Burton ML70109

 coal mine  Add category

 Upload a photo

This is mining lease ML70109 which is for the Burton coal mine that is owned 95% owned by Peabody Energy after they purchased Germany's RAG holding in the mine. Thiess designed, constructed, and has a life of mine contract to operate the mine. ML70109 falls under permit ID 109602, permit name BURTON which was approved December 21, 1994 with an expiry date of December 31, 2022. The approximate area is 5098 hectares and the authorized lease holder name is Peabody (Burton Coal) PTY Limited. This was the first lease for Burton to mine the Burton Pit which is at the northmost part of the lease, and it includes the original haul road to the rail loading area. Since then other mining leases have been approved as mining continued southwards along the resource.


First coal at Burton was produced in 1996 and it has a production capacity of around 4.5 million tonnes per year of mostly high quality coking coal for export. Typcial current production is over 3 million tonnes per year. 2 of Burton’s satellite pits both broadmeadow and Wallanbah have ceased mining and a rehabilitation program has been initiated to decommission those mined areas. Current focus for Burton is the Burton Widening Project for the original Burton Pit which Peabody is looking to modify the terrace method to a depth around 240 meters at the highwall, a first for Australia. The mining target is the Burton seam which is an 11 meter thick coalescence of the Leichhardt and Vermont seams.

The coal resources targetted by Burton are hosted in the Permian Rangal Coal Measures. The main Leichhardt and Vermont coal seams coalesce over much of the area to form the 11m-thick Burton seam, while the Burton Rider seam is developed immediately above this in its central part. The coal measures dip at 8–32° towards the east.

Mineable in-situ reserves are 54.6Mt to a depth of 80m and 65.8Mt to a depth of 100m. The deposit contains both opencut and underground coal resources and Burton was one of the first mines to utilize the terrace mining method to extract steep coal seams. Opencut coal resources in the Burton seam occur along a 16km strike length and are adequate to support a 12-year mine life, with at least the same again in underground resources. The company also controls the adjacent Plumtree and Kerlong resources, which have not yet been exploited.

All run-of-mine coal is cleaned before transport by rail to Dalrymple Bay for export. Raw coal is crushed to –50mm, with prime hard coking coal recovered using dense medium cyclones. Middlings from this circuit are re-treated to produce thermal coal. Variable amounts of coking coal product can be diverted into the thermal coal to enhance it, if needed. Fine raw coal is handled in spirals and Jameson flotation cells to produce further prime hard coking coal. The products are dewatered in centrifuges and a belt filter before being recombined into the coking and thermal products.