Site owner appears to have no employees or premises and its phone is disconnected

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Plans to mine a vast coal deposit in north Queensland have been quietly revived, despite the failed sale of the project last year and the collapse of an associated company.

Guardian Australia understands that Wilton Coking Coal made two applications to the Queensland government for coal production permits in the Bowen basin in January.

The unlisted company has held exploration rights for about 12,000 hectares near Emerald since 2011. Plans for one of Australia’s largest coalmines, producing 10m tonnes a year, were abandoned during an environmental impact study process in 2015, when the coal price dropped to about half its current value.

The site in question was promoted in 2013 as containing 6.2bn tonnes of coal, although an ASX statement in 2017 said it had 2.6bn tonnes.

The move to revive mining plans, though at this stage on a smaller scale, will come as a surprise given that the project, once valued by its proponents at $800m, was subject to a failed sale last year. Gateway Mining was set to pay $50m for Wilton and another prospect site but the deal collapsed in December.

Wilton is wholly owned by Coal of Queensland, which no longer appears to have employees or its former East Brisbane headquarters. The company’s phone number has been disconnected. An associated company, Coal of Queensland Holdings, collapsed last year.

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Australian Securities and Investments Commission documents show Wilton is also linked to another parent company, Coal of Queensland Investment Holdings, recently renamed Futura Resources.

Each company now lists its headquarters as the office of a Sydney accounting firm, Enrizen, which did not respond to questions about future plans for Wilton.

Queensland’s environment department confirmed it was assessing the new applications to mine about 1.6m tonnes a year of metallurgical coal at a site of about 800 hectares.

“The scope of the project currently being assessed under the mining lease process is different to an EIS that was withdrawn in 2015,” a spokeswoman said.

Wilton’s exploration permit for the remainder of the site expires in December. It is unclear whether it plans to revive the bulk of the mine plan it abandoned in 2015.

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With most of the public focus on the undeveloped Galilee basin, the site of the Adani Carmichael mine and other potential projects backed by companies controlled by Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer, coal production has expanded in the adjacent Bowen basin.

While access remains a problem for Adani, projects in the Bowen have established links to rail lines and the coal export terminal at Gladstone. There are at least a dozen large operational mines in the vicinity, with three more in the construction phase.

A December BIS Oxford Economics report singled out the Bowen basin and predicted a further increase in activity over the next decade.

In Queensland, mining applications must be assessed by the environment department, which also decides whether the project has to undergo a full EIS.