Australia/New Caledonia/Papua New Guinea Mining – Page 72

Queensland suppliers awarded $900M of Rio Tinto’s Amrun bauxite project contracts – by Leo Oliver (International Business Times – March 23, 2017)

March 23, 2017

http://www.ibtimes.com.au/

Mining giant Rio Tinto has awarded contracts worth $1.38 billion for the development of the Amrun bauxite mine project. Of these, Queensland suppliers have received nearly two-thirds, amounting to $900 million, of the contracts. More than 500 companies have been associated with the project in the state.

The project, in Cape York Peninsula, includes the development of a mine, processing plant and bauxite stockpiles, warehouses, a power station and new barge, ferry and ship loading facilities. It is expected to substitute the East Weipa bauxite mine.

The volume of bauxite to be exported from Cape York following the development of the mine is forecast to surge by nearly 10 million tonnes a year. Production and shipping is expected to kick-off in the first half of 2019.

Australia’s Rinehart children cleared to sue billionaire mother – by Sonali Paul(Reuters U.S. – March 22, 2017)

March 23, 2017

http://www.reuters.com/

The children of mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person, have been cleared by a court to sue their mother for what they describe as mismanagement of a multi-billion dollar family trust, in a long-running family feud.

Rinehart’s daughter Bianca, who is now trustee of the family trust, said Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd – the mining company set up by her grandfather, Lang Hancock, and run by her mother – did not pay A$500 million ($380 million) in dividends that she said were due to shareholders, one of which is the family trust.

The trust’s only asset is a 24 percent stake in Hancock Prospecting, which has reaped billions of dollars from iron ore assets in Western Australia.

Indigenous Australians: Labor to support native title changes to protect mining deals – by Gareth Hutchens (The Guardian – March 21, 2017)

March 21, 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/

Labor will support the Turnbull government’s move to amend the Native Title Act following a shock federal court decision striking out a native title deal in Western Australia last month.

It means mining projects – including Adani’s Carmichael coalmine – already in operation under Indigenous land use agreements (ILUAs) may not be affected by the federal court’s ruling.

The news has angered Wangan and Jagalingou traditional owners fighting Adani’s mine. They have accused Labor of “lining up with the government” to wind back their rights.

Australian mining firms closely watching after Tanzania imposes an export ban – by Daniel Flitton (Sydney Morning Herald – March 20, 2017)

March 20, 2017

http://www.smh.com.au/

A surprise export ban imposed on gold and copper concentrate by Tanzania’s President has forced several Australian mining firms to seek urgent assurances about the future of their operations in the African nation.

The export ban is seen by some as the latest manifestation of a populist drive affecting politics worldwide, amid a backlash to globalisation most obviously characterised by Donald Trump’s rise to the White House.

Perth-based Tanga Resources director John Stockley will fly to Tanzania on Monday for talks with local ministers after the country slapped a ban on the export of mineral concentrates and ores for metallic minerals, including gold, copper, nickel and silver.

Billionaire Adani Sees Disputed Australia Mine Start by 2020 – by P R Sanjai and Perry Williams (Bloomberg News – March 20, 2017)

March 20, 2017

https://www.bloomberg.com/

India’s Adani Group plans to begin extracting coal from the $16.5 billion Carmichael project in Australia in 2020 after environmental protests delayed the first phase of the mine.

The company will begin work on the project three months after it gets final approval from Australia’s federal government, Gautam Adani, billionaire chairman of the Indian group said on Friday. Adani expects permission from Malcolm Turnbull’s government for the project in Queensland’s Galilee Basin as early as May, with a final investment decision by May or June, he said.

The project is meant to fuel power generation for 100 million Indians and create 10,000 jobs in Queensland. It will likely proceed given the pressing need for fresh sources of power generation in India, according to David Lennox, an analyst with Fat Prophets in Sydney.

The Economist explains: How Australia has gone 25 years without a recession (The Economist – March 16, 2017)

March 17, 2017

http://www.economist.com/

WESTERN AUSTRALIA’S iron ore and Queensland’s coal were at the centre of Australia’s recent mining boom, stoked by the red-hot growth of China’s steelmaking industry. At its height about five years ago, mining investment accounted for 9% of national GDP. But as investment started to decline in 2013, Western Australia’s debt soared.

At 6.5%, its unemployment is now Australia’s highest. If the pattern of earlier booms had followed, Western Australia’s plight would have reverberated around the country and ended in a national bust. Yet the economy’s growth has stayed intact, notching up 25 years without a recession. How has Australia managed a feat that has defied most other rich countries?

Australia’s mining booms over the past 160-odd years made the country feel rich and confident while they lasted. Workers made big money, and this brought prosperity to far-flung regions producing gold, coal, gas and other commodities. Recessions followed nearly all earlier booms, including the most recent one, in the 1980s, largely because the upheaval proved too big a shock for an economy that was highly regulated.

Tensions rise in New Caledonia as it mulls a break with France – by Michael Field (Nikkei Asian Review – March 16, 2017)

March 17, 2017

http://asia.nikkei.com/

Bougainville and Guam are also moving toward referendums on constitutional status

AUCKLAND Due east of Australia, the Pacific island of New Caledonia is mulling a final break from France, ending a relationship lasting more than 150 years. In a referendum that will take place next year, islanders will vote on the issue of independence.

The wording of the referendum question to be asked has not been determined, and neither has the eligible electorate. Tensions have been building, prompting Paris to dispatch 50 additional security officers to the territory. They arrived in February, but attacks on police have continued, wounding three and drawing condemnation from authorities.

Sonia Backes, a senior pro-French politician in New Caledonia, has been critical of what she sees as Paris’ soft line. This month she demanded the prosecution of an indigenous politician who called whites in New Caledonia “immigrants.” “UNBEARABLE REMARKS” “These remarks are unbearable,” she said, adding that those who say such things should be prosecuted for “inciting racial hatred.”

Programmed targets employment for 5000 Indigenous Australians – by Ben Creagh (Australian Mining – March 6, 2017)

March 7, 2017

https://www.australianmining.com.au/

Mining services provider Programmed has set a goal to employ 5000 Indigenous Australians across its operations.

Programmed, which also operates in industry sectors like oil and gas, manufacturing and retail, announced the 10-year plan in Canberra last week with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Fortescue Metals Group chairman Andrew Forrest.

It is the largest ever contract by an Australian company for Indigenous employment. According to Programmed, the company wants a workforce that reflects the diversity of society by culture, gender, age, sexual orientation and abilities.

Sam Walsh befuddled by Rio Tinto wealth ‘deferral’ – by Matthew Stevens (Australian Financial Review – March 6 2017)

March 6, 2017

http://www.afr.com/

Every door at Rio Tinto used to be wide open to Sam Walsh. But when the former Rio Tinto chief executive and his lawyers checked in with his erstwhile dominion to find out what the board found so disturbing in the erupting Simandou email scandal, he was told: “Read the newspapers, Sam.”

Walsh is said to be befuddled and insulted by the lack of professional courtesy offered by his former employer through their time of shared crisis and thoroughly mystified by the logic that had the Rio Tinto board force a “deed of deferral” on the present and future benefits Walsh is owed by the company.

The deed, revealed in Rio Tinto’s annual report, puts a two-step delay on Walsh owning the full weight of deferred shares awarded under short and long-term incentive plans that would be worth about $20 million at current prices.

Greens push to close coalmining in 10 years – by Kylar Loussikian (The Australian – March 3, 2017)

March 3, 2017

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

The NSW Greens will today call for the phase-out of all coalmining over a decade, a move the industry says will have a devastating effect on jobs and end “almost all” of the state’s electricity generation capacity.

The policy, to be launched by federal Greens leader Richard Di Natale and the party’s state energy spokesman, Jeremy Buckingham, also calls for an auction for mining licences over that period to raise $7 billion to be used to support miners and regional communities as they move away from coal.

The state’s coal industry produced 247 million tonnes of raw coal in the last financial year, and 191 million tonnes of saleable coal worth nearly $15bn. It also powers about 80 per cent of the state’s electricity generation capacity.

China ‘angling for control’ of massive Mt Frieda copper deposit in PNG – by Brian Robins (Sydney Morning Herald – March 2, 2017)

March 2, 2017

http://www.smh.com.au/

Frieda River is one of the largest undeveloped copper deposits in the world. Now, the smaller shareholder in the project, in the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea, has cried “foul’ warning that a proposed board spill will give the Chinese government control.

Less than two years after paying $1.2 billion to snap up PanAust, an Australian miner with interests in projects in Laos and Papua New Guinea, Guangdong Rising, a Chinese investment company owned by the Guangdong provincial government of southern China, is angling to gain control over the Mount Frieda gold and copper deposit.

The Frieda River deposit has been under study for development for more than 30 years. Now controlled 80 per cent by PanAust and 20 per cent by Highlands Pacific, it has had a series of owners, from Japanese to American groups, with Swiss trader Glencore the majority owner before it sold to PanAust. All of the owners to date have struggled with the cost of developing the resource.

Adventures of a Australian female opal miner – by Jason Bainbridge (The Age – February 26, 2017)

February 27, 2017

http://www.theage.com.au/

If Sue Cooper has a problem with her telephone reception, it is a 10-hour round trip for a Telstra Remote-Area Service technician in a four-wheel drive to fix it. If she needs to refuel? That’s a three-hour round trip with a 2000-litre tanker on a dirt track. And if she needs medical attention? Build your own airstrip in order for the Royal Flying Doctor Service to land.

Welcome to Sue Cooper’s life, six to seven months of every year, as an opal miner in western Queensland. One of Sue’s mining leases is on Mount Margaret Station, a pastoral lease that operates as a cattle station. Located about 50 kilometres west of the township of Eromanga (Australia’s furthest town from the sea), Mount Margaret was once Australia’s largest sheep station, occupying 600,000 hectares.

Sue is a relative through marriage, and I visited her mining camp in late 2016. To give a sense of scale out here, the “bush paddock” containing Sue’s small mining lease is a rugged, fenced-off corner of the property comprising 69,000 hectares – roughly the size of Singapore. Often Sue, her partner and her children are the only people out here.

Australia’s Kambalda faces future with no nickel output – by Josh Chiat (The West Australian – February 22, 2017)

February 23, 2017

https://thewest.com.au/

Kambalda has run on nickel dust since it kicked off the base metal’s Australian boom in the 1960s. It is now facing having virtually no nickel production in the town by February next year, with Independence Group saying reserve life extensions at the harvesting phase Long nickel mine have proved unsuccessful.

Long — which delivered 2365 tonnes of nickel to the BHP Billiton Kambalda concentrator in the December quarter — and RNC Minerals’ Beta Hunt, which is now largely a gold operation, are the only producing nickel mines in Kambalda, where a series of operations have been put on care and maintenance amid low prices for the stainless steel ingredient since 2015.

Independence Group managing director Peter Bradford, who is also grappling with lagging development at the company’s flagship Nova nickel- copper mine 160km east of Norseman, said drilling at Victor West had proven unsuccessful.

Iron ore rockets towards $US100 a tonne – by Jessica Sier (Sydney Morning Herald – February 22, 2017)

February 22, 2017

http://www.smh.com.au/

The price of iron ore has surged higher still, reaching its highest level since mid-2014, and flirting with the $US100 a tonne mark. A pick up in steel futures has sent Australia’s largest export soaring 21 per cent so far this year, and up 84 per cent in the last twelve months.

Iron ore, with a ferrous content of 62 per cent was fetching $US94.86 a tonne on Wednesday morning. China’s Dalian Commodity Exchange, most-active futures surged as much as 30 per cent this year to 723yuan ($136).

Consolidation in the Chinese steel industry, which iron ore fuels, has seen steel exports are slump 5 per cent month on month and down 24 per cent year on year, while iron ore imports are up 12 per cent year on year.

Coal ‘an attractive business’: BHP Billiton chief Andrew Mackenzie – by Matt Chambers (The Australian – February 23, 2017)

February 22, 2017

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

BHP Billiton says Chinese coalmining policy that has reined in production means it could develop more Queensland coking coalmines after three years of focusing on squeezing the most cash it could out of the mines and not promoting their growth.

Speaking to investors last night after delivering a $US3.2 billion ($4.2bn) first-half profit, chief executive Andrew Mackenzie said coal remained an attractive business.

“There is no doubt the Chinese tried to restructure their mining activities in both coals, and indeed in iron ore, through their restructuring of steel,” Mr Mackenzie said. “It has probably made the bulks a little bit more investable than they would otherwise have been.”