LV-NG Project

The LV-NG Project is a proposal by the Latrobe Valley Next Generation consortium for a "$1bn plus coal export business" in the Latrobe Valley based on the use of a brown coal de-watering process. The companies listed as being in the consortium are Exergen, the Indian coal mining and power generation company Tata, the contracting company Theiss, the Japanese trading company Itochu and the engineering firm Sedgman.

Documents obtained by the Greens under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that in October 2009 the Victorian Transport Department was forshadowing the establishment of a major coal-based export industry in the State. In a submission to Infrastructure Australia, the government agency argued that there was a need for the development of the Port of Hastings as up to 6 million tonnes of brown coal, 2.4 million tonnes of coal-based fertiliser could be exported by 2020. It also foreshadowed the production of up to 4 million tonnes of liquid fuel from brown coal. In November 2010 a spokeswoman for Energy Minister Peter Batchelor told The Age that "there are currently no companies in Victoria that have a technically proven and commercially viable means of exporting brown coal at anything approaching the scale suggested in the report, and this is unlikely to change in the near future." The spokeswoman, Roxanne Punton, said that the state government had no plans for a coal allocation tender "at this stage".

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