Melbourne, Dec 18: Adani Monday said it has cancelled a 2.6 billion dollar contract with Australian mining services company Downer as part of a cost-cutting drive, a week after the Queensland government vetoed a concessional loan to the Indian giant for the controversy-hit Carmichael coal mine.
The split comes after Downer was the target of a nationwide activist campaign pressuring them to quit the 16.5 billion dollar project in central Queensland, the ABC News reported.
In a setback to India’s energy giant Adani, the newly- elected Queensland government last week vetoed a plan to give a 900-million dollar concessional loan for the construction of a rail line in the controversy-hit Carmichael coal mine project in Australia.
The Adani group had applied for the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) loan worth 900 million dollars for building the 388-km rail line to connect the major coal mine to the sea port.
The 16.5 billion dollar Carmichael coal mine project is one of the world’s largest. The move to cancel the contract raises further questions about the fate of the massive project, with Downer one of only two mine contractors — along with Thiess — considered capable of handling an operation producing up to 60 million tonnes of coal a year, the report said. Adani said in a statement that it is committed to the project and the split with Downer was “simply a change in management structure”. PTI
