United Wambo Coal Mine

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United Wambo Coal Mine is an operating coal mine in Singleton, New South Wales, Australia.

Location

Table 1: Project-level location details

Mine Name	Location	Coordinates (WGS 84)
United Wambo Coal Mine	Singleton, New South Wales, Australia	-32.549369, 150.984787 (exact)

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

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Project Details

Table 2: Project status

Status	Status Detail	Opening Year	Closing Year
Operating	–	2020	–

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	5.667	2022	Surface	–	–	60*	500

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
67	2023	1270	Sydney	Bituminous	Thermal & Met	–

Table 5: Ownership and parent company

Owner	Parent Company	Headquarters
United Collieries and Wambo Coal	Glencore PLC [50.00%]; Peabody Energy Corp [50.00%]	USA, Switzerland

Note: The above section was automatically generated and is based on data from the GEM April 2024 Global Coal Mine Tracker dataset.

Coal Mine Background

The coal mine opened in December 2020 after the combination of the Wambo Mine and the United mine. The United mine began operations in 1989 and the Wambo coal mining operations were established in the late 1960's. There have been open-cut and underground works at both mines. Operations were suspended at the United mine in March 2010 with the mine entering into care and maintenance.

According to the Glencore website, "The current existing and approved Wambo open cut coal mine adjoins the United operations, and was planned to produce up to 8 Mtpa of run of mine (ROM) coal up to 2017. The combined Wambo underground and open cut operations, have approval to extract up to 14.7 Mtpa run of mine (ROM) coal, and to transport up to 15 Mtpa product coal via the approved train loading facility until 2025. Wambo has lodged a modification to development consent DA 305-7-2003, which includes an extension to the life of the open cut up to and including 2020, and an extension to the life of the underground operations to 2032.

In November 2014, a 50:50 Joint Venture between United Collieries Pty Limited (United Collieries) and Wambo Coal Pty Limited (Wambo Coal) was announced which, once commenced, will combine the extraction and exploration rights for a number of mining tenements at United and Wambo. Subject to receipt of all necessary approvals, the Joint Venture will look to develop the United Wambo Open Cut Coal Mine Project (the Project) that combines the existing open cut operations at Wambo with a proposed new open cut coal mine at United."

If the extension goes ahead the mines will operate for a further 23 years and extract a total of 150 million tonnes of coal.

The application was approved in 2019 "in an "unprecedented" move by the IPC [Independent Planning Commission], any coal extracted from the new 'super pit' near Singleton can only be exported to countries that have ratified the Paris Climate Agreement or have policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"A condition like this has never been imposed on an Australian coal mine in my experience," said Lock The Gate coordinator Georgina Woods."

Objection

Lock the Gate spokesperson, Georgina Woods, said, “With this new proposal, there would be 25 kilometres of nearly uninterrupted open cuts between Broke and Jerry’s Plains, straddling two major waterways and causing cumulative noise and air pollution."

Georgia Woods from campaign group, Lock the Gate, says, “This mine will increase harmful levels of particle pollution in the Hunter, which already regularly exceeds national air pollution guidelines... This mine is right in the central part of the Valley that is most badly affected by air pollution. Singleton residents will suffer as a result of this expansion."

Lock the Gate says that "the mine would still lead to nearly 260 million tonnes of additional greenhouse pollution in the atmosphere, which would have a direct impact on global warming. “Frankly, we don’t have confidence in the Department of Planning’s priorities when it comes to minimising greenhouse gas emissions from exported Hunter coal,” Ms Woods said.

“The Department has shown itself incapable of maturely dealing with this issue and piled pressure on the Commission to stop it from creating this modest requirement to address it.”

Ecological impacts

"On 7 December 2015, the Project was determined to be a Controlled Action requiring approval under the EPBC Act from the Commonwealth Minister for the Environment due to its potential impact on the following matters of national environmental significance: • Central Hunter Valley Eucalypt Forest and Woodland (a Critically Endangered Ecological Community (CEEC) listed under the EPBC Act) • regent honeyeater (a threatened species listed in the EPBC Act) • swift parrot (a threatened species listed in the EPBC Act) • spotted-tailed quoll (a threatened species listed in the EPBC Act) • a water resource."

On its website Lock the Gate says "Lock the Gate Alliance is accusing the Department of Planning of rubber-stamping a biodiversity offsetting stitch up to let the United Wambo mine clear over 200 hectares of a nationally critically endangered woodland despite warnings the ecological community could become extinct in a few decades.

The remnant proposed to be bulldozed for the new mine is in moderate to good condition, which means, according to the Commonwealth Government’s conservation advice it is “critical to the survival” of the community overall.

Lock the Gate estimates there has been cumulative clearing of over 3,000 hectares of the Central Hunter Valley Eucalypt Forest and Woodland for coal mines since 2007.

But last month the Department of Planning recommended the mine proceed because the proponent, a joint venture of Glencore and Peabody Australia, had an adequate offset package to compensate for the loss.

Lock the Gate says that the offset package being proposed by the company is incomplete, and up to a third of the area put forward by the company as compensatory habitat is their own mining pits with the promise they will be rehabilitated into the future."

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Additional data

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