The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.
Cliffs Natural Resources has moved the production start date for its Black Thor chromite deposit in the Ring of Fire back a year to 2016, because discussions about the location of Cliffs’ ferrochrome processing plant took longer than expected.
Cliffs spokeswoman Patricia Persico said “that’s fine” because the talks were about “necessary and important topics” such as the building of an all-weather road to the site, 540 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, as well as electricity prices.
Those discussions are continuing, said Perscico. The company has said all along its timelines to develop the project are estimates, she said. Cliffs is promoting a north-south road in its talks with the government of Ontario, said Persico. What that will mean in terms of shared capital is still being discussed.
Cliffs announced in early May it had selected a brown-field site north of Capreol, at the old Moose Mountain Mine, as its choice of location for the ferrochrome smelter.
That announcement moved development of Black Thor into the feasibility stage, “which allows us to really get deeper ” into the project’s scope and move the environmental assessment project forward, said Persico.
“I think if you look at any mining project, at any scope of project today from a greenfield, you have to make those correct decisions because you are making a large capital investment,” Persico said.
“We have to make all the right decisions, along with, obviously, the stakeholders and communities. We are a publicly traded company and we have shareholders, so we have to do the right thing with the money … so where we allocate the capital is significant.”
The scope of a mining project is different than, say, a manufacturing plant, said Persico. “There’s a lot involved in the appropriate front-end engineering that has to go in place.”
Persico said Cliffs is “all about really doing the right thing by the communities, by shareholders, First nations and government.”
Discussions with First Nations located near Cliffs’ deposits are continuing and aren’t the reason the production start date was pushed back.
Rick Bartolucci, minister of Northern Development and Mines, agreed a delay in a pro-j ect the size of Cliffs’ Black Thor deposit is “not uncommon at all.”
For the rest of this article, please go to the Sudbury Star website: http://www.thesudburystar.com/2012/10/01/black-thor-deposit-delayed