Orica chief executive Sanjeev Gandhi seems to have thrown down the gauntlet to billionaire Andrew ‘‘Twiggy’’ Forrest, who’s been banging on forever about a deal to produce hydrogen at Incitec Pivot’s mothballed Gibson Island ammonia plant in Brisbane.
Two years on and Fortescue is yet to deliver a feasibility study on the plant.
The one glimmer of hope is that it remains among five green energy projects that Forrest lieutenant Mark Hutchinson swears will receive a final investment decision by the end of the year. To paraphrase Dumb and Dumber’s Lloyd Christmas, it means, yes, there’s a chance.
And what about Forrest’s commitment in 2021 to build the world’s largest electrolyser plant in the central Queensland town of Gladstone? He turned the first sod last year and gave a tall order that production would start in 2023. “We have orders right now to take these electrolysers as they come off the production line next year, and that order list is growing rapidly,” he said at the time.
Well, the building is there, but it’s all crickets for now, with Fortescue immensely quiet on the fine detail of, you know, when it will actually start delivering an exportable product.
No word either on Fortescue’s ancient partnership with AGL in the Hunter Valley to repurpose the Liddell and Bayswater power stations – that idea, from 2021, was to pivot the facilities away from filthy coal and nudge them into the production of green hydrogen and ammonia.
Many promises, few accomplishments. And now here’s Gandhi strutting in at Orica’s annual investor brief with a thinly veiled suggestion that, perhaps, just maybe, there’s some kind of race afoot in the green hydrogen stakes.
Well, he didn’t say it in so many words, but how else to interpret his remarks that Orica, one of the biggest carbon emitters in the country – and Incitec’s chief rival, no less – is on track to build its own commercially viable hydrogen plant in the Hunter Valley by 2026? The hope is to use renewable hydrogen to replace natural gas in the manufacture of (slightly) lower-carbon ammonia.
Here’s Gandhi, in his own words: “We are happy to produce green hydrogen by the way of (a) 50 megawatt hour electrolyser that would be the largest commercial electrolyser in the world, if I can get that up and running in 2026.
“So it feels small, it is small, but it is still today the biggest one that will operate commercially.”
What else needs to be said? It’s on, baby!
Inquiry elevated
A morsel of news out of NSW where the government ordered a special ministerial inquiry in July to examine the alleged cover-up of rampant sexual assaults committed by a former prison officer, Wayne Astill.
Retired judge Peter McClellan KC was appointed to examine allegations that senior officials at Corrective Services NSW failed to act on a multitude of complaints that Astill was raping and abusing women under his care at Dyllwinia Correctional Centre.
Astill is currently serving a maximum term of 23 years in prison after being convicted this year of a handful of those offences. More than three dozen women have since come forward alleging they were similarly assaulted and mistreated.
Mere months after starting his inquiry, Margin Call now hears that McClellan’s probe has been elevated to a Special Commission of Inquiry, a rare step that gives him sweeping powers to access documents protected by legal privilege. Expect to see that announced shortly.
Prison boss Kevin Corcoran was the assistant commissioner in charge of custodial services when complaints about Astill were being circulated through the chain of command. The question being asked, of course, is what did he know, and when did he know it?
Packer appointment
A global search is under way to fill the James Packer Chair in Mood Disorders, a professorial position funded with a $7m gift from the billionaire to the University of NSW.
It’s the institution led by the inimitable David Gonski, who was a close adviser to the late Kerry Packer, as well as the co-executor of his will, which was kept in a safe inside Gonski’s harbourside home.
Packer’s interest in promoting research into mental health is borne of his own struggles with bipolar disorder, revealed during his memorable evidence to a 2020 inquiry into Crown casinos.
De Sailly Search has been charged with filling the position, with the job advertisement stating that whoever is chosen will have to “work effectively with key stakeholders, including the Chair funders”. That’s Packer, but it would seem he’s not that interested in micromanaging the appointee.
Margin Call wondered if he might be party to the final decision on recruitment at all, but Packer said he wasn’t seeking that level of scrutiny, and it was more likely that he would be supportive of whatever decision was made by the university. With Gonski in charge, who could blame him?
Meanwhile, his renowned superyacht I.J.E continues to quest along the Aegean Sea to ports unknown. Our only interest in this marginalia is that the radar keeps turning up a couple of curious names for the pleasurecraft tethered to the ship. There’s a “Goose”, “Cougar” and apparently a “Maverick”, making it bleedingly obvious that someone on board is a Top Gun fan.
Packer’s idea? No, he tells us the ship’s captain came up with the names and old mate Ben Tilley approved them. They’re the names of the ship’s jet skis.
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