Hail Creek Coal Mine

This article is part of the Global Coal Mine Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor.

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Hail Creek Coal Mine is an operating coal mine in Glenden, Queensland, Australia.

Location

Table 1: Project-level location details

Mine Name	Location	Coordinates (WGS 84)
Hail Creek Coal Mine	Glenden, Queensland, Australia	-21.484811, 148.37 (exact)

The map below shows the exact location of the coal mine:

Project Details

Table 2: Project status

Status	Status Detail	Opening Year	Closing Year
Operating	–	2003	2040 (planned)

Table 3: Operation details

Note: The asterisk (*) signifies that the value is a GEM estimated figure.

Capacity (Mtpa)	Production (Mtpa)	Year of Production	Mine Type	Mining Method	Mine Size (km2)	Mine Depth (m)	Workforce Size
–	10.808	2025	Surface	Open Pit	210.0	60.0*	1090.0

Table 4: Coal resources and destination

Total Reserves (Mt)	Year of Total Reserves Recorded	Total Resources (Mt)	Coalfield	Coal Type	Coal Grade	Primary Consumer/ Destination
89.0	2022	1500.0	Bowen	Bituminous	Thermal & Met	Terminal (Export)

Table 5: Ownership and parent company

Note: To access more comprehensive data on energy ownership, please visit the Global Energy Ownership Tracker.

Owner	Parent Company	Headquarters
Hail Creek Coal Pty Ltd	Marubeni Corp [12.0%]; Glencore PLC [84.7%]; small shareholder(s) [3.3%]	Switzerland, Japan

Table 6: Historical production (unit: million tonnes per annum)

ROM or Saleable	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
ROM	9.2	10.2	7.66	9.47	10.59	10.78	10.09	–	10.81

Reported Methane Emissions Data

Global Energy Monitor collates facility-scale methane emissions data reported by government and company sources collected in a systematic fashion. This mine is associated with the following methane emissions reports:

Table 7: Methane emissions

Reported Coal Mine Methane Emissions (thousand tonnes CO2 equivalent)	Reported Coal Mine Methane Emissions (thousand tonnes CH4)	Year of Reported Coal Mine Methane Emissions	Reported Coal Mine Methane Emissions (thousand tonnes) Reference	Reference type
23.584	1957.49	2024-25	​	national government data

Note: The above sections were automatically generated and are based on data from the Global Coal Mine Tracker May 2026 release.

Ownership Tree

This ownership tree is part of the Global Energy Ownership Tracker, a project of Global Energy Monitor.

Background

The Hail Creek mine is a surface mine, operated by Glencore, as part of a joint venture of Glencore, Marubeni Coal, and Sumitomo Corporation, producing 9.4 million tonnes per annum, near Clermont in the Bowen Basin of Queensland, Australia. The mine's previous owner, Rio Tinto, held a 71 percent interest in the mine and sold to "customers in Asia and Europe with up to 12 million tonnes of thermal coal per annum."According to the company, "Hail Creek Mine's resources were discovered in 1968 with project feasibility work completed in the 1970s. In 2001 Hail Creek Mine started construction and was officially opened in 2003."

On its website, Rio Tinto states that as of the end of 2008 the mine employed 436 people.

Rio Tinto states that "in 2008 the mine produced more than six million tonnes of hard and semi-soft coking coal. After being washed and prepared for sale, the coal is loaded onto trains for transportation 100km to the Dalrymple Bay Coal terminal where it is shipped to international customers. Hail Creek Mine had marketable reserves of 167 million tonnes as at 31 December 2008."

Coal from the mine is transported over 100km by train to the Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal for shipping overseas.

• Operator: Glencore
• Owners: Glencore (84.67%), Marubeni (12%) and Sumitomo (3.33%)
• Location: Glenden, Queensland, Australia
• Coordinates:-21.484811, 148.37
• Status: Operating
• Production: 9.4 mtpa
• Total Resource: 1500 million tonnes
• Mineable Reserves: 108 million tonnes
• Coal Type: Coking coal (Metallurgical & Thermal)
• Mine Size:
• Mine Type: Surface, opencast
• Start Year: 2003
• Workforce Size: 940
• Source of Financing:

Coal Mine Boundaries and Methane Sources

Global Energy Monitor researchers have identified coal mine boundary/boundaries and potential sources of coal mine methane (CMM) for this mine. These research results can be used to drive CMM attribution and mitigation efforts, particularly when combined with remotely sensed methane plume locations and mine ownership data. Explore the results with the embedded map at the top of this page by clicking on the mine boundary polygon or the CMM placemarkers to reveal more details. A detailed description of this research can be found in Coal Mine Boundaries and Methane Sources. This data is also available as a downloadable companion dataset to the Global Coal Mine Tracker and the Global Methane Emitters Tracker.

Table SMP1: Coal mine boundaries and methane sources data

ID	Mine feature category	Mine feature subcategory	Description	Coordinates precision	Data source date
M0046.B1	mine boundary	surface	Hail Creek coal mine boundary	extracted	2024-01-01 00:00:00

Table SMP2: Coal mine boundaries and methane sources data (continued)

Coal mine boundaries and methane sources were last researched for this mine on Jun 02, 2025

ID

Notes

M0046.B1

The boundary is the mining lease ML 4738 found in the Queensland Mining leases dataset https://web.archive.org/web/2/https://www.data.qld.gov.au/dataset/queensland-mining-and-exploration-tenure-series/resource/f87794b8-7b9a-4732-89bb-56ccb2228d27. This lease was also corroborated against the HCOC_ML4738 boundary shown in figure 4 on page 25 of the Hail Creek Environmental Assessment Report - Hail Creek Eastern Margin Extension Project from 1/2024 at https://web.archive.org/web/20240528022706/https://www.glencore.com.au/.rest/api/v1/documents/095ae370185b23a2d7b47779dc8b91a8/Hail+Creek+Eastern+Margin+Extension+Environmental+Assessment+Report.pdf. This figure also shows mining is occuring in the eastern half of the lease and exploration is occurring in the western half of the lease. The mining lease was granted on 12/15/1977 and expires on 12/31/2040. The area of the mining lease is 204 sq km.

Methane Plumes Detected Nearby

Global Energy Monitor researchers analyze satellite-detected methane plumes in order to determine whether they have been observed at or near the site of GEM energy assets. The satellite data provider creates imagery of individual methane plumes and estimates their emission rates at the time of observation. GEM has reviewed many of these plume detections against Google Earth imagery and GEM’s own energy infrastructure tracker data. The following table lists methane plumes which are associated with the energy asset or facility based on distance and manual review. (A full description of the analysis process is available in the Global Methane Emitters Tracker methodology wiki page.)

Table M1: Plume details

For additional details on this individual plume identification and others, see the Global Methane Emitters Tracker.

Observation date	Satellite data provider	Location of plume origin	Methane emissions rate	Additional plume information
2025-07-14T01:10:15+00	CarbonMapper, tan20250714t011015c43s4001-B	-21.47, 148.3836	1837.031 kg/hr	Queensland State Methane Observation 2025-07-14, 2

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Additional data

To access additional data, including an interactive map of world coal mines, a downloadable dataset, and summary data, please visit the Global Coal Mine Tracker on the Global Energy Monitor website.