focus has intensified.

However, the U.S. Constitution drawn up in a simpler century teflon coats presidents - never having envisioned the likes of  Donald Trump.

The reach of Trump’s business interests are said to reach as far as Australia.

Given the man doesn’t seem to understand that the only ethical course would be to divest himself entirely of his business interests by placing them in a genuine blind trust not run by family members, close friends or business partners, so that both America and the world can have a measure of confidence in the his decision making as president, one can only look aghast at the potential for these business interests to fatally infect his presidency and U.S. foreign policy.

In July 2015 Donald Trump disclosed 515 U.S. and foreign corporations or partnerships in which he was either president, partner, chair, director, secretary, member and/or shareholder.

Forbes, 17 August 2015:

Under “Our Hotels” on the Trump Hotel Collection website, it lists six domestic hotels and six international hotels…..

The other hotels abroad are in Toronto, Doonbeg, Ireland, Vancouver, and Baku, Azerbaijan. (Toronto and Vancouver also have a Trump Tower.)

On the website for the Trump Real Estate Collection, nine international properties are listed, including two Trump Towers in India and one in Istanbul, another in Uruguay and another in the Philippines, as well as a Trump World in South Korea, among others.

Donald Trump has an interest in more than 30 U.S. properties, roughly half of which have debt on them according to The New York Times on 20 August 2016:

Debt on properties Mr. Trump owns or leases

PROPERTY	LOCATION	DEBT OUTSTANDING
40 Wall Street	Manhattan	157,400,000
Trump International Hotel*	Washington	127,000,000
Trump National Doral golf resort	Miami	125,000,000
Trump Tower	Manhattan	100,000,000
Trump International Hotel	Chicago	45,000,000
167 East 61st Street	Manhattan	14,500,000
Trump Park Avenue	Manhattan	12,495,000
Trump National Golf Club	Colts Neck, N.J.	11,700,000
4-8 East 57th Street "Niketown"	Manhattan	10,600,000
Seven Springs estate	Mount Kisco, N.Y.	8,000,000
Trump National Golf Club Washington	Potomac Falls, Va.	7,600,000
Trump International Hotel and Tower	Manhattan	7,000,000
Trump International Hotel**	Las Vegas	3,200,000
1094 South Ocean Boulevard	Palm Beach, Fla.	250,000
124 Woodbridge Road	Palm Beach, Fla.	250,000

*This construction loan was for $170 million. The Trump Organization and Times sources confirm roughly $127 million has been drawn down on.
**This loan was worth $110 million in 2010. The Trump Organization says a Trump entity is responsible for $3.2 million of the debt outstanding. The Times could not confirm this.

Debt associated with Mr. Trump's limited partnerships/investments

PROPERTY	LOCATION	PRC  OWNED	DEBT OUTSTANDING
1290 Avenue of the Americas	Manhattan	30	950,000,000
555 California Street	San Francisco	30	589,000,000
Starrett City / Spring Creek Towers	Brooklyn	4	410,000,000

Other:

An internal Trump Organization corporate loan, which Mr. Trump says is worth more than $50 million.

Sources: RedVision Systems, Securities and Exchange Commission, New York Times, Bloomberg data, Trump Organization.

The New York Times compiled these debt estimates using bank documents, public filings and through interviews with the Trump Organization and people familiar with the debt who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on the record about it.

The bulk of these liabilities appear to consist of mortgages maturing between 2016 and 2029.

The Washington Post, 16 September 2016:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection records, compiled by ImportGenius.com since 2007, give us a look at what has been imported by many of the businesses that are owned by Trump or use his name via licensing deals.

Trump has imported from the countries coloured red and many of the products bearing Donald Trump’s name appear to come from low-wage countries in East Asia.

Vodka

Trump licensed his name to the Israeli vodka after a 2011 legal battle. Unlike the original Trump vodka made in Holland, the new version was popular as one of the few liquors that’s kosher for Passover.

Barware

Made by a crystal company in a small town in Slovenia, its first entry into the U.S. market.

Ties

Made in countries such as China and sold on Amazon.com in nearly 200 patterns and sizes.

Mirrors

Made in China.

Accessories

Including cuff links, belts and eyeglasses made in China and other countries.

Fragrance

Trump’s cologne has been manufactured in and out of the United States.

Clothing

Trump makes his clothing line abroad. The manufacturers are generally scattered throughout East Asia and Central America.

Chandeliers and lamps

Some of these products retail for more than $4,000. Made in China.

Furniture

Trump Home sells furniture to consumers made in Germany and Turkey, but his own hotels often get furniture from massive distributors such as the multinational IHS Global Alliance.