Exploration must evolve and excel: Rio Tinto

Rio Tinto executive Alan Davies has urged the mining industry to embrace and excel at exploration, declaring that the era of cost-cutting cannot continue forever, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Speaking in Melbourne on Thursday, Davies bemoaned the lack of large mineral discoveries in recent years, which had coincided with dramatic cuts to spending on exploration by mining companies.

“We are in an industry where our assets expire. But we know the world will continue to demand our products,” he said.

Big rise in Chinese steel production

Steel production in China will expand through to 2030, according to Rio Tinto, which forecast the increase after Morgan Stanley predicted that output by the largest supplier will peak this year and then contract, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

China’s crude-steel output will increase from 823 million metric tons last year to about 1 billion tons by 2030, Alan Smith, Rio’s Asia president for iron ore, told a conference in Beijing on Wednesday.

On Monday, Morgan Stanley said in a report that China's production would drop from 806 million tons this year to 801Mt in 2016 and 795Mt in 2017 as the economy matures.

AGL contractor did not test for BTEX before sewer discharge, Hunter Water says

AGL’s contractor did not test for toxic chemicals in flowback water before it was treated and discharged to Newcastle's main sewerage network, the state agency Hunter Water says, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Transpacific Industries discharged the so-called flowback water from AGL's four test wells in its Waukivory pilot project late last year into Hunter Water's sewers, despite AGL and Transpacific being warned not to dispose of the waste water through the agency's network.