The underground blaze forced operations to halt in March, which the buyer said was grounds to withdraw under the contract.<\/p>\n
But Anglo American disputed this, and said it would seek damages for “wrongful termination” of the sale.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Anglo American technicians stand outside Grosvenor Mine Shaft 5.\u00a0 (Supplied: Anglo American)<\/p>\n
In a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, Peabody demanded its full deposit of $113 million be “returned without further delay”.<\/p>\n
It said it had received nearly $44 million from Anglo since the termination.<\/p>\n
Dispute follows ‘significant’ drop in coal value<\/p>\n
Queensland University of Technology professor Robert Perrons said there was an industry expectation the arbitration would continue until the end of 2026.<\/p>\n
He believed Peabody, a considerably smaller company than Anglo, had wider concerns about the investment.<\/p>\n
“Since they penned the deal, not only has the coal price dropped significantly, but the word on the street is that the [metallurgical] coal price will continue to slide into 2026 and then stay there for an extended period of time,” Professor Perrons said.<\/p>\n
“In today’s context, clearly, they overpaid.”<\/p>\n
In addition to the underground blaze at the Moranbah North mine, fires have also occurred at Anglo American’s Grosvenor mine to the south on at least two occasions.<\/p>\n
Workers were injured in an explosion at the mine in 2020<\/a>, and investigations continue into a separate ignition in June last year<\/a> that forced operations to stop.<\/p>\n Remote control dozers seal the burning Grosvenor Coal Mine after an underground fire in June 2024. (Supplied: Anglo American)<\/p>\n Professor Perrons said Peabody would have “had its eyes open” to the fact that further fire events were possible when acquiring the assets.<\/p>\n Union seeks certainty for workers<\/p>\n In a statement, the Mining and Energy Union said the dispute should be resolved by the companies.<\/p>\n It said the focus should be on the “safe restart of operations” at the Moranbah North and Grosvenor mines to “drive certainty for our members, their families, and the local communities who rely on these jobs”.<\/p>\n Operation at the Grosvenor mine have been paused. (ABC Tropical North: Liam O’Connell)<\/p>\n Last month, Anglo announced it had made job cuts at its Brisbane office and in the Bowen Basin.<\/p>\n It declined to detail the number of redundancies, but Isaac Regional Council said more than 200 positions were affected.<\/p>\n In August, Anglo American CEO Duncan Wanblad said his company had made substantial progress towards a safe restart of the Moranbah North mine.<\/p>\n The company held a view that “lack of damage” to the mine and its equipment supported claims there had been no MAC.<\/p>\n “The unsolicited inbound interest expressed to us in recent months is testament to the strategic value of these assets,” Mr Wanblad said.<\/p>\n The company said in August it hoped to restart operations at Moranbah North later this year, with Grosvenor to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coal mining giant Anglo American has launched arbitration proceedings against Peabody Energy after the company pulled out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[62129,122817,49424,64,63,99,12334,122819,104257,27771,62131,122818,122820],"class_list":["post-194787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-anglo-american","tag-anglo-teck","tag-arbitration","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-coal-mining","tag-grosvenor","tag-middlemount","tag-mining-and-energy-union","tag-moranbah-north","tag-peabody-energy","tag-underground-ignition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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