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United States Mining

Acid mine drainage ‘enormous public liability’ in perpetuity—EARTHWORKS – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – May 6, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

A new report by the environmental NGO, Earthworks, proclaims acid mine drainage could generate between $57 billion to $67 billion annually in costs—a debt that future generations may shoulder.

RENO (MINEWEB) – A new study recently released by the Washington, D.C.-based environmental NGO Earthworks asserts an estimated 17 billion to 27 billion gallons of contaminated water will be generated by 40 U.S. hardrock mines annually in perpetuity. Forty-two percent of these mines are located on public lands.

“Another 13 mines are likely to generate water pollution in perpetuity, accounting for an additional 3.4 billion to 4 billion gallons of polluted water per year,” said report authors, Earthworks chief Bonnie Gestring and environmental research and science consultant, Lisa Sumi.

The proposed Pebble Mine Project—opposition of which has become a cause célèbre for environmentalists and sportsmen’s group– is among new mining projects Earthworks suggests will generate substantial water pollution.

“The primary cause of this lasting pollution—acid mine drainage—is well understood,” said the report. Acid rock drainage is mostly associated with sulfide ore deposits. “Yet, no hard rock open pit mines exist today that can demonstrate that acid mine drainage can be stopped once it occurs on a large scale,” according to Earthworks’ research.

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BHP nets $650m on sale of Arizona mine – by Allan Seccombe (Business Day – April 30, 2013)

http://www.bdlive.co.za/

BHP Billiton, the world’s largest resources group, has sold a small, noncore copper mine in Arizona and an associated railway company for $650m, bringing its sale of assets in the past year to $5bn, BHP announced on Monday.

Analysts widely expect further asset sales from Australia-based BHP after Marius Kloppers stepped down as CEO. He was replaced by Andrew Mackenzie who has said he will focus on securing profit margins and cash flows by ensuring optimal performances from the group’s assets.

BHP sold Pinto Valley and the San Manuel Arizona Railroad Company to Canada’s Capstone Mining for $650m in cash in a deal subject to regulatory approval. The transaction should be concluded in the second half of this year.

“The sale of Pinto Valley is an excellent outcome for BHP Billiton shareholders,” Peter Beaven, president of BHP Billiton Copper, said yesterday. “It is consistent with our strategy and it takes the transaction value of divestments announced over the last 12 months to $5bn.”

Analysts said the price was well above what the market was expecting and that it was no surprise BHP was selling the business because of its small size and limited remaining life.

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Copper remains strong part of Ariz. economy – by Tony Davis (Arizona Daily Star – April 28, 2013)

The Legacy of Copper Mining in Arizona Documentary

“Arizona produces more copper than any other state. This brief history shows how Arizona’s copper mining built a state and changed a nation. This documentary was sponsored by ASU, Daniel Buckley, Freeport McMoRan, Intel, Channel 8, and Resolution Copper Company and was presented to the Arizona Mining Alliance and American Copper Council in May of 2012.”

http://azstarnet.com/

Salaries in Arizona’s mines are more than twice those for the average job, says a new mining industry-financed report. When benefits are included, the average worker in the mining industry earned $108,000 a year as of 2011, says the report from Kent Hill, a research professor in economics at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business.

The average pay and benefits for people working in mining-related jobs not directly in the industry, such as suppliers, is $80,000, he reports. The average for all Arizona workers, including benefits, is about $47,000, he says.

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Utah copper mine landslide will hurt state economy – by Paul Foy (Associated Press/Houston Chronicle – April 26, 2013)

http://www.chron.com/

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The landslide that washed over the terraced steps of a mining pit nearly a mile deep left only the tip of one giant electric-powered shovel poking out of the dirt. The rubble buried three of them, along with 14 enormous haul trucks.

Even more of Kennecott Utah Copper’s equipment lay buried under uneven piles of rubble as high as 300 feet at the bottom of the pit west of Salt Lake City.

It will take months for the major U.S. copper mine to recover from the devastating landslide, even though it had been anticipated by the company. It ran farther out than expected, burying equipment that had been staged there for a dig-out.

Yet company officials tried to sound optimistic Thursday as they opened Bingham Canyon mine to view for the first time since the April 10 slide. “There’s no doubt in my mind that there’s a future in mining here,” Kennecott Utah Copper chief Kelly Sanders said. “We’ll meet this challenge.”

Sanders said the company might be able to resume limited ore digging within days, but a full recovery could take a year. Kennecott, which will work from a stockpile, will run out of copper in months and has cut its production goal for 2013 by half. The company has asked 2,100 workers to take vacation or unpaid leave, but few are doing so yet.

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Anglo American to spend $80 million advancing proposed Pebble Mine – by Laurel Andrews (Alaska Dispatch – April 22, 2013)

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/

The Pebble Partnership plans to spend $80 million this year on advancing its proposed mine in Alaska’s Bristol Bay.

The proposed Pebble Mine, 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, is estimated to hold 81 billion pounds of copper, 107 million ounces of gold and 5 billion pounds of molybdenum, and is said to be one of the largest such deposits in the world. However, the location of the proposed massive open-pit mine — near the breeding grounds of the fertile Bristol Bay salmon fishery — has led to intense scrutiny by opponents of the mine who say it would damage salmon streams that are important both commercially and culturally to the region.

The Pebble Partnership is 50-50 venture between global mining companies Anglo American and Northern Dynasty. Last year, the Pebble Partnership spent $107 million on preparing the permit application for the proposed mine. To date, the partnership has spent $680 million steering the project toward development.

The $80 million spent this year will come from Anglo American, due to the way the joint venture is structured, said Mike Heatwole, Pebble Partnership spokesperson. This year’s funds will be spent with the goal of developing an overall project description and toward initiating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) permit process.

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New center in Ely will fight copper mining – by John Myers (Duluth News Tribune – April 21, 2013)

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

Just down the road from the offices of the Twin Metals copper mining company, a group of Ely business people are about to open a new “action center” on the city’s main street aimed at persuading those who drop in to take action against copper mining.

Just down the road from the offices of the Twin Metals copper mining company, a group of Ely business people are about to open a new “action center” on the city’s main street aimed at persuading those who drop in to take action against copper mining.

A fundraiser last week for the new “Sustainable Ely” center drew 65 people, mostly area residents and business people who say that the risk of environmental damage caused by copper mining in the Boundary Waters watershed isn’t worth the promised jobs and economic boost.

“We’ve got a good start. We raised $4,500 already for this grass-roots effort,” said Steve Piragis, an Ely canoe outfitter who’s helping organize the effort. “This is an idea we’ve had for a couple years. Now we have the energy and the building to do it.”

The new center underscores the chasm in Ely and across the Northland between residents who support copper mining jobs coming to town and those who want to keep the new kind of mining out of northern Minnesota.

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UPDATE 2-Rio Tinto unit says Bingham Canyon slide worse than expected – by Reuters U.S. (April 12, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

April 12 (Reuters) – A landslide at Rio Tinto’s Bingham Canyon mine in Utah extended further into the pit than predicted, and there was greater damage to equipment than previously estimated, Rio’s Kennecott unit said on Friday.

Kennecott Utah Copper, which operates the mine that is near Salt Lake City, said it had not yet determined the impact of the slide, which occurred late on Wednesday, or a time frame for resuming mining operations.

Photos published by Salt Lake City’s Deseret News show debris extending from the top of the massive pit mine to its floor, slicing through terraced roads and burying trucks.

“The size of the slide was significant,” the company said in an emailed statement. “We don’t have information yet regarding the magnitude or impact. We do know that the flow into the pit extended beyond the scenarios we forecasted, having a greater impact on equipment.”

The company said on Thursday that all employees were accounted for and safe. In its latest statement, Kennecott said there had been some damage to equipment and to a building structure in the mine. It said experts had not been granted access to the mine.

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Kennecott to keep refining after huge slide in Utah copper mine – by Bob Mims and Steven Oberbeck (The Salt Lake Tribune – April 11 2013)

http://www.sltrib.com/

Company has enough ore to refine for right now, will decide when it’s safe to work in the pit later, but visitors center will remain closed. Kennecott Utah Copper said Thursday its Bingham Canyon Mine experienced a large landslide, but no injuries were reported.

The slide occurred about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday along the pit mine’s northeast wall, said Rio Tinto-Kennecott spokesman Kyle Bennett. The landslide, however, was anticipated and all employees had been evacuated ahead of time.

“We started noticing movement in that part of the mine in February,” Bennett said, indicating at that time the mine’s wall was slipping a fraction of an inch each day.

As the slipping continued and began to accelerate in the following weeks, Kennecott moved workers out of the area, utility lines were rerouted and the modular building that housed the mine monitoring equipment was relocated to safer ground. Kennecott also closed its visitors center for the rest of the year.

By early Wednesday, the northeast wall of the mine was slipping at a rate of 2 inches a day. “At 11 a.m. yesterday we moved everyone out, including those who were working in the bottom of the mine,” Bennett said, adding there were only 37 workers still laboring in the mine at that time. “All of our employees are safe and accounted for.”

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Swiss firm to invest $80M in PolyMet’s Iron Range mine – by Dee Depass (Minneapolis-Saint Paul Star Tribune – April 10, 2013)

http://www.startribune.com/

PolyMet Mining’s long-awaited plans for a copper-nickel mine in Minnesota’s Iron Range received welcome news Wednesday when a Swiss-based commodity trading and mining firm pledged to invest $20 million and help raise another $60 million in new equity financing.

The involvement from Glencore AG, which includes $20 million in bridge loans and up to $60 million in new equity, is expected to be finalized in June, pending regulatory approvals in the United States and Canada.

The investment will allow PolyMet to complete the lengthy environmental review and permitting process that has already been six years in the making at a cost of $50 million to date. Environmental permits and state regulatory approvals are required before mill work and mine construction can begin.

“So this is a pretty exciting day for us,” said PolyMet CEO Jon Cherry. Glencore’s financing arrangement will involve the issuance of new stock to existing and new shareholders through a secondary offering process known as “a summary of rights offering.” It is not yet known how many PolyMet shares Glencore will ultimately own, but it will not exceed 49.99 percent.

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[Minnesota] Iron Range’s copper-nickel mining poses opportunity and possible threat – by Dan Kraker (Minnesota Public Radio – March 26, 2013)

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/

HIBBING, Minn. — After more than a century in which iron mining has played a central role in the economy and culture of northeastern Minnesota, a new kind of mining is poised to join the taconite industry.

Generally known as copper-nickel mining, for the two main metals companies want to extract, the process is hailed for bringing much-needed jobs to the region. But opponents prefer to call it “sulfide mining,” for the kind of ore the metals are found in — and because unearthing sulfide can cause toxic water pollution.

It’s a matter of mere geologic chance that northeast Minnesota could hold world-class deposits of both iron ore and copper and nickel.

Geologists have determined the Iron Range formed in what had been a tropical sea two billion years ago. The Duluth Complex, where most of the copper-nickel deposits lie, took form nearby a billion years after that, when North America tried to split apart near present day Lake Superior.

Those deposits formed when molten rock deep in the earth called magma encountered rocks containing sulfur, said University of Minnesota – Duluth geologist Jim Miller.

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Could faster mining permitting help fuel future U.S. economic growth? – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – March 25, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

A bill introduced by Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nevada, a former Nevada Mining Association president, aims to set timelines on U.S. mining permits and limit citizen lawsuits against projects.

RENO (MINEWEB) – The National Mining Association and its long-time loyal opposition, the environmental NGO Earthworks, recently sparred before a congressional subcommittee as whether the U.S. mining really needs HR 761, The Critical and Strategic Minerals Production Act of 2013.

Hal Quinn, CEO of the National Mining Association, told the House Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals Resources that the measure “addresses a key issue for the country’s future economic growth and manufacturing revival: the painfully slow permitting process for the miners that supply metals and minerals essential for our basic industries, our national defense and the consumer product we use.”

“The value added by major industries that consume the $77 billion of minerals produced in the U.S. was an estimated $2.4 trillion in 2012, or 15% of our GDP,” Quinn noted. “In addition, domestic mining generated $50 billion in tax payments to federal, state and local governments.”

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Finding the Truth: Facts Behind Cyanide Beach Film – by Levi Rowe (March 22, 2013)


Levi Rowe is a Santa Barbara college student majoring in Entrepreneurship with a minor in Philosophy. levil.rowe@gmail.com

The recent film produced by John Dougherty, called Cyanide Beach, attempts to link Augusta Resource – and thereby Rosemont Copper – to a closed mine – the Furtei mine, in Sardinia, Italy. The producer aims to incite public fear and raise alarm over the proposed Rosemont Copper mine outside of Tucson, Arizona, with the goal of delaying and ultimately stopping the project.

The trouble with Cyanide Beach is that, like many “investigative” pieces, Mr. Dougherty started with a conclusion and worked backwards. When one starts research with a clear goal, or hypothesis, one must be extremely careful to adjust the hypothesis as their research disproves the original hypothesis. The investigator, or researcher, must resist the urge to become personally invested in their hypothesis lest they begin to distort facts and findings to fit the intended (hoped) result.

When these flawed, distorted findings are shared with the public as a means to inform, what we end up with is a grossly misinformed public.  And that’s the case with Cyanide Beach.

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Tempers flare at hearing on Central Arizona copper mine – by Michelle Peirano (Arizona Daily Star – March 22, 2013)

http://azstarnet.com/

RESOLUTION COPPER SEEKING LAND SWAP FOR C. ARIZ. PROJECT

WASHINGTON – Cronkite News Service – A four-hour congressional hearing grew testy Thursday as House members considered a bill to swap thousands of acres of private and federal land to make way for a massive copper mine in Central Arizona.

The bill to trade land near Superior with Resolution Copper Mining passed the House last year but stalled in the Senate, and is back now for its eighth year.

Supporters said the deal, which would give Resolution access to a copper-rich piece of government land, would bring thousands of jobs and more than $6 billion in new taxes to the state over 40 years of operation. “The economic benefits are staggering,” said Republican Rep. Paul Gosar, who co-sponsored the bill with Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, both of Arizona.

The company says the mine would be the largest copper producer in the country and would account for 25 percent of the world’s copper, turning out 1 billion pounds or more a year.

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Ageing baby boomers, few replacements threaten U.S. mining sector—NRC Report – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – March 22, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

The retirement of the baby boomers who comprise the bulk of the mining-related workforce could mean problems for mining, academia, and even the American life style, says a new report.

To read the report, “Emerging Workforce Trends in the Energy and Mining Industries: A Call to Action,” go to http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18250

RENO (MINEWEB) – A new report by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Engineering is concerning that the loss of a large number of experienced energy and mining workers in industry, academia, and government may actually impact the high standard of living and importance of the United States in the global economy.

For example, the Mine Safety Health Administration (MSHA) expects that 46% of the coal-sector workforce will be eligible to return in five years.

“Not only are there too few younger workers in the pipeline to replace them, but there is little time to capture the knowledge of experienced employees before they leave,” said the NRC’s Committee on Emerging Workforce Trends in the U.S. Energy and Mining Industries.

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There’s lots more iron ore to mine, says DNR expert – by Anna Kurth (Hibbing Daily Tribune – March 18, 2013)

http://www.virginiamn.com/

HIBBING — Iron Range residents have been mining iron ore on the Mesabi Range since 1892. And before that, iron ore was mined from the Soudan Underground Mine near Tower since 1884.

And Peter Clevenstine believes they could be doing so for another hundred years. Clevenstine, manager of engineering and mineral development for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources Division of Land & Minerals, spoke Thursday about iron ore resources to area residents at a Lunch and Learn session put on by the Hibbing Area Chamber of Commerce and the Society of Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration.

The iron mining business is booming in Minnesota. In 2001, the state took in $10 million in mineral revenue for the first time. Last year, the state collected just more than $50 million in mineral income. About 98 percent of it came from iron ore.

“Will resources continue to support this higher level of activity?” he asked. “… I think we could end it right now and say ‘yes, there’s more ore and things are looking very bright for the communities.’”

The Minnesota mining business is benefiting from three factors — an increase in world demand, industry consolidation and the Mesabi Range’s competitive advantage.

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