Australia considers first new coal port for 25 yrs

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia, the world's biggest per-head greenhouse-gas polluter, is considering its first new coal export port for 25 years, despite official efforts to curb coal-fired carbon emissions to fight climate warming.

Just days after green activists disrupted the world's biggest coal port north of Sydney, demanding tougher climate action, the premier of Queensland state said she was looking at a "trifecta" of options for new coal ports in the tropical state's north.

"The project is expected to create around 2,200 jobs during construction and some 760 permanent jobs during operation," Anna Bligh told lawmakers on Tuesday, saying the port would help accelerate exports from the Bowen, Galilee and Surat coal basins.

The centre-left Labor national government will on Wednesday unveil an options paper for how a carbon-emissions trading scheme could reshape the A$1 trillion ($972 billion) economy to make it less reliant on coal-fired electricity for energy.

But Bligh said her government was considering a A$5.3 billion proposal by Canada-listed Waratah Coal for a new mine near Alpha, in the Galilee basin, producing 25 million tonnes of thermal coal a year for export, mainly to Japan and South Korea.

A new coal port would also be built near Shoalwater Bay, between Rockhampton and Mackay, on the central Queensland coast, with capacity of 100 million tonnes a year.

A second Bowen Basin Growth project by BHP Billiton-Mitsubishi Alliance would open two new mines at Daunia and Caval Ridge, helping boost exports by 20 million tonnes.

And a third proposal was for a 30 million tonne-a-year open-cut mine near Wandoan by Xstrata, Bligh said.

Australian Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is expected to include fuel on Wednesday to make the emissions trading scheme as broad as possible on start-up in 2010.

But her paper will not have any short or medium-term emissions targets, with those due later this year.

Instead, the paper will provide direction for a trading scheme that will be among the world's most comprehensive, with the government to offer payments to motorists and households compensating for the inevitable price rises the regime will place on top of inflation, already racing at 16-year highs.

($1=A$1.03)

(Reporting by Rob Taylor, editing by Mark Bendeich)