Babcock Infrastructure Resumes Australia Coal Loading

By Angela Macdonald-Smith

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Babcock & Brown Infrastructure Group, owner of Australia’s second-biggest coal-export terminal, resumed loading ships today at the Dalrymple Bay port in Queensland after a stoppage caused by a tropical cyclone.

“The first vessel has berthed this morning, with the second about to berth, so we are back to loading ships,” Greg Smith, general manager of operations at the unit of Babcock Infrastructure that owns the port, said today by e-mail. BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance, which owns the neighboring Hay Point terminal, is yet to restart loading, BHP said.

Australian authorities evacuated resort islands off Queensland’s coast during the weekend and put emergency services on alert as Tropical Cyclone Hamish brought damaging winds and high seas. The storm has since abated to a low weather system and is continuing to weaken as it moves northwest back up the Queensland coast, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Rail deliveries of coal to both Dalrymple Bay and Hay Point, south of Mackay, remain disrupted after a train accident earlier in the week.

Coal rail deliveries, halted March 10 after a train derailment at rail company QR’s Coppabella yard in central Queensland, resumed yesterday afternoon before being stopped again, Smith said in an earlier telephone interview. The rail system supplying the port may be out of action until about 10 p.m. local time tonight, Smith said.

Damaged Locomotives

Rail deliveries to Hay Point are “restricted,” Samantha Evans, a spokeswoman for Melbourne-based BHP, said in an e-mail.

The Coppabella yard was open from about 7 p.m. until midnight yesterday to allow some trains to pass through, and was closed again for the removal of damaged locomotives and wagons, QR spokesman Garry West said in e-mailed comments today.

Work at the yard, the main staging point for coal trains in the regional rail system, may continue after it reopens, potentially causing further delays, West said.

At Gladstone, further to the south of Queensland, coal shipping is back to normal and rail deliveries are continuing, Evans said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Angela Macdonald-Smith in Sydney at amacdonaldsm@bloomberg.net