Anglo American's Australian Drayton South coal project in the Upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales has once again been rejected by the state's planning commission, the Planning Assessment Commission said Thursday.
The project, which was to extract 74.9 million mt of run-of-mine coal over a 15-year period at a rate of approximately 6.4 million mt/year, was not in the public interest, PAC said.
Anglo American had hoped to extend operations from the neighboring Drayton mine to Drayton South but had to close the Drayton mine in September 2016 as it was mined out and the company was facing difficulties in gaining the extension approval.
Anglo American has recently divested its Australian coal operations, with sales including its Dartbrook project to Australian Pacific Coal, its Callide thermal coal mine in Queensland to Batchfire Resources, and its Foxleigh mine, also in Queensland, to Middlemount South.
