Situation:

A major energy company on the East coast of Australia was undertaking a feasibility study for an underground coal mine expansion. The coal would first need to be degassed in order to create a safe environment for the heavy mining equipment to work within. To degas the wet coal seams, significant volumes of water needed to be pumped out of the surface layers sitting above the coal seams. The project would require an integrated set of activities ranging from drilling, camp construction, gas flaring, surface facilities design and water handling.  Forecasted water volumes were determined by the sub-surface specialists and provided in a raw time based format. Given the expansive footprint of the growing mine site, water storage ponds were not co-located along side all the operational activity hubs. Significant volumes of water needed to be transported to ensure that water handling did not become a constraining factor to the integrated project schedule and no proposed solutions had been put forward to date. 

Task:

We were requested to analyse the geographic footprint of the mine site and subsequently formulate business case options that allowed for significant volumes of water to be transported in a way that was both safe and cost effective, with consideration given to both capital and operational expenditure. The business case needed to be underpinned by credible engineering based limiting factors and offer realistic projections of total installed costs or long term cost profiles.