The proposed plans come despite the company’s planned closure of its existing mine in five years.
Muswellbrook Coal is preparing to file an application with the Mining and Petroleum Gateway Panel for the planned project at Castle Rock, reported ABC News.
Work on the project is scheduled to commence in 2019 with plans to commence mining by 2024.
The project will support the region with 500 construction jobs and further new jobs will be created once the mine commences operations.
The mine is expected to produce 15 million tons of export thermal coal each year for around 30 years.
Muswellbrook Coal existing open-cut mine has CCL713, ML1304, ML1513, ML1562, A176, EL5431, EL5600 tenements. It has around 130 employees and contractors, and produced 1.23 million tons of run-of-mine coal in 2009.
