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Thread: Coal, environment, this will hurt

  1. #11
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    Iron ore mining exports are actually INCREASING at the moment.

    Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
    Cheers .........

    BMKAL


  2. #12
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    Don' know any details but on the telly this morning the one liners scrolling along the bottom of the screen had one that said, "China's new coal laws could be good for Australia"
    Dave.

    I was asked " Is it ignorance or apathy?" I replied "I don't know and I don't care."


    1983 RR gone (wish I kept it)
    1996 TDI ES.
    2003 TD5 HSE
    1987 Isuzu County

  3. #13
    DiscoMick Guest
    Yes, China is by far the world's biggest investor in renewable energy and even its coal fired power plants are mostly newer and cleaner than ours. They are turning away from importing dirty coal at the very time our government is focusing on coal exports.
    All of this just makes it even more important we continue to support investment in renewable energy because it is the big winner in today's international energy market with around half of energy investment now going into renewables.
    So, we definitely should keep John Howard's highly successful Reneweable Energy Target, which will secure the current 20,000 renewable energy jobs and could save the proposed investment which could create another 14,000 jobs.
    If that means we replace more dirty coal power stations with clean renewable energy sources that can only be good. SA is leading the pack averaging about a quarter of its electricity coming from wind power alone. Joe Hockey's complaint that wind generators look ugly is just selfish and ridiculous - coal mines and power stations are not exactly works of art either, but who cares as long as it works.
    Coal still has a future, but it will decline in importance. The energy future of this country is too important to allow it to be hijacked by any one industry sector at the expense of the overall good.

  4. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by BMKal View Post
    Iron ore mining exports are actually INCREASING at the moment.

    Never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
    Mate, I am

    Australia undermining global iron ore prices

    Quote:
    Weaker demand from China is one factor undermining iron ore prices, but Australia's big players are far from blameless.

    They are working to eliminate competitors and a group of high-powered businessmen are the first casualties.

    Tumbling iron ore prices are starting to claim their first Australian victims.

  5. #15
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    Love to know where they get their info in that article Arthur (I actually read this one a few days ago via a link on the intranet at work).

    They claim - "The ramp-up in output has come from Australia, which now accounts for half the world's production"

    Haven't seen the 2014 production figures yet, but in 2013, Australia was the second largest iron ore producer in the world, accounting for about 18% of total production. The largest producer for the same period was China, accounting for almost 45% of total production.

    I know that the three major producers in Australia are ramping up production at the moment, but I would be extremely surprised if that increase was anywhere near enough to take Australia's production from 18% of world total to 50% of world total as claimed in the ABC report.

    What is happening at the moment is that the "high cost" operators are finding it hard to survive (a couple have already fallen over, including Shree Minerals in Tasmania - which I always believed should never have got off the ground in the first place).

    One of the problems with the mining industry is that, whenever there is a "boom" and prices are high, all sorts of shonky operators come out of the woodwork and new mines open up which really don't stack up if you do a proper financial evaluation of them. Then as soon as the prices start to drop off a bit, these operators go bust, usually causing their shareholders to lose their money (the directors often manage to do quite well out of it though ).

    Have a look at the iron ore miners who are in trouble now - and then look at how long they have been in the industry.

    I've been in iron ore mining for a few years, and it's not so often that you see this cycle in this industry - but I used to work in the gold mining industry, and these events are a regular feature of that industry. Surprisingly, this time around with the gold price having been pretty steady for a while now and at comparatively good price (in Aussie dollars) - there doesn't seem to have been the flurry of "new" gold mining companies appearing. Maybe people (investors) have started to wake up.

    The other issue at the moment is that China is reportedly knocking back high impurity (mainly sulphur & phosphorus) iron ore. I read yesterday that FMG has about 6 million tonnes of product sitting in China that they cannot sell (FMG's Cloudbreak and Christmas Creek mines are both well known for high impurity levels - don't know yet what their new Solomon operations are like).

    This will be interesting - because the iron ore deposits that are known to be of some of the lowest iron grade but highest impurities content - are the Chinese mines. Many of these mines are already uneconomical, but continue to operate being propped up by the Chinese Government. If these Chinese mines were to shut down, the world price of iron ore would rise significantly.

    But - don't believe too much of what you read in the media about the iron ore mining industry in Australia being in trouble. That's a long way from the truth. Similarly, the claims that government revenue is falling due to the reduction in the price of iron is largely crap. Any loss due to falling prices at the moment is offset by increased volume - not to mention the currently falling value of the Australian dollar.
    Cheers .........

    BMKAL


  6. #16
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    I am not disputing your information, I am just confused for the contradicting news about the industry.
    I read that India cannot extract enough ore for their own needs and it is going to be compensate for the weak demand from China. These news contradict the news in the link that I have posted.
    On the other hand the ore mining investment in Uruguay (which are 2,500 million tonnes of underground iron ore deposits bringing the tiny country to be in the top 8 suppliers in the world) are suspended because the price of ore and demanding for it
    Have that one work out

  7. #17
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    It's called figure picking. We ship and sell about half of the worlds EXPORTED iron ore, making is one of if not the biggest EXPORTER,with Brazil and Canada doing a fair bit. China MINES far more than us but use it all , creating far more employment as well. The funny thing is their ore is very low quality and they blend ours with theirs to raise the levels of iron and reduce impurities.

  8. #18
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    Arthur - underground iron ore deposits are unlikely to be profitable even at a higher price than is current today - the costs of underground mining are many many times greater than open pit mining.

    Most of the large iron ore mines in Australia are virtually on the surface - just strip off the grass and topsoil and you're into it. Much cheaper mining costs - and then when you look at the economies of scale of the larger mines, there's simply no comparison.

    2,500 million tonnes is definitely a large quantity and will no doubt make Uruguay a major player at some point in time - but either the price will have to go up significantly, or the cheaper to mine deposits will have to be depleted (which in turn will drive the price up anyway) before this happens.
    Cheers .........

    BMKAL


  9. #19
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    Thanks for your inputs mate, my knowledge about the subject it is very limited.
    I know that it will be an open pit and that there is a lot of opposition to the mine because the size of it and some of the figures on the extraction like tons of explosives, water to be used, etc, etc.
    They estimated that the mine will take 150000 ha of good land which it is a lot for a small country like Uruguay where the primary industry is very important.
    The initial investment is in the orther of 3 billion dollars and I do not know the reputation of the investor that is Zamin Ferrous.
    I hope that what ever they do will be good for the small nation.

  10. #20
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    Don't know much (anything at all really) about Uruguay. Just looked it up and read a bit - yes, it is a very small country. Hopefully this mob will do the right thing by the country and the people there.

    Reading the company's web-site, it looks as though they might be targetting India as their prime market in the longer term - appears that is where most of the senior people and the money are coming from.

    Another thing that will slow them down is the fact that the ore deposit in Uruguay is magnetite and not hematite. Magnetite is usually more expensive to mine and process, but once processed, results in a better quality iron concentrate that is preferred by most of the world's steel producers. One of the greatest advantages of processed magnetite is that it typically contains far lower concentrations of the nasty impurities (silica, sulphur, phosphur) than hematite ore - and that is becoming increasingly attractive to the steel mills in places like China as they are looking to reduce pollution.

    Most of the iron ore mines in Australia are hematite - main exceptions being Savage River in Tassie, Arrium (used to be OneSteel) in SA which was mining both hematite and magnetite (not sure if they still are - Tombie will know) and the newer operations in WA at Karara and Cape Preston, both of which are struggling. There are plenty of other known magnetite deposits in Australia, but most are not scheduled for production for many years due to the availability of the cheaper to mine and process hematite here. With most hematite deposits, all you have to do is dig it out of the ground, crush it and load it onto a ship.

    The project in Uruguay is proposing to use magnetic separation - there have been huge advances in this technology during recent years, mostly developed by the Chinese for their low grade mines. They have developed a machine called a SLon which is a much more efficient magnetic separator than the older style machines. I have previously used the older style mag separators, and I'm currently involved in a trial project where a small scale pilot plant based around this new technology will be installed within the next few weeks - I went and looked at the equipment earlier this week. Should be interesting.
    Cheers .........

    BMKAL


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