Mine rehabilitation and financial assurance – the new regime in Queensland
Author: Johanna Kennerley, Senior Associate
On 15 February 2018, Queensland Government released the much anticipated Mineral and Energy Resources (Financial Provisioning) Bill 2018 (Bill). The Bill is substantially the same as the previous Mineral and Energy Resources (Financial Provisioning) Bill 2017 (2017 Bill), which lapsed due to the 2017 election.
The Bill proposes the introduction of two key changes to Queensland’s mine rehabilitation and financial assurance regime:
A revised financial assurance regime that seeks to minimise the financial risk to the State if mineral and energy resource tenure holders do not comply with their environmental management and rehabilitation obligations. The new regime proposes the creation of a pooled fund for financial assurance contributions, and a more flexible way to provide sureties; and
New mine planning obligations that focus on progressive rehabilitation throughout the entire life cycle of a mine.
Our previous newsletters (which can be found here) provide detailed summaries of the policies leading to this Bill.
The Bill has been referred to the Economic and Governance Committee, which is due to return its report to the House by 20 April 2018.
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