Новости за 16.12.2022

Hedge fund AQR Capital Management and four other parties are due to ask a British judge on Friday to force the London Metal Exchange (LME) to release documents about decision-making that led the LME to suspend nickel trading in March. AQR and others filed legal action in September after a wild price spike in nickel spurred the LME to cancel deals worth billions of dollars, which they said led to "significant losses" for market participants.

Mining major Rio Tinto has completed the $3.1-billion acquisition of dual listed Turquoise Hill Resources, simplifying the ownership of the Oyu Tolgoi copper mine in Mongolia. Turquoise Hill shareholders earlier this month approved the C$43 a share cash offer from Rio for the remaining 49% interest in the company which Rio did not already own.

Uranium developer Peninsula Energy on Friday announced that its subsidiary Strata Energy had been awarded a supply contract from the US Department of Energy (DOE) to provide domestically produced uranium concentrates to the $75-million Uranium Reserve. Under the supply award, Strata is to supply 300 000 lb of US-origin uranium pentoxide (U3O8) for the Uranium Reserve.

Freight operator Aurizon has struck an agreement with Magnetic Rail Group to divest of the East Coast Rial (ECR) business for A$425-million in cash. ECR is the coal haulage business with operations in New South Wales and Queensland, which Aurizon acquired as part of its acquisition of One Rail Australia (ORA). In accordance with Aurizon’s undertaking to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the company had to divest of the asset.

Mining major Rio Tinto has inked an alliance agreement with the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation in Canada. This first agreement named Kuessilueu, which means "the wind is turning” in Nelueun, establishes the foundation for an innovative and sustainable alliance for both partners from a human, cultural and economic standpoint.

The newly established Australian Minerals and Energy Skills Alliance (AUSMESA) is looking at ways to relieve labour shortages in the mining and resources sector as one of its first priorities. AUMESA was established earlier this week as part of the federal government’s A$402-million investment over the next four years to establish the Jobs and Skills Councils (JSCs) to address skills shortages and broader workforce challenges.

Diversified miner Sibanye-Stillwater is procuring wind energy capacity from independent power producers. The miner issued a request for information last year, indicating that it was looking to secure up to 250 MW of remote wind generation. The miner than opted to pursue more capacity based on the positive market response.

During the international community‘s search for solutions to the climate crisis at the COP27 conference in Egypt in November, international project developer JUWI published a release noting that it had entered into the final stages of commissioning the world’s “largest” solar hybrid project at miner Centamin’s Sukari gold mine, 400 km south of the conference venue Sharm El-Sheikh. The energy system consists of a 36 MW solar photovoltaic (PV) farm and a 7.5 MW battery-energy storage system that have... Читать дальше...

Diversified miner Sibanye-Stillwater is implementing a range of renewable-energy solar photovoltaic (PV) projects to support its local gold and platinum-group metal (PGM) mining operations. This includes a 50 MW solar PV project to support its gold mining operations, and a combined 175 MW of solar PV projects to support its PGM operations.

The construction of gold miner Gold Fields’ 50 MW Khanyisa solar photovoltaic (PV) plant at its South Deep gold mine was completed in August this year, and Gold Fields executive VP Martin Preece espouses the benefits thereof to Mining Weekly. Such benefits include, mitigating loadshedding, reducing energy costs and reducing the mine’s carbon emissions.

Among South Africa’s many natural endowments, it is blessed with abundant solar energy, a free and inexhaustible resource that can provide renewable energy in mining, states gold producer Pan African Resources on its website. Unavoidably, as mining companies extract minerals from the ground that the world needs, they disturb land, consume natural resources and generate waste, including carbon emissions.

Canadian miner Giyani Metals provided results of a feasibility study (FS) conducted for its K.Hill battery-grade manganese project, located in Botswana, last month. The FS results followed lifecycle assessment – prepared by environmental consultants Minviro –  published in late September, which calculated the project’s global warming potential (GWP) and concluded that the main impact driver is the consumption of electricity from the national grid in Botswana, corresponding to about 37% of total GWP... Читать дальше...

In October New York Stock Exchange-listed mining house Platinum Group Metals (PTM) reported that the Waterberg Joint Venture (JV) Resources, in principle approved a R380-million pre-construction work programme for the Waterberg project, which focuses on early infrastructure, de-risking and project optimisation. The Waterberg platinum-group metals (PGMs) project is a bulk underground palladium and platinum deposit located on the northern limb of the Bushveld Complex in South Africa.

As part of its greater five-year, R50-billion capital investment programme to extend life-of-mine (LoM) development at several of its operations, platinum group metals (PGMs) miner Impala Platinum (Implats) has allocated R4.3-billion to its energy security and decarbonisation projects in South Africa and Zimbabwe. The energy security and decarbonisation projects will ensure that every operation has renewable energy in the mix to meet the group’s decarbonisation targets and strengthen energy security.

Aim-listed metals processing company Jubilee Metals Group’s Inyoni platinum group metals (PGMs) processing facility, in Gauteng, has successfully increased its operational output, subsequent to the completion of its capitalisation and expansion programme in March. This is based on Inyoni’s exceeding design throughput targets and reaching 86 000 t a month of chrome and PGMs-containing run-of-mine (RoM) feed.

Mining company Exxaro’s “Mega Projects” are geared toward ensuring sustainability through initiatives dedicated to incorporating diverse stakeholder perspectives, strengthening its existing human resources and upgrading existing sites to be more modern and efficient. Exxaro’s Mega Projects investments have several objectives, including growing the current projects of the coal business, and expanding and increasing production volumes more sustainably.

Coal exploration and mining company Canyon Coal’s greenfield Gugulethu project – located south-east of Hendrina, in Mpumalanga – forms part of the miner’s expansion objectives to become a larger player in the sector. Initially delayed by Covid-19’s impact on coal prices, Canyon Coal reassessed the viability of the mine and found that the project remained feasible as a result of the current coal price, explains Canyon Coal projects head Gerhard Cronje.

Investment company Menar’s Zululand Anthracite Colliery (ZAC) expansion project is in the shaft development phase and first coal is expected by April 2023. The project will increase production at the colliery, in Emakhalathini, about 100 km from Richards Bay, in KwaZulu-Natal.