Why Gina Rinehart’s company is fighting with a country music star

Australia’s richest woman wants to mine coal in the Rocky Mountains, and one of Canada’s most famous country music singers has built a coalition of ranchers, fishermen and environmentalists to stop the project.

A unit of billionaire Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting is seeking government permission to reopen the Grassy Mountain mine in Alberta to extract coal used in steel production.

The project has been previously rejected because of concerns it would damage water quality and harm wildlife. Hancock’s not alone. Separately, Valory Resources wants to dig for metallurgic coal nearby.

Enter Corb Lund, a winner of the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy and multiple Canadian Country Music Association awards. The 57-year-old Albertan wants provincial leaders to impose a moratorium on new coal projects in the eastern Rockies.

For almost half a century, new coal mines in Alberta were tightly restricted to a select group of areas. But in 2020, the province temporarily scrapped the policy and began selling mining leases in previous no-go zones, only to suspend those sales the following year. In 2025, the restrictions were lifted again, triggering legal action by environmentalists.

“I’ve never spoken out in 30 years in the public eye about any issue politically ever, except for this one, because it was so egregious,” Lund said. “The risks are so high on this and the rewards are so low that the only people benefiting from it are the foreign coal companies and a handful of people that get the jobs.”

A spokesperson for Hancock Prospecting’s Northback subsidiary said a 2025 Alberta-wide poll had shown 74 per cent of Albertans support Grassy Mountain, and the proposed mine would be developed with close consultation of locals.

The firm had reduced the size of its initial proposal by 40 per cent and cut the planned mining rate almost in half to 2.5 million tonnes a year, chief executive officer Mike Young said in Calgary. The developer also planned to build a water-treatment facility and bury selenium exposed during mining to negate the need for tailings dams, he said.

“Just because your company is owned by a foreign company doesn’t give you any legal ability to shirk your responsibilities,” Young said. “We are a Canadian company that’s owned by an Australian company. We have all the obligations of a Canadian company owned by a Canadian.”

Canada is the world’s eighth-largest producer of metallurgic coal, and Alberta ranks No. 2 domestically behind British Columbia.

Although coal-fired power generation is being phased out in Canada, the price of metallurgic coal — the kind used to make steel — are near historic highs following a rally that kicked off in 2021.

A joint federal and provincial review board rejected the Grassy Mountain project five years ago on environmental concerns, finding that “the adverse environmental effects on surface water quality and westslope cutthroat trout and its habitat outweigh the positive economic impacts”.

As a result, the board deemed the development “not in the public interest”. Hancock is suing the Canadian government for $C2 billion ($2 billion) in damages under an international trade dispute mechanism.

About 3000 volunteers have been out in force through the harsh northern hemisphere winter and early spring months gathering signatures across the province, and placing signs in windows and on front lawns.

Norma Dougall, a canvasser for the Water Not Coal petition who owns property near the proposed mine, said she was part of the first public hearings on the project.

“We naively thought that logic and common sense and science prevailed and that it was going away, and now it’s back on again,” she said at a Calgary street festival.

“So we’re trying to get a permanent ban so this issue doesn’t keep popping up and down because water is really the most valuable resource versus coal, especially coal from an Australian coal miner selling it to Asia,” she said.

Lund was in Edmonton this week to submit the petition to Elections Alberta. If they gather roughly 178,000 verified signatures, the question will be put to Premier Danielle Smith’s cabinet to decide whether to act on it or put the question to voters alongside 10 others in an October 19 referendum.

Smith has said that if the petition is successful, she will add it to the ballot. The Water Not Coal group has gathered more than 200,000 signatures, according to Lund.

The project is still a ways away from regulatory approval. Northback’s revised application will go to public feedback and regulatory review for two years and then face another public hearing.

“Alberta’s biggest thing is the environment,” said Donna Clement, a volunteer gathering petition signatures outside a Calgary sporting goods store. “That’s what we’re known for around the world. Not necessarily the oil and gas, but the mountains and everything that goes with it. So that’s important to me.”

Bloomberg

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