In the "infrastructure crisis" of the last 12 months, the east coast coal chains have often faced unflattering comparison with their iron ore producing counterparts in Western Australia. The iron ore operations work under one hand, with tight corporate synchronisation of both investment and operation along a vertically integrated chain. By comparison, the eastern coal chains are sometimes presented as a sack of cats: full of jealously competitive miners facing each other across the coalfield, and all interested in pushing as much of their own product as possible down a jumbled chain of state owned or private common user assets, and with precious little interest in co-operation.
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