Leigh Creek Exploration, South Australia

This is the ASTER image of Leigh Creek coalfields at the north part of South Australia.
It is located at the south of North Flinders Ranges.
Flinders Power operates the coalfields.

The coal is exploited by open-pit method and delivered to Augusta, which faces Spenser Gulf, approximately 260 km south away by railway.
At Port Augusta, the coal becomes the fuel of generating thermal electric power.
This produces 40% of electricity used in South Australia. Leigh Creek coalfields were discovered as the brown coal sandwiched by coal-bearing shale in the last half of the 19th century, but no commercial mining was conducted at that time.

When the demand of energy increases after the World War II, the coalfields were reevaluated and a full-fledged drilling started.

The coalfields currently produce approximately 2.5 million ton of coal.