To make the 6am shift, workers at the Myuna coal mine near Newcastle rely on an early night’s sleep. But for the past week, that sleep has not come easily. Worries have come instead. “Where are we going to go? What are we going to do?” asks Jason Thoroughgood, 57, who has worked here for more than four decades. “It’s the last thing I think of at night, and the first thing I think of in the morning.”
Thoroughgood is one of nearly 300 workers whose livelihoods are on the line, caught in the crossfire of a corporate stoush between the mine’s owner, Centennial Coal, and its sole customer, Origin Energy, over the price of coal for the Eraring power station. Unless a deal is reached soon, Centennial says the site could close for good, leaving its workforce to face having to re-skill, uproot themselves and their families for jobs further away in the Hunter Valley, or find employment on a fly-in-fly-out basis.
“I’ve been here since I was 16 – straight from school to the mine,” Thoroughgood says.
“I’m getting towards the end of my career, but I’ve still got years to go, and to see the younger kids going through all this mental angst, too, it’s just terrible.”
Since it was built in the 1980s, Myuna Colliery on the shores of Lake Macquarie has had one purpose: piling black coal onto a conveyor belt to feed the hungry furnaces of nearby Eraring, the giant 2880-megawatt generator that powers the state of NSW. But the ongoing shift to cleaner energy sources and the deteriorating reliability of Eraring’s ageing equipment mean its years left in the grid are numbered. Origin has said it wants to close Eraring as soon as it can do so responsibly without worsening the threat of electricity spikes or blackouts. Last month, the company agreed to a reprieve, extending it out to 2029, to buy NSW more time to connect more renewable generation, storage and power lines to help compensate for its exit.
But the lifeline for Eraring hasn’t trickled down to the underground mine at Myuna, despite the two sites being linked by a dedicated conveyor belt just eight kilometres long.
Talks between Origin and Centennial over the next coal contract have hit an impasse: Origin has made two offers over the past week, and eventually agreed to Centennial’s demands for a deal that extends out to 2029 to give the mine more certainty. But the power and gas giant says Centennial is demanding prices that are far too high – well above others in the market – and would cost $50 million a year more than coal it could source from other mines in the area.
Origin says it is not its responsibility to cover the costs of a loss-making operation, and warns Centennial’s demands would “undermine our ability to operate Eraring sustainably”. It also accuses Centennial of failing to adequately prepare and plan for the transition of its workforce, as Origin had done for its staff at Eraring.
“The cost of operating Myuna is a matter for Centennial and its parent company, Banpu, a company of substantial size and profitability,” says a spokesperson. “Origin and NSW households and businesses cannot be expected to wear those costs.”
Centennial, a subsidiary of Thai energy giant Banpu, counters this by arguing its coal prices need to be higher because Myuna is “captive” to Eraring because the site is landlocked and unable to transport any of its production to other customers or to the port to ship overseas. Despite Origin agreeing to roll over its existing terms and conditions until Eraring closes in 2029, the offer still falls short, according to Centennial, as it meant Myuna would continue losing $1 million a week. The coal supplier insists it chose to absorb losses in earlier short-term contracts it struck with Origin just to keep its people employed, with an “expectation” that once there was greater certainty around Eraring’s lifespan, a more sustainable agreement would follow.
“This offer does not provide a viable pathway for the continued operation of the mine or the security of the workforce and community that depend on it,” Centennial managing director Craig Gillard says.
While Centennial’s Myuna and Mandalong mines were historically Eraring’s top suppliers by far, today they account for less than 20 per cent of all the coal burned at the plant. Because they are older, underground mining operations, the coal extracted at the mines is generally more expensive than that of newer, open-cut mines. Origin has been sourcing greater volumes of coal via rail from other mines across the Hunter – a push that accelerated following crippling production issues that curtailed Centennial’s deliveries in 2022 and forced Origin to scramble for alternative supplies just as prices were soaring from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which soon flowed through to power bills.
Trade unions are backing a campaign to keep Myuna open, including the Mining and Energy Union, Electrical Trades Union, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and Collieries Staff and Officials Association.
“We call on all parties, including the state and federal governments, to put their heads together and come to a genuine, commercially sustainable agreement that keeps Myuna operating alongside Eraring,” says Robin Williams of the Mining and Energy Union.
Federal Labor MP for the Hunter, Dan Repacholi, has also stepped in, calling for Origin and Centennial to “cut the B-S” and come to a workable agreement.
“There are 300 jobs at stake for men and women who risk their lives every day to supply the coal to Eraring to create the power to NSW that we know we all currently need … and they are being caught up in corporate jargon” Repacholi says.
“Origin needs to give a bit more and work a bit more with Centennial to look after these workers, plus the thousands of others who will be affected if this work is not happening in the area.”
Luke Baker, who has worked in Myuna’s underground mine for 11 years, says the support from the community has been humbling as he and his workmates face another period of anxiousness and uncertainty.
“My daughter has just started high school, my parents are only getting older, and our job prospects are such that we will have to move away, or I will have to do FIFO,” he says.
“There’s a twist in my guts that won’t go away.”
Myuna’s miners know the era of coal-fired power is drawing to a close in Australia, he adds, but they are hoping for a bridge to what may come next. Centennial’s plan to restart the export-focused Newstan coal project nearby in 2029 offers a possible lifeline for redeployment, provided the workforce can hold on long enough. As Baker puts it: “The benefit of time could be quite profound here.”
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Nick Toscano is a business reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X or email.