by A month after Adani got the final approvals for its Carmichael mine, it’s still hard to work out what’s going on with Adani and the Galilee Basin in general. Adani has been making a fair bit of noise, but the project still seems to consist of tree clearing and road building. To get past this stage, and without significant in-house experience of major projects, Adani needs partners: engineering design firms, construction contractors, and so on. And even if no external funding is needed, the project still needs insurance, which is getting harder to come by. Adani claims it has insurance lined up, but declines to say which firm is providing it. Assuming the claim is true, the obvious explanation is that the insurer is worried about reputational damage from being associated with
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A month after Adani got the final approvals for its Carmichael mine, it’s still hard to work out what’s going on with Adani and the Galilee Basin in general. Adani has been making a fair bit of noise, but the project still seems to consist of tree clearing and road building.
To get past this stage, and without significant in-house experience of major projects, Adani needs partners: engineering design firms, construction contractors, and so on. And even if no external funding is needed, the project still needs insurance, which is getting harder to come by.
Adani claims it has insurance lined up, but declines to say which firm is providing it. Assuming the claim is true, the obvious explanation is that the insurer is worried about reputational damage from being associated with such a toxic project. Presumably, that concern will be reflected in higher premiums.
The same is true as regards engineering. It’s widely rumored that global firm Gutteridge, Haskins and Davey will get the job, but so far GHD has refused to comment. As well as reputational damage, GHD needs to consider the fact that Adani has burned a string of previous contractors. They are still fighting their last partner, AECOM over a payment of $12 million. AECOM must surely be regretting ever getting into bed with Adani, ending up losing their money as well as their reputation.
Any firm looking at this history, and tendering to Adani, would want a high price and money up front for its services, as well as trying to keep its involvement as quiet as possible. That in turn raises the question of how a project that was marginal to begin with can manage to pay over the odds for everything it needs. This at a time when a company like Whitehaven is relying for its continued profitability on the assumption that existing producers will leave the market.
On the jobs front, Adani has been advertising positions in its Townsville office (about 60, as of today). But that’s barely enough to replace the cuts made last year. There’s no sign of the promised thousands of jobs so far.