Victoria OKs diesel fuel project

VICTORIA has approved a 50-year mining licence for a $5 billion joint project by Shell and Anglo American to convert Latrobe Valley brown coal into diesel fuel.
The government approval also requires the project to capture and store underground - a process known as geosequestration - carbon dioxide produced during the process.
Coinciding with the licence approval to Anglo-American company Monash Energy, Shell Gas and Power and Anglo American also signed a joint development agreement to advance the project today.
The Monash Energy plant is forecast to produce 60,000 barrels of synthetic diesel daily when it comes on stream by the middle of the next decade.
Shell will bring its technology in coal gasification and transformation of gas to liquids to the project.
Potential storage sites for the carbon dioxide have been located already, including in the Bass Strait gas fields.
Premier Steve Bracks boasted the project was the biggest resources development in the state for the past 25 years.
"It will generate a new wave of economic activity in the Latrobe Valley," he said.
"The technology will be able to be exported as unique technology for Victoria."
Victoria will benefit from royalties on the coal mined as well as jobs growth.
The synthetic diesel, said to be of a higher and cleaner quality because it contains fewer impurities including almost no sulphur, will not necessarily be sold in the state.