1.2.2.1.1 Awaba Colliery

Awaba Colliery is in the Newcastle Coalfields approximately 1 km from Awaba township and 5 km south-west of Toronto (Figure 6). It covers 2519 ha and is bordered to the north by Newstan Colliery, to the south-east by Myuna Colliery and to the west and south-west by Mandalong Mine, all of which are owned by Centennial Coal (Centennial Coal, 2012a, p. 7). Awaba Colliery is covered by Consolidated Coal Lease (CCL) 746 which provided the right for mining at Awaba Colliery (Centennial Coal, 2014a, p. 7), reported as being current by NSW Trade and Investment (Resources and Energy) as at November 2014 (at which time, the most recent update available was dated 1 April 2014) (NSW Trade and Investment, 2014, p. 7). No other information regarding the status of this lease is currently available (November 2014).

Mining has taken place at Awaba Colliery continuously since 1947. The mine was originally state-owned, and in 2002 was purchased by Centennial Coal Company Ltd (Centennial Coal; owned by Banpu Public Company Ltd) from the NSW Government. Although Centennial Coal’s operations were approved until 31 December 2015, coal resources were exhausted earlier than expected and mining ceased in March 2012 (Centennial Coal, 2012a, p. 5). Subsequently, all mine access points were decommissioned (Centennial Coal, 2012a, p. 6).

Historically, the underground mining operations at Awaba produced over 35 Mt of coal through the combination of bord-and-pillar and continuous miner techniques (Centennial Coal, 2012a, p. 5). Coal was mined from the informally named Great Northern and Fassifern coal seams (Centennial Coal, 2012a, p. 7). During its last full year of operations (2011) the mine extracted 0.9 Mt of coal (Centennial Coal, 2012a). The mine produced thermal coal, which was originally used entirely by the nearby Wangi Wangi Power Station for state-wide electricity generation. However, following its sale to Centennial Coal, some thermal coal was also exported for sale (Centennial Coal, 2012a).

Awaba Colliery operated under NSW Environmental Protection Licence 443 (Centennial Coal, 2014a, p. 9). Following its closure, Centennial Coal continues to undertake annual environmental reporting that focuses on various measures such as rehabilitation, monitoring, complaints, data trends, non-compliance and discrepancies between predicted and actual impacts of the project (Centennial Coal, 2014a, p. 8).