Greg Ansley: Resources boom mark two brings challenges

Greg Ansley. Photo / Supplied

This is the year that Australia begins to feel the joy and the burden of wealth.

Three decades on from the first great resources bonanza, boom mark two is exploding on a country that has yet to fully decide how to deal with the vast scale of investment and income that is driving its resource riches.

In poet Dorothy McKellar's sunburnt country of droughts and flooding rains, even bad turns to good: while coal production has been hit hard in Queensland by that state's devastating floodwaters, resulting shortages could force prices up.

On the other side of the continent, where temperatures in Western Australia's big Pilbara mining region will soar close to 40C over the next few days, eight huge LNG and iron ore projects are scheduled to come on line in the next four years.

Even with a bump in the road from last year's global crisis, resources kept the wolves from Australia's door and will continue to surge on rising global demand, especially from China.

Reserve Bank Governor Glenn Stevens told a Melbourne conference last month that Australia was living through an event in the global economy that had few, if any, parallels in human history.

He said that if, as was likely, China's growth remained at 7-8 per cent for the next few years, demand for iron ore and coal would rise "a long way" over the next couple of decades, pushed further by India.

And that would continue to lift Australian living standards: a shipload of iron ore that five years ago was worth about 2200 flat-screen TV sets was now worth about 22,000 sets.

Mining employs more than 600,000 Australians, comprises about 48 per cent of total exports, pays more than A$7 billion in royalties, and contributes A$4 of every A$10 of profit earned by the nation's companies.

Its LNG sector is also booming: the federal forecaster ABARE expects a six-year surge in exports, with gas exports almost doubling by 2014-15 on rising demand led by China and India, underwritten by up to A$200 billion ($263 billion) in new projects.

The scale of investment across Australia's mining and energy sectors is already staggering - most of it in Queensland and WA, but with A$80 billion either under way or in the pipeline in the emerging powerhouse of South Australia.

ABARE's most recent overview of major resources development projects, released in November, identifies a record A$132.9 billion in planned capital expenditure, an increase of 20 per cent since April.

This includes 72 advanced projects under construction or committed, spanning energy, minerals, infrastructure and processing, and reflecting, in part, the decision to go ahead with BG Group's Queensland Curtis Island LNG facility and Rio Tinto's plans to expand iron ore export capacity by 60 million tonnes over the next three years.

In the six months to October, five energy projects with a combined capital cost of A$2.5 billion were completed, the largest Rio Tinto's Claremont, Queensland, open-cut thermal coal mine.

Advanced energy projects include Gorgon's LNG project, a joint venture between Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobil and three minor Japanese investors, that at a capital cost of A$43 billion is Australia's largest-ever resources project.

It is scheduled for completion in 2015.

Major iron ore projects on the advanced list include BHP Billiton's A$5.9 billion WA iron ore rapid growth project, with an annual production capacity of 45 million tonnes, and Citic Pacific Mining's A$5.3 billion Sino iron project at Cape Preston in WA.

But behind the roar of the boom, Australia is struggling to manage its fortune.

The planned mineral resources rent tax - among the triggers that toppled former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd from power - remains a bitter political battle between the federal Government and major miners and the big mining states.

More significant are the fears of a two-speed economy, with lopsided growth favouring resource-rich states and sucking investment, capital and skills from less-endowed regions.

Statistics reflect the concern: more than 90 per cent - A$110 billion - of advanced minerals and energy projects are based in WA and Queensland, and population in the two states is increasing at about 2.5 per cent a year, almost twice the rate of other states.

This is exacerbating Australia's looming skills shortage, and potentially adding to the cost of doing business for resource players as well as other companies - and flowing across the Tasman to New Zealand.

Australian mines and downstream companies already employ thousands of expatriate New Zealanders and figures showing an increase in transtasman migration confirm the lure of higher wages.

South Australia, which this month signed a deal with the federal Government to attract skilled workers under a new migration plan, has already aggressively recruited in New Zealand.

Tens of thousands of workers across a broad span of skills and occupations must be found to build, man, manage and service the vast number of projects coming on stream.

A Future Directions International paper last September warned that A$280 billion worth of projects coming on line in WA were facing serious labour constraints.

By 2014 an extra 26,000 skilled workers could be needed. Within a further six years that could rise to 400,000 - a target that is likely to fall 150,000 workers short.

The answer so far has been to out-compete rivals by offering wages rising into six figures for skilled workers, a strategy that is now being seriously questioned as a long-term answer to labour shortages.

For Australia, managing wealth - rather than achieving it - is the challenge ahead.

DRIVING WEALTH

Major projects in the resources boom

* Gorgon LNG, WAA$43 billion

* BHP Billiton iron ore rapid growth project, WAA$5.7 billion

* CITIC Pacific Mining Sino Iron project, WAA$5.3 billion

* Hamersley Iron Brockman 4 iron ore mine, WAA$1.5 billion

* Rio Tinto open cut thermal coal mine, QldA$1.3 billion

* Xstrata Ulan West coal expansion, NSWA$1.1 billion