Rio Tinto Getting out of Coal Projects Platts reports world number three miner Rio Tinto has withdrawn from the port expansion project at Queensland’s Abbot Point, Australia.
The $9 billion project approved by the state government in December, was designed to up the port’s coal export capacity to 385 million million tonnes – a more than sevenfold increase from the current annual tonnage.
Platts quotes a Rio Tinto official as blaming “changes in the economic environment and the commitments required to progress this option” as reasons for pulling out and adding:
“Global economic markets have shifted to a period of significant uncertainty and we continue to see both a sustained upward pressure on costs and long timeframes for regulatory approvals,” the official said.