Past review
15/06/2006
The Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal (DBCT) is an export coal terminal for the Bowen Basin coal mining industry.
It has been ‘declared’ for third party access under part 5 of the Queensland Competition Authority Act 1997. Declaration allows for the determination of fair and reasonable terms and conditions of access to the terminal.
On 20 June 2003, we received a draft access undertaking (DAU) for the coal handling services at DBCT.
The DAU was submitted by Prime Infrastructure (DBCT) Management on behalf of DBCT Holdings.
Our review of the DAU represented the first substantial review of a bulk commodity port in Australian regulatory history.
As such, there was no regulatory precedent to guide the assessment of the many issues specific to access regulation of port infrastructure.
On 20 April 2005, we published our decision to refuse to approve the DAU. That decision set out the reasons for refusing to approve the DAU and outlined how it had to be amended in order to be approved by us.
In July 2005, Prime Infrastructure (DBCT) Management changed its name to BBI (DBCT) Management Pty Ltd—or DBCT Management.
Following the release of our decision, DBCT Management and the users of the facility, represented by the DBCT User Group, entered into discussions to resolve all outstanding matters in relation to the DAU and associated standard access agreement. Because of concerns about the time being taken to finalise these discussions, on 21 October 2005 we issued DBCT Management with an initial undertaking notice in accordance with s.133 of the Queensland Competition Authority Act. This notice required DBCT Management to submit a revised DAU that was consistent with our decision by 19 January 2006.
On 4 January 2006, DBCT Management submitted a draft access undertaking (2006 DAU) in accordance with the initial undertaking notice, as well as an associated standard access agreement. We received submissions and supplementary submissions on the 2006 DAU.
On 15 June 2006, we published our decision approving the 2006 DAU.
On 15 October 2004, we published our draft decision proposing not to approve the DAU for DBCT.
On 26 November 2004, we received a number of submissions in response to the draft decision. Given the complexity of issues involved, we sought further information, and as a result, Prime Infrastructure and the DBCT User Group made a number of additional submissions.
In November 2004 an errata to our draft decision was published.
In July 2003, we released a ‘request for comments’ paper.
The request for comments paper summarised the DAU and raised a number of issues about which we sought comments from interested parties.