Floods destroy key rail and road links for coal

AUSTRALIA’S coal industry may be disrupted for months after key rail and road links were washed away in the floods, while some infrastructure could take years to repair, authorities said yesterday.

The floods have swamped mines in Queensland state, paralysing operations that produce 35% of Australia’s estimated 259 million metric tons of exportable coal.

“There are some aspects of the rebuilding of infrastructure that will take, potentially, years,” Major-General Mick Slater, chief of the flood recovery operation in Queensland, told a news conference in flood-hit Rockhampton town.

“We still don’t know what it looks like underwater. I know that major roads, rail lines and bridges are all damaged.”

A survey showed the expectation among analysts was that recovery in coal output to pre-flood levels would take about three months.

Commodities form a large part of Australia’s $1 trillion economy and coal is the top export earner, forecast before the floods to earn nearly $50 billion in revenue in fiscal 2011.

“Until weather conditions improve, the situation could deteriorate further.

“Australia’s exports will likely take at least a couple of months to normalise,” Barclays Capital said in its daily commodities briefing.

The floods have affected an area the size of France and Germany combined. Three people have been killed and at least 40 towns are isolated or partially under water after the state’s worst floods in 50 years. Damage has been estimated at $5 billion.

A muddy inland sea has stranded some of Australia’s best beef cattle on tiny islands of high ground, destroyed wheat and sugar crops, and the wet season has only just begun.

Floodwaters were receding yesterday in some areas only to begin inundating new ones. Authorities said even once floods reached a peak, water would not significantly recede for almost a week, leaving the Capricorn highway, which runs through the main coal region, cut off.