An expansion of one of Australia’s largest coal mines, to mine coal until 2085 and produce 500 million tonnes of carbon pollution, more than Australia’s annual emissions from all sources. 

Whitehaven Coal’s Blackwater North coal mine is an expansion of the existing Blackwater coal mine, one of the largest coal mines in Australia. Whitehaven Coal  purchased the Blackwater mine, and its associated Blackwater North expansion from BHP Mitsubishi in 2024. Whitehaven entered into a joint venture with Japanese steel companies Nippon Steel and JFE Steel who are now joint owners of the Blackwater mine. 

The mine is located on Ghungalu country, near the town of Blackwater in Central Queensland’s Bowen Basin. The Blackwater North project would expand the Blackwater mine into previously unmined areas, digging new open cut pits and increasing the approved extraction limit of 16 million tonnes of coal a year to 22 million tonnes of coal a year. The project proposes to mine an additional 180 million tonnes of coal over a 60 year lifetime. 

The expansion would produce around 490 million tonnes of carbon emissions from the burning of the additional coal in addition to the direct emissions produced from the release of fugitive methane gas during the mining process. 

The existing Blackwater mine reported 643,597 tonnes of direct CO2e emissions to the Clean Energy Regulator in 2021-22, mostly from the release of fugitive methane gas produced from the mining of 14 million tonnes of coal. If this rate of coal production and emissions was maintained from 2029 (when the existing Blackwater mine would end) up until 2085, the proposed Blackwater North expansion would add more than 36 million tonnes of CO2e to Queensland and Australia’s emissions totals over that period. 

Blackwater North has applied for an Environmental Authority from the Queensland government. The project is also undergoing assessment under federal environmental law through referral under the EPBC ACt see documents here.