CS Energy hints at ‘legal proceedings’ amid release of reports into Callide failures

State-owned company CS Energy has issued vague warnings of ‘legal proceedings’ amid the release of two major reports into catastrophic failures at Callide Power Station.

Beleaguered state-owned company CS Energy has issued vague warnings of “legal proceedings” amid the release of two major reports into catastrophic failures at Callide Power Station.

And executives of the company have used a bizarre press conference where they refused to take questions to absolve ministers Mick de Brenni and Cameron Dick of blame and instead point the finger at their joint venture partner IG Power.

The release of the Brady report into the 2021 explosion of Callide C3 and a separate report into the cooling tower collapse at Unit C4 came just hours before Mr de Brenni was due to deliver a keynote energy speech at the Queensland Media Club.

CS Energy chair Adam Aspinall issued a full mea culpa on behalf of the company, apologising to workers, the government and Queenslanders for “not having maintained the world class performance” expected.

Two major reports have been released into catastrophic failures at Callide Power Station. Picture: Steve Vit

“Despite no one being injured as a result of these incidents, there are unacceptable outcomes for the people of Queensland who trusted CS Energy to maintain these assets,” he said.

“Working within the constraints of the Callide C joint venture has further complicated CS energy’s operations.”

Mr Aspinall, who replaced former Brisbane Lord Mayor Jim Soorley as CS Energy’s chair last year, then moved to concede the written briefings provided to the government in 2021 when Unit C4 exploded was “ambiguous”.

“I acknowledged that the information which CS Energy used to brief the government was ambiguous and did not include commentary on the maturity of CS Energy’s process safety management systems or details of the maintenance backlog,” he said.

“For this I also extend my apologies to the government. I confirm that all funding requests for maintenance and capital expenditure on our generation assets have been approved unadjusted by shareholding ministers.”

CS Energy chief executive Darren Busine, who replaced Andrew Bills last year, said the Brady Heywood report were “consistent with CS Energy’s technical report” released in February.

He said while the report showed a “lack of maintenance did not cause the incident” CS Energy had “areas of improvement to ensure we operate and maintain our assets to world class standards”.

Mr Aspinall acknowledged CS Energy had damaged the trust of Queenslanders and the government through the two incidents at Callide C.

Neither of the executives took questions from journalists, with Mr Aspinall citing “legal proceedings”.

CS Energy Chairman Adam Aspinall (right) and CEO Darren Busine. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

CS Energy fought for months in court to keep Dr Sean Brady’s report from public view. It was revealed in Federal Court CS Energy had engaged lawyers to then hire the investigators, ensuring the findings were covered by legal privilege.

It has now been revealed Norton Rose Fulbright, on behalf of CS Energy, also engaged HartzEPM to investigate the partial collapse of Unit C3 cooling towers in October 2022.

Callide C3 cooling tower collapse

Unfavourable water chemistry leading to the premature critical defects of the wooden structure was the root cause of the collapse.

Investigators also found the structure was riddled with loose nuts on the foundation bolts, loose and ungrouted anchor plates on its main bracing elements among other construction issues.

Minister Mick de Brenni in Brisbane. Picture: John Gass

HartzEPM found there was no clear program to comprehensively inspect and maintain the cooling towers.

Access to part of the structure was also obstructed so routine inspection and maintenance had “not generally been available” in that area.

But it was “not impossible” to do so and could have been done by shutting down parts of the cooling tower.

Investigators found this “would require a capital commitment to undertake this work, together with small loss of generating capacity while inspection, maintenance and/or refurbishment is carried out”.

Brady report into Callide C4

The Brady report into the explosion at Callide Unit C4 found former chief executive Andrew Bills was aware of the concerns of a high-ranking executive that an incident at the power station was “quite possible” amid a lack of maintenance.

This Process Safety Specialist, in their exit interview warned “the lack of maintenance at Callide over the last few years, pushing out overhaul dates, ageing plant and budget restrictions, four fires in five months and several managers over the past few years is a concern”.

They advised that they had raised these concerns through “conversations with a number of people” and were “so worried for Callide”.

According to the Brady report “meeting notes record that the interviewer met with the CS Energy CEO on the same day and provided the information from the interview, and that the CEO was ‘concerned regarding comments on Process Safety at Callide and will investigate further’”.

Dr Brady concluded the C4 incident was traceable to a “failure to implement effective process safety practices”.

“The failure to implement effective process safety practices was not unique to the incident on 25 May 2021. Rather, it was consistent with an organisation that did not value or practise effective process safety,” he wrote.

Originally published as CS Energy hints at ‘legal proceedings’ amid release of reports into Callide failures