.svg)
The Escarpment Mine Project is an opencast coal mine at the Mount Rochfort Conservation Area on the Denniston Plateau on the West Coast of New Zealand in the vicinity of the disused Escarpment Mine.[1] Bathurst Resources Limited (through its subsidiary company Buller Coal Limited) intended to extract and export between one and four million tonnes of coal a year from open cast mining in an area of 200 hectares of conservation land on the southern Denniston Plateau.[2] The mine would be the second largest opencast coal mine in New Zealand after Solid Energy's Stockton Mine on the Stockton Plateau.[3] Environmental groups such as Forest and Bird and the West Coast Environment Network opposed the project.
Mining started in late 2014.[4] However, Bathurst suspended mining in 2016, in response to the closure in June of the Holcim cement works at Cape Foulwind, its main customer for the 35,000 tonnes of coal produced annually at the Escarpment mine, and the low international prices for hard coking coal.
- ^ New Zealand Topographical Map (Map). 1–50:000. Topo50. LINZ. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
- ^ Smellie, Pattrick (26 August 2011). "Bathurst wins consents for Escarpment mine above Westport". Business Desk. Retrieved 17 April 2012.
- ^ Mussen, Deidre (29 October 2012). "Escarpment Mine: Environment Court Hearing Starts". The Press. Retrieved 28 November 2012.
- ^ "Escarpment". Bathurst Resources. Retrieved 8 December 2020.