The Bulga Optimisation Project is a proposal to extend the Bulga open cut coal mine near Singleton, in the Hunter Valley, NSW. The Australia Institute made a submission on the economic assessment done as part of the response to submissions on the original Environmental Impact Statement. The revised assessment by Deloitte Access Economics is a marked improvement on the earlier assessment. The authors provide little detail around royalty calculations, however.

In our submission, we attempted to calculate potential royalty values, but erroneously applied royalty deductions to royalty values, rather than to the price royalties are derived from. This understates royalty values, which in fact are likely to be close to the Deloitte estimates. We apologise for any confusion created by this error.