Upside seen in mining slump
The slowdown hitting WA’s mining sector makes right now the best time to get out and sell the WA resources industry to offshore investors, according to Mines and Petroleum Minister Bill Marmion.
Speaking ahead of a two-week tour to promote investment in the WA resources industry to the region, Mr Marmion toldWestBusiness this year’s slowdown in construction and mining sectors made it the perfect time to address some of the concerns of WA’s regional partners about investment in the State.
As part of the trip, Mr Marmion will address the Asia Mining Congress in Singapore this week and then the WA-Korea Energy and Resources (WAKER) Forum in Seoul, before checking on progress of Shell’s Prelude floating liquefied natural gas platform in Korea.
Mr Marmion said the fall in commodity prices had caused plenty of pain across the State, but made for some upside for future investment.
“Now is a very good time to invest in Western Australia, because I think that one of the things that has concerned people in the past has been the high cost of labour,” he said.
“But the cost of labour is dropping right off and that’s probably demonstrated by Sirius Resources’ Nova project. When it went out to tender it came in probably $100 million below what they anticipated — and I’ll be trying to sell that point.”
Mr Marmion will also visit China’s Shandong province and says he will push WA’s emerging uranium industry in light of China’s push to expand its nuclear power generation capacity.
One thing that won’t be on the formal agenda in China is the stalled talks over the Oakajee Port and Rail project, derailed by low iron ore prices and teething troubles at WA’s two existing magnetite projects in Karara and Sino Iron.
Mr Marmion said the State Government still wanted to support the emergence of a magnetite iron ore industry in WA.
He said WA was also keen to sell its initiatives in streamlining project approvals.
“I will be interested to see what our partners think of investing in WA, and feedback on problems ... because they’re things we can work on,” he said.
