Alcoa’s Kwinana alumina refinery cannot be left to rot, says Madeleine King
Madeleine King has vowed to keep a close eye on Alcoa’s upkeep of its shuttered Kwinana refinery, amid concerns that the firm may be keeping the facility in mothballs to defer rehabilitation and remediation costs.
Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King has vowed to keep a close eye on Alcoa’s upkeep of its shuttered Kwinana refinery, amid concerns that the international giant may be keeping the facility in mothballs in order to defer potentially billions of dollars of rehabilitation and remediation costs.
Alcoa confirmed on Wednesday that the Kwinana refinery – which sits in the electorates of both Ms King and West Australian Premier Roger Cook, and which has been operating since 1963 – would stop production at the end of the year. About 1100 jobs will be lost as a result.
The US giant blamed the age of the refinery, lower-grade ore and soft market conditions for the decision to curtail the facility’s production. Rather than announce a complete closure of the refinery, which would commit Alcoa to the costly process of rehabilitating and remediating a site that is known to have contamination issues, Alcoa will retain 50 staff to keep the refinery and its residue storage facilities “actively managed” once production ends.
Ms King told The Australian that while Alcoa had said there was a possibility of Kwinana ramping up again if market conditions changed, it was “difficult” to see how the refinery could ever reopen given the reasons for the curtailment.
She said both the federal and state governments would be watching closely to ensure the company met its obligations.
“You can’t leave a facility like that to rot. It’s bad for the local people, it’s bad for the environment, and that will not be allowed to happen,” she said.
“You can rest assured those obligations will be enforced.”
WA Greens MP Brad Pettit was among those who questioned whether Alcoa’s decision to “curtail”, rather than officially close, the refinery was a means of deferring the significant remediation and rehabilitation costs at the site.
He said it would be a “lose-lose” if the refinery sat all but idle instead of being rehabilitated or used by new renewable energy or hydrogen ventures looking for a prime site near Perth.
“If that’s a way for them to avoid what could potentially be multi-billion dollar responsibilities around remediation of that site, then that’s of great concern,” he told The Australian.
“The government should be putting a lot of pressure on Alcoa to provide clarity, and if they’re not going to use it they should remediate it and lose it.”
The Kwinana refinery has two areas that have been classified as contaminated under WA’s Contaminated Sites Act.
Remediation and rehabilitation is a growing issue for Australia’s extractive industries as an increasing number of major projects near the end of their lives.
Regulatory issues around the rehabilitation of old oil and gas projects came to the fore following the debacle of the Northern Endeavour oil production vessel and associated oilfields in the Timor Sea. Woodside Energy in 2016 offloaded the ageing project to a minnow, Northern Oil and Gas Australia, which collapsed soon after, with NOGA’s failure leaving taxpayers carrying the can for the clean-up bill.
Mr Cook also made it clear Alcoa would be expected to meet its obligations at the site. “They’re not disappearing; they remain anchor tenants,” he said.
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