Premier Colin Barnett says he can't see "a great deal of substance" in junior explorer Padbury Mining's claims it has secured a massive $US6.47 billion ($6.89 billion) funding deal to construct a port and rail network at Oakajee, as the company missed a self-imposed deadline to reveal its mystery backer.
Padbury had been due to reveal further details of the funding by today, including the identity of the wealthy investor it claims is providing the funds but instead suspended its shares from trading late yesterday.
It now expects to make the announcement by the commencement of trade on Thursday.
Padbury said the suspension period would allow it to provide detailed responses to enquiries from the ASX and ASIC in relation to the company's original announcement.
The premier was today dismissive of Padbury's funding claims, saying he expected Chinese giant CITIC Group to take the lead on developing a port and rail network at Oakajee after an encouraging meeting with the company's chairman in Beijing last week.
He also met with the chairman of steelmaker Baosteel, which he says is eyeing development of a port project at Anketell Point in the Pilbara.
"There's still a way to go but I'm confident CITIC will lead the Chinese interest in the Mid West and Baosteel will lead Chinese interests in the Pilbara through Anketell," he told reporters.
"It was very positive and it was made very clear to me that they had the endorsement of the Chinese national government."
Any bid to develop a port and rail network at Oakajee would come after decades of failed attempts to secure the ambitious dream.
Plans by Japanese giant Mitsubishi Corporation to develop the infrastructure effectively collapsed in late 2012 when the company cut spending and removed staff from the project, despite claims at the time from the Barnett government that the project was not dead.
Mr Barnett said there were a number of reasons why the Oakajee project had so far failed to get off the ground but said he was confident progress would be made.
"There are several different mines and none of them are of the scale of the Pilbara iron ore mining projects, so you don't have that degree of finance behind it," he said.
"Bringing all of them together is critical so you need to get a volume of iron ore, probably at least 35 million tonnes, to make it viable. Ultimately you'd want to be over 50 million tonnes.
"It's a whole new mining province but I think the advances are being made."
