Leonardo DiCaprio has thrown his support behind West Australian activists who are angry at the federal government for green-lighting a mine expansion in an area home to endangered species.
In February Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek gave approval to South32 to clear up to 3,855 hectares of native vegetation in WA’s Northern Jarrah Forests as part of a mine expansion near the town of Boddington.
The Australian Securities Exchange is experiencing an influx of Canadian producers seeking dual listings. There has been a trickle of dual listings on the ASX since 2018,, but the trend has significantly accelerated following Canadian uranium developer NexGen Energy (TSX: NXE), adding an Australian listing in 2021.
Capstone Copper’s (TSX: CS) ASX listing in February 2024, however, seemed to have open the floodgates, with a further four Canadian mining companies initiating the listing process since.
https://www.northernminer.com/
Canada and Australia could end up trailing emerging mining nations such as Argentina if their governments don’t speed up permitting and lower costs, BHP (NYSE, LSE, ASX: BHP) CEO Mike Henry warned.
Countries such as the United States, Argentina and Saudi Arabia are making “sizeable” efforts to reform their mining sector and attract capital, Henry said Sunday in Toronto. At the same time, established natural-resource powerhouses such as Canada and Australia have seen their global attractiveness erode.
The term gamechanger is often over used enough to be rendered meaningless, but the huge Simandou mine in the West African country of Guinea is going to be just that as its start up is set to rock the seaborne iron ore market.
The first cargoes from the project may arrive by the end of this year and it’s expected that it will ramp up to its full capacity of 120 million metric tons per annum fairly quickly. The four blocks of Simandou are impressive in their scale and infrastructure challenges, boasting a 620 kilometre (384 mile) rail line, a new port with dedicated trans-shipment vessels that will load bulk carriers offshore.
It does not take long at lunch with Andrew Forrest for him to start seeming less like an Australian mining billionaire and more like a climate activist–meets–zealous prosecutor. His rugged features quickly appear not to reflect the arid expanse of Western Australia’s Pilbara region, home to the core operations of his $38 billion Fortescue iron-ore business.
Rather, they appear the result of a succession of high-stakes court battles. When we meet at a luxurious Paris brasserie, he speaks passionately about a client that he’s been representing for several years: the planet. His case? Corporate bosses must act now—and act fast—to tackle climate change, an argument he delivers with force and the unrivaled credibility that comes from decades in the carbon-spewing industry.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/
French mining giant Eramet has announced major changes in its leadership. The company is a major stakeholder in New Caledonia’s nickel industry, being the owner of Société Le Nickel (SLN), the French territory’s oldest nickel mine and smelter operator.
Eramet’s current chair/chief executive Christel Bories will relinquish her CEO position, only to retain her role as chair. The changes are expected to become effective at Eramet’s shareholder’s general meeting, scheduled on 27 May, Eramet said in a release. The new director general/CEO will be Paulo Castellari.
Severe Cyclone Zelia has made landfall near Australia’s iron ore export hub, bringing heavy rainfall and damaging wind gusts, with the system threatening big mines and crucial rail links as it tracks inland.
(Bloomberg) — Severe Cyclone Zelia has made landfall near Australia’s iron ore export hub, bringing heavy rainfall and damaging wind gusts, with the system threatening big mines and crucial rail links as it tracks inland.
The powerful cyclone crossed the coast to the east of Port Hedland, the nation’s biggest iron ore export harbor, packing very destructive wind gusts of up to 290 kilometers (180 miles) per hour near its center, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. Winds that strong flatten structures and buckle power lines.
The man behind a booming mining company in Indonesia has issued a stark warning about 10,000 Aussie jobs.
The shock collapse of Australia’s nickel mining sector has threatened 10,000 high-paying jobs as a leading ASX-listed nickel miner warns bluntly those jobs are probably never coming back. That’s the view of Nickel Industries managing director Justin Werner, who leads the rising $3.3bn company with vast mining and refining operations in Indonesia.
“It is certainly challenging (for Australia) in the foreseeable future,” he told NewsWire from his home in Bali in a wide-ranging interview this week. “Even if the nickel price goes up, it’s about having a sustained nickel price above $20,000 (per tonne).
Australian firms are edging closer to breaking China’s production stranglehold on the rare minerals used in the world’s critical defence systems, electric vehicles and clean energy transition.
Companies like Iluka Resources, Lynas Rare Earths, and several lithium miners are already refining, or close to producing, the minerals needed for the batteries, electric circuitry and high-strength magnets that underpin the globe’s green energy transition.
Two potential buyers for Glencore’s stake in mothballed New Caledonian nickel producer Koniambo Nickel SAS (KNS) have submitted offers following site visits late last year, KNS said.
Part of a loss-making nickel industry in French-controlled New Caledonia, KNS halted its operations in March after commodity group Glencore decided to sell its 49% interest.
Brisbane, Australia (CNN) — Lawyers for women who claim they’ve been sexually harassed while working for global mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto say they’ve been inundated with emails since filing two class action cases in an Australian court.
The separate lawsuits, which were filed in the Federal Court in Sydney and revealed Wednesday by law firm JGA Saddler, alleges widespread and systematic sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the two companies’ worksites over the last two decades.
(Bloomberg) — Rio Tinto Group contributed to widespread damage due to waste left at an abandoned copper mine in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, and risks to local communities are ongoing, a report has found.
Panguna, which was operated by Rio subsidiary Bougainville Copper, was once one of the world’s largest copper mines. It was shut in 1989 after local protests over the disbursement of revenue from the mine degenerated into a civil war that killed as many as 20,000 people.
Pink Diamonds are amongst the rarest precious items on earth. That is why they are the most collectible stones right now. To own a pink diamond is to own a piece of Australian and world history.
“Buying a Pink Diamond is like buying a Pablo Picasso while he was alive… In another decade, the Argyle Pink Diamond will emerge as the new Faberge egg, the thing myths are made of. The value of rarity is the most priceless factor” – THE AUSTRALIAN BUSINESS REVIEW.90% of the world’s pink diamonds have been discovered in the mines of North Western Australia in the Argyle diamond mines. “The Argyle pink diamond story has enthralled throughout the years following the remarkable discovery of the Argyle mine in 1979.
Is Western Australia’s once-booming nickel industry dead or just a sleeping giant? Thousands of job losses this year marked the bleakest period in the local industry’s history, which dates back to the 1960s.
In those days, the discovery of nickel literally put the Goldfields town of Kambalda on the map, leading to the development of the country’s first nickel mine while the Vietnam War drove demand for this key ingredient of stainless steel.
New Caledonia is home to thousands of species found nowhere else—and to nickel that companies like Tesla
This story was produced with support from the Rainforest Journalism Fund in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.
In September, 2020, Elon Musk and a Tesla executive named Drew Baglino put on matching T-shirts and took the stage in a California parking lot. To mark what the company called Battery Day, Tesla had gathered an audience of shareholders, who were social distancing by sitting separately in gleaming electric cars.
Some of the company’s new batteries, Musk and Baglino announced, contained far more nickel than previous models; as a result, they could travel farther, and at far less cost, on a single charge. “Increasing nickel is a goal of ours and, really, everybody’s in the battery industry,” Baglino said.
