DBCT's 2015 draft access undertaking

In accordance with section 134(1) of the QCA Act, we considered DBCT Management Pty Ltd’s (DBCTM’s) 2015 draft access undertaking (DAU). Our decision was not to approve it.

In accordance with section 134(2) of the QCA Act, on 21 November 2016, we gave DBCTM a notice (a secondary undertaking notice) stating the reasons for the refusal (being those reasons contained in the attachment, including the appendices) and asking DBCTM to amend its 2015 DAU in the way set out in Appendices A and B of that attachment.

We asked DBCTM to provide a copy of the amended DAU within 60 days of receiving the secondary undertaking notice. This period was later extended to 17 February 2017.

On 22 April 2016, we released a draft decision on DBCT Management’s 2015 DAU.

We invited stakeholders to comment on our draft decision by 8 July 2016. We received submissions from DBCT Management, DBCT User Group, Glencore, Aurizon Operations and Aurizon Network.

Our draft decision was to refuse to approve the 2015 DAU. We identified the manner in which we considered the 2015 DAU should be amended to enable us to approve it in accordance with our obligations under the QCA Act.

All information relating to the 2015 DAU, including our draft decision, consultant reports and stakeholder submissions received is available below.

Further submissions

We received submissions from five stakeholders on our draft decision on DBCT Management’s 2015 DAU.

We considered there were a small number of new proposals and/or information presented by stakeholders in their initial submissions on the draft decision that warranted further consultation with stakeholders. We therefore developed a list of issues/questions to assist stakeholders in considering matters associated with the identified new proposals and/or information.

We received two submissions by the due date, 26 August 2016,from DBCT Management and the DBCT User Group. In addition, DBCT Management also provided an additional submission commenting on some other issues. The submissions are available below.

WACC

On 30 June 2016, we released a report from Incenta Economic Consulting on DBCT Management’s debt risk premium and the risk-free rate for the 2015 DAU. We invited submissions on this report and received one submission by the deadline, which is available below, along with Incenta’s report.

In light of the submissions we received on our draft decision, we commissionned Jeremy Brasington to provide advice on interest rate swap transaction costs. The report is available below.

On 23 June 2015, we issued an initial undertaking notice under section 133 of the Queensland Competition Authority Act 1997 (the QCA Act) requiring Dalrymple Bay Coal Terminal (DBCT) Management to submit a draft access undertaking (DAU) to us within 90 days after receiving the notice—that is,  by 21 September 2015.

This notice started a process under the QCA Act for putting in place a new approved access undertaking for DBCT.

In response to a request by DBCT Management, and in accordance with section 133 of the QCA Act, we extended the period referred to in the initial undertaking notice until 19 October 2015. The notice of extension, and our response to DBCT Management are included below.

On 12 October 2015, we received a draft access undertaking (2015 DAU) from DBCT Management within the time specified in our extension to the initial undertaking notice.

We received submissions on DBCT Management’s 2015 DAU from the DBCT User Group and Vale Australia. These are available below.

We also received supplementary submissions after the deadline from the DBCT User Group and DBCT Management.  We considered these submissions in our draft decision, but noted that further analysis may be required on some issues.