 Part of the Stockton Opencast Mine | |
| Location | |
|---|---|
  Stockton Mine Stockton Mine is in the West Coast Region | |
| Country | New Zealand |
| Coordinates | 41°40′05″S171°52′01″E / 41.668°S 171.867°E |
| Production | |
| Products | Coal |
Stockton Mine, on the Stockton Coal Field, is New Zealand's largest opencast mining operation. The entrance to the mine is at the former settlement of Stockton.
The coal field is situated between 5 and 10 kilometres linear distance south west of Stockton. The southernmost part of the coal field is only 5 km away from the historic mining town of Denniston. The elevation of the coal field varies between 500 and 1100m above sea level.
The Stockton coal field dips to the Northeast with approximately the same dip as the Denniston Coal Field, 15 km to the south. Both fields contain Bituminous Hard Coking Coal.
The extracted coal is transported from the mine to an aerial ropeway near Stockton. The coal is transported to Ngakawau using this ropeway, doing away with the dangerous railway operation that plagued the Millerton and Denniston Inclines. From Ngakawau, most of the coal is transported by rail to Lyttelton, where it is exported via ship to steel makers in Japan, India, China, South Africa and Brazil. Parcels of coal are barged from Westport to Port Kembla, New South Wales in Australia. [1]
The Stockton mine railway was, in 1908, New Zealand’s first electric railway. It carried coal from the Westport-Stockton Coal Companies mine to the NZR railhead at Ngakawau on the West Coast of the South Island from 1908 to 1953, when it was replaced by an aerial cableway. The line was 10.5 km long, with 2.4 km in two long tunnels. The system used 275 v DC from a low overhead line via trolley poles, and 915 mm gauge track. The seven locos were of low built "mine" type. [2]
The mine was operated by State-owned Solid Energy in a partnership agreement with Downer Australia. Solid Energy obtained the Stockton Coal Mining Licence (CML) in 1987 for a period of 40 years. in 2015, Solid Energy was placed into voluntary receivership. In 2016 Talley's, in a joint purchase with Bathurst Resources, announced they would purchase Stockton and the former Solid Energy mines at Rotowaro and Maramarua. [3] The sale, to BT Mining, went through in 2017. [3]
After concerns were raised about the environmental performance of Solid Energy, particularly at Stockton, in 2006, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment proposed in 2008 to undertake a review of its environmental management. [4] While the Stockton mining had created local jobs, the environmental impact has created some resistance against extending the operation to include the proposed Cypress Mine at Happy Valley. This led to the formation of the Save Happy Valley Campaign (SHVC).
As a result of 120 years of mining on the plateau, Stockton produces about 15,000 tonnes of acid mine drainage a year, which costs $3 million to $3.5 million to treat annually. The drainage was expected to continue until about the year 2100, and the treatment costs were anticipated to increase when the mine eventually closed, with the Government total liability estimated at $83 million in 2020. [5] In 2022, a bituminous geomembrane lined storage area was installed to safely contain mining byproducts as the site prepares for eventual closure. [6]
Denniston is a small settlement, 15 kilometres east of Westport, on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is situated on the Denniston Plateau, 600 metres (2,000 ft) above sea level in the Papahaua Ranges.
Waimangaroa is a small town located on the West Coast of New Zealand.
The Midland line is a 212 km section of railway between Rolleston and Greymouth in the South Island of New Zealand. The line features five major bridges, five viaducts and 17 tunnels, the longest of which is the Otira tunnel. It is the route of the popular TranzAlpine passenger train.
Solid Energy was the largest coal mining company in New Zealand and is a state owned enterprise of the New Zealand Government.
Millerton is a small settlement in the northwestern South Island of New Zealand in the West Coast region. It is in the Papahaua Ranges, around 33 kilometres by road north of Westport, via SH67 from Westport to Karamea.
The Seddonville Branch, later truncated as the Ngākawau Branch, is a branch line railway in the West Coast region of New Zealand's South Island. Construction began in 1874 and it reached its terminus at the Mokihinui Mine just beyond Seddonville in 1895. In 1981 it was closed past Ngākawau and effectively became an extension of the Stillwater–Westport Line, since formalised as the Stillwater–Ngākawau Line.
Hector and Ngakawau are two lightly populated settlements located at the mouth of the Ngākawau River in the West Coast region of New Zealand. Both settlements are situated on State Highway 67 between Westport and Karamea. Despite a low population, many of the workers at New Zealand's largest open-cut coal mine at Stockton choose to live at these places and shuttles frequently operate between the two places.
Rotowaro was once a small coal mining township approximately 10 km west of Huntly in the Waikato region of New Zealand. The town was built especially for miners houses, but was entirely removed in the 1980s to make way for a large opencast mine.
The Cypress Mine is a proposed extension to the open cast coal mine the Stockton Mine’s operational area, to the east into the Upper Waimangaroa Mining Permit area, on the West Coast of New Zealand.
State Highway 67 (SH 67) is a New Zealand state highway located in the northern parts of the South Island of New Zealand. It is 51.2 km long usually on the coast and connects SH 6 with the settlement of Mokihinui. It used to be 96 kilometres long and ran the entire length of the road from Westport to Karamea The highway and its spur serves the large West Coast town of Westport and lies entirely within the Buller District.
Mining in New Zealand began when the Māori quarried rock such as argillite in times prior to European colonisation. Mining by Europeans began in the latter half of the 19th century.
The Ngakawau Restoration Project is a proposed hydro scheme planned to divert acid mine drainage from coal mines to an ocean outfall to restore water quality of the Ngākawau River, in the northern section of the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. The project is a configuration of the Stockton Plateau Hydro Scheme being developed by Hydro Developments (2013) Limited. Project information can be found at https://hydrodevelopments.co.nz
The Ngākawau River is a river of the West Coast Region of New Zealand's South Island. It flows generally northwest, reaching the Tasman Sea at Hector.
Denniston Plateau is an 18 km long, 600–800 m high coalfield plateau in the Papahaua Range on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. A combination of impermeable rock, high rainfall, and shallow acidic soil has created a unique ecosystem of stunted trees and heath-like vegetation which is home to numerous endemic and undescribed species of plants and invertebrates. The plateau contains rich seams of high-quality coal, which led to the creation and abandonment of the mining towns of Denniston and Millerton, and the current Stockton Mine. Plans to create a new open-cast mine on the southern part of the plateau have become an environmental controversy.
The Escarpment Mine Project is an opencast coal mine at the Mount Rochfort Conservation Area on the Denniston Plateau on the West Coast of New Zealand in the vicinity of the disused Escarpment Mine. Bathurst Resources Limited intended to extract and export between one and four million tonnes of coal a year from open cast mining in an area of 200 hectares of conservation land on the southern Denniston Plateau. The mine would be the second largest opencast coal mine in New Zealand after Solid Energy's Stockton Mine on the Stockton Plateau. Environmental groups such as Forest and Bird and the West Coast Environment Network opposed the project.
The Mt William North Mining Project is a proposed coal mine planned for the West Coast Region of New Zealand.
The Koranui Incline was an inclined tramway on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand that, for four years from late 1882 to the end of 1886, brought coal from a mine high on Mt Frederick down to a railway line near sea level.
The Rockies Incline was an inclined tramway on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand that for ten years from 1925 to 1935 brought coal from the Westport Main Coal Company’s mine on the Millerton-Stockton plateau down to the Westport to Seddonville railway line near sea level.
The Charming Creek Tramway was a 9 kilometres (5.6 mi) long private bush tramway at Ngakawau in Buller District on the West Coast in New Zealand. It was used from 1903 or 1905 to 1958.
Bathurst Resources, along with a number of subsidiaries, is a coal mining company in New Zealand that was established in 2010.