Czech energy tycoon Pavel Tykač lines up next move on Callide C power plant

Callide C power station. Picture: CS Energy

Czech energy heavyweight Pavel Tykač has won his bitter battle to keep control of a half-share in Queensland’s Callide C coal-fired power station – but the war with state-owned CS Energy is far from over.

As flagged by Margin Call a few weeks ago, Tykač’s Sev.en Global Investments (7GI) has finished negotiations with its former Chinese partners in the troubled power plant and arranged to pay off creditors, emerging this week as the sole half-owner of the main operating companies that run the plant.

And there’s plenty of trouble ahead for CS Energy, it appears. Not just because parts of the plant are still out of action following a new explosion in April. But rather because 7GI is now free to press on with pursuing the Queensland utility for the losses caused by the crippling failures in 2021 that put the plant out of operation for years.

There were few nods to a cooperative future with CS Energy, Callide’s operator, in 7GI’s statement on the subject on Thursday.

Rather, 7GI boss Alan Svoboda promised “robust oversight” of the way the plant was run, and warned that CS Energy’s role in the earlier failures – the explosion of a turbine in 2021 and the collapse of a cooling tower in 2022 – remain under investigation.

As do the “large losses” suffered by its owners as a result. What does that mean? A lawsuit, no doubt.

Armed with the damning report into CS Energy’s failings compiled by forensic engineer Sean Brady, 7GI is now well placed to pursue the matter through the courts.

It’s something that CS Energy has bitterly opposed all along, not least in its efforts to prevent the release of the Brady report to the public. Even a few weeks ago, when FTI Consulting’s John Parks took 7GI’s recapitalisation proposal to the federal court for approval, CS Energy were still complaining it should have been put to a vote of creditors instead.

And who might be the biggest of those creditors? CS Energy, of course.

Not that any of this is good news for Queensland households. They’ve already seen power bills blow out as a result of the Callide C catastrophe. Any payout on a compensation claim will undoubtedly wind up added onto the same place.

Even if 7GI is right, and the additional scrutiny on the plant’s operations and maintenance drives down costs, these things never seem to even out properly when it comes to monthly household budgets.