Mega-trends and minerals: the next 30 years in Queensland’s resources sector

The Hon. Scott Stewart MP, Queensland Minister for Resources

Global mega-trends have shaped Queensland’s resources sector for more than a century: from gold rushes through oil shocks and now decarbonisation.

As a government, we are responding to these mega-trends. We are developing a 30-year vision and plan to meet and prosper from new emerging trends: the Queensland Resources Industry Development Plan. Industry 4.0 and automation; environmental, social and governance considerations including climate change; geopolitics — it’s all being factored in, and the final plan will set a path to a transformative but thriving future for the sector.

What has the development of the plan been telling us? In a world seeking to decarbonise, the long-term formation of our resources industry is likely to shift and transform. There will be a greater focus on new economy minerals such as copper, cobalt and vanadium as we transition to cleaner energy. However, the strong economic, social and governance credentials of Queensland and the quality of our metallurgical and thermal coal are likely to see demand continue for these resources for the foreseeable future.

The prices of both metallurgical and thermal coal have rallied to record amounts, which is expected to drive a strong recovery in our goods exports from 2021-22.

It will continue to be a strength for Queensland over the coming years.

Transitional fuel

Other opportunities lie in the role gas will play as a transitional fuel to a renewable energy future, by offering a reliable and dispatchable power supply during peak demand periods. Gas is also a vital feedstock for fertiliser production and for our manufacturers as we seek to grow our domestic manufacturing sector and reduce our dependence on imported product.

Queensland is the only state securing Australia’s east coast gas supply with exploration and production tenures set aside purely for the domestic market. We will ensure Queensland continues to develop critical infrastructure to service Queensland’s and Australia’s future resource supply needs. That’s why we’ve invested $5 million to investigate a potential pipeline and infrastructure to improve the delivery of Bowen Basin gas to the domestic and export markets.

As a previous Queensland Labor Government showed with the opening up of the Surat Basin a decade ago, the Bowen Basin could be a source of future gas projects and jobs for Queenslanders. The Bowen Basin pipeline also has the potential to make more gas available for Queensland manufacturers. The potential of hydrogen, and Queensland’s ambition to become a hydrogen superpower, offer opportunities for the gas sector to transfer its mega-project planning, design and construction expertise and experience to a fuel of the future.

The next phase

In this third decade of the 21st century, the next exciting phase for Queensland’s resources industry is in new economy minerals. The world’s attention and action on climate change offer us great opportunity, because we are blessed with fantastic deposits of the minerals needed to support decarbonisation and the world’s energy transition to clean energy - copper, cobalt and rare earth elements.

The Queensland Government is investing $23 million in our New Economy Minerals Initiative to encourage new exploration, reinvestigation of old mines and probing of the geological information government holds already to foster new discoveries, projects and jobs.

Construction will be underway on our first vanadium mine this year: Multicom’s Saint Elmo mine near Julia Creek: the first of a potential hub of vanadium projects in the North West Minerals Province.

This project is a milestone in a journey that began seven years ago with the Queensland Government’s North West Minerals Province Taskforce.

Importantly, this also lays the foundation for a potential next level new industry in Queensland, manufacturing vanadium redox flow batteries.

And beyond new mines, emerging technologies are being trialled for reprocessing of tailings to find secondary deposits and research is even being done into the potential use of plants to extract minerals, in a process known as phyto-mining.

ESG and technology

The global environmental focus, merged with shareholder and community attention on social and corporate governance, has elevated the importance of the triple bottom line, also known as ESG. Queensland is streets ahead of most of the competition on all three factors. Our corporate governance, labour market and environmental regulatory frameworks underpin strong ESG credentials. We just need to make sure the market is aware – and that includes investors.

Queensland is already marketing its ESG credentials to investors such as South Korean manufacturers seeking to buy into new economy minerals supply chains. Here again, new and emerging technology will be central. Increasingly, buyers and investors seek a digital document trail that includes production inputs like water and energy, and carbon emissions. Technologies like blockchain are being piloted to help miners efficiently track how they have met commitments to government, community and stakeholders like landowners and native title holders who are impacted by their operations.

Looking towards 2022 and beyond

This year marks a defining point for the Queensland resources sector. History shows that the sector has an immense propensity for change, and resilience in the face of that change. As this yearbook goes to print, the Queensland Resources Industry Development Plan draft is being released for more discussion and refinement.

Together industry, government and the community will set goals and a course for the next 30 years to drive the sector’s continuing transformation and growth in an ever-changing world. 