Pipeline for coal big threat to Lyttelton

Press, 10 January 1984, Page 1

Pipeline for coal big threat to Lyttelton

By

PETER COMER

The Port of Lyttelton will lose its biggest bulk export trade, coking coal for Japan, if a slurry pipeline project to load ships on the West Coast goes ahead.

About 220,000 tonnes of West Coast coal a year goes through the port, bringing the Lyttelton Harbour Board about $2 million in gross revenue, or 8 per cent of its total income.

The coal also accounts for about 30 per cent of all goods on the Midland rail line between Christchurch and Greymouth. Costs of transporting the coal by rail to Lyttelton for shipment had been high when the export coking coal trade started in 1979, and had increased each year, said the Minister of Energy, Mr Birch. He said studies had shown that pumping coal slurry into ships lying off the West Coast by pipeline and mooring buoy would be cheaper than sending the coal to Lyttelton by rail.

“A cheaper ship-loading route has to be found. Otherwise it is only a matter of time before the coal export programme becomes unprofitable and those mines affected have to close, because there is no demand for high-quality coking coal in New Zealand,” said Mr Birch. However, he said that no

firm decision had been made yet on whether to proceed with the slurry pipeline project at Ngakawau, a coal mining and sawmilling settlement 30 kilometres north of Westport.

A number of other options were still being considered. The Ngakawau project, which would involve mixing the coal with water and pumping it to a bulk carrier ship moored to a buoy offshore in deep water, would be a world “first.”

New Zealand already has two slurry pipelines, at Waipipi, north of Wanganui, and Taharoa, south of Raglan, which have been used since the early 1970 s to pump ironsand concentrate into tankers offshore. Mr Birch said that a similar slurry pipeline at Ngawakau was feasible.

“There is no doubt in the minds of those in charge of the project that they have found a system which can economically load our export coking coals directly offshore from Ngakawau,” he said.

The slurry method would also be less sensitive to changing oil prices and es-

calating wages, which had a “considerable impact” on the present rail system. The Lyttelton Harbour Board was still confident that a coal transport cost deal being negotiated between the board and the Railways Corporation could save the coking coal trade through Lyttelton, said the board’s general manager, Mr I. H. Brokenshire, yesterday.

Mr Brokenshire said that the Government was largely responsible for the present system of getting coal from the West Coast into bulk carriers at Lyttelton being a labour-intensive and costly “makeshift” method. “It is ‘makeshift’ in that the Government required, when the trade started in 1979, that the board did not spend large amounts of money,” said Mr Brokenshire.

“At that stage it was said that a decision on the future of the trade would be made after a year. A decision has not been made yet, and we have had to continue with the same method,” he said. It would be “less than fair” for the Government to implement the pipeline project without giving the present system a chance.

Concern had been expressed at the present cost of carrying the coal to Lyttelton by rail, but the Harbour Board had undertaken to prepare with the Railways Corporation a case for different methods and costings, were the coking coal trade to be increased to 500,000 tonnes a year instead of 220,000 tonnes.

A proposal put by the Harbour Board and the Railways Corporation to the Greymouth Coal Company, Ltd, involving annual ship-

ments totalling two million tonnes, had been well received, said Mr Brokenshire.

Instead of using the present labour-intensive methods, coal-carrying rail waggons could be brought right into the port area and be unloaded using a tipper or bottom-dumping bulk system, with underground hoppers, to link up directly with the board’s sophisticated conveyor belt and ship loader, which are now used to take coal from a big storage pile at Cashin Quay. “Coal is a very valued trade to this port. Obviously, we want to keep it,” said Mr Brokenshire.

Ironically, Lyttelton’s biggest export shipment of coking coal, 48,000 tonnes, is this week being taken aboard the bulk carrier General Aquinaldo. According to the Railways Corporation in Christchurch, coking coal comprised about 30 per cent of all goods carried on the Midland railway line between Christchurch and the West Coast in the year to March 31, 1983.

It accounted for 47 per cent of freight carried on the branch line from Westport to Stillwater. The secretary of the Canterbury branch of the National Union of Railwaymen, Mr P. S. Corliss, said that the union would be “horrified” if coking coal were taken off the Midland line.

The effect on jobs would be felt worst in Greymouth and Westport, where the livelihoods of up to 50 railwaymen could be jeopardised.

Coking coal was one of the mainstays of the Midland line, said Mr Corliss.