Rio shrugs off Baosteel project threat
Rio Tinto chief Sam Walsh has brushed off Baosteel and Aurizon’s tilt to resurrect the stalled $7.4 billion West Pilbara Iron Ore project, saying the iron deposits were too low a grade to be any threat to Rio and it would be a long, hard road to bring it to fruition, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
He said the grades of the West Pilbara project’s undeveloped ore resource of more than 2.2 billion tonnes were “chalk and cheese” when compared to the quality of Rio’s product.
“Bringing on projects is getting far more complex and far more difficult,” Walsh said, speaking after Rio’s 2014 annual general meeting yesterday.
He said the lead time for bringing on a project between finding a resource and the start of operation had blown out from an average of 10 years to 27.
“It won’t be easy, it’s not easy for any of us,” he said.
Origin tips power switch to black coal
Origin Energy says the east coast’s gas-fired power use will drop off dramatically in the next three years as Queensland’s LNG plants soak up demand, sparking a revival in the use of black coal to provide electricity in the nation’s most populated states, according to The Australian.
Indonesia’s gamble on ore export ban worries investors, mining communities
Work at Harita’s Air Upas mine in Ketapang, West Kalimantan, and dozens like it across Indonesia ground to a halt in January after the government defied lobbying from this powerful industry by implementing a long-planned ban on the export of unprocessed ores, according to the Australian Financial Review.
The move is designed to promote investment in costly domestic processing facilities, but critics such as the World Bank say it has damaged investor confidence and is threatening the state finances.
Economic growth fell to its slowest pace in five years in the first quarter as tens of thousands of workers were made redundant and mineral exports, which reached $US11 billion last year, were halted.
