Two offers in four days: Origin puts a $150 million number on Eraring’s coal

Eraring Power Station, on the western shore of Lake Macquarie, is scheduled to stop generating in April 2029. That date was set by Origin’s 20 January announcement extending the plant’s life by about 20 months, and every part of the machine that keeps the station running now has to be contracted to reach exactly that far and no further. The first piece of that machine to come apart in public is the coal supply.

Myuna Colliery, an underground mine at Fassifern operated by Centennial Coal, a subsidiary of the Thai-listed Banpu group, supplies Eraring with 100 per cent of its coal. That figure is not ours and not Origin’s: it is how the Net Zero Economy Authority describes the relationship on its Eraring closure page. A station burning only Myuna coal, and a mine selling only to the station next door, are locked together until the closure date, which is what makes a pricing fight between them a story about the whole district rather than a line in two companies’ accounts.

What Origin says it offered

Both releases are Origin’s account, and the dollar figures are Origin’s forecasts, not audited numbers. Centennial and Banpu’s side of the negotiation is not in them, and as of publication we have found no Centennial statement setting out its own position. When one is published, we will report it. What can be said from the documents that do exist is the shape of the disagreement: Origin wants the current price carried through to closure, says the alternative being asked of it is around $50 million a year more, and pointedly notes that “the cost of operating Myuna is a matter for Centennial and its parent company, Banpu, a company of substantial size and profitability.”

The structure of the second offer is worth pausing on. A three-year contract signed in early 2026 and described as running “to the scheduled retirement” is the April 2029 closure date expressed as a commercial term. Origin is not just naming a date in press releases; it is trying to write that date into the last coal contract the station will ever need. If the offer is accepted on those terms, the supply chain and the closure schedule become the same document.

The workforce thread runs through the middle of it

The unusual feature of Origin’s 3 February release is that a commercial negotiation announcement spends a paragraph on workforce policy. Jarvis called it “extremely disappointing to see workforce related issues being brought into our commercial negotiations with Centennial,” and said workers and the community “deserve greater transparency from Centennial Coal on how it will support them through the full implementation of the Energy Industry Jobs Plan, if the Net Zero Economy Authority recommends it be required.”

That “if” has since resolved. On 27 March the authority’s chief executive, David Shankey, applied to the Fair Work Commission to establish the Energy Industry Jobs Plan for the Eraring closure. The application names Origin Energy, Centennial Coal and 11 other businesses as employers that should be included, covering what the authority says is more than 1,300 workers at the power station, at Myuna, and across the supply chain. Under the plan, employers can be required to provide workers with training, career and financial advice ahead of a closure; the authority said the plan would add “certainty, structure and enforceability” to supports that in some cases already exist, naming Origin’s Future Directions program as an example. As of publication the authority’s process page lists the application as under consideration by the commission.

Set side by side, the two threads explain each other. In February, Origin was publicly asking Centennial to say how it would support Myuna’s workers under a plan that did not yet formally exist; seven weeks later the plan’s architect asked the industrial umpire to bind both companies to it. Whatever the commission decides will land on exactly the workforces whose employers are, on Origin’s account, still arguing about the price of the coal between them.

What to watch

Three dates now sit in front of this story. The Fair Work Commission’s determination on the jobs plan application, which will settle who owes Eraring and Myuna workers what. Any announcement, from either company, that a coal supply agreement has actually been signed, and for how long. And mid-2026, which is when Origin’s site transition page says it plans to lodge the scoping report that begins the formal approvals process for demolishing and rehabilitating the station after closure. A supply deal, a workers’ determination and a demolition scoping report, all pointed at the same April 2029 date, from three different directions.