By Angela Macdonald-Smith
Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Australia’s national competition regulator refused interim approval for a six-month extension of a system used at a Queensland coal-export harbor to manage ship queues, saying miners need to find a long-term solution.
The queue system used at the Dalrymple Bay coal terminal was intended to be a short-term measure and its extension isn’t in the public interest, Graeme Samuel, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, said today in an e-mailed statement.
Bottlenecks at Australian ports have helped constrain supplies of the fuel to Asian customers, contributing to record prices earlier this year and increasing costs for mining companies. When the regulator last approved the queue mechanism at Dalrymple Bay in March, it said the authorization was for “a limited period only.”
Continued use of the system “has the potential to result in insufficient investment in the coal chain and substantial losses in export revenues,” Samuel said in today’s statement.
The coal terminal at Dalrymple Bay, used by mining companies including Xstrata Plc and Rio Tinto Group, is owned by Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Group. The regulator first authorized the use of the ship queue arrangement three years ago.
Terminal users may re-submit a request for interim authorization of the queue management system once they have developed a long-term solution for reducing ship waiting times, Samuel said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith in Sydney at amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net
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