#Official Mining Thread

[Wayno]

Thanks wayno, my resume's on its way

i only ask for 10% of first years salary as a spotters fee!

[Cruise]

hehe 4 four weeks until i find out if a got an interview.

will you settle for a beer?

[Wayno]

hehe 4 four weeks until i find out if a got an interview.

will you settle for a beer?

Sold!

[rhino]

Man, these guys give me the shits! Do yourselves a favour and never buy Marathon Resources shares (no, I didn't buy any - ever - they're waaaay to shonky for my liking). This is from today's 'Tiser:

Mining operations suspended in Arkaroola wilderness
GREG KELTON, STATE EDITOR
February 12, 2008 01:00pm

MINING operations in the Arkaroola wilderness area have been suspended indefinitely in the wake of breaches of the miner's exploration licence.
Marathon Resources has been exploring for uranium and other minerals in the Mt Gee area near the Arkaroola sanctuary sparking calls from both federal and state Liberals and the Greens for a total ban on mining in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.
Earlier this year, the Government launched an investigation in the discovery of drilling core samples which had been buried on the mine site.
The Government has received the initial findings of an investigation by departmental officers that has confirmed a breach involving the unauthorised burial of "a large number" of exploration samples, drilling material and other waste.
Premier Mike Rann said the Government's decision sent a clear message to mining companies.
"This is a remote part of our state but it is not the wild west," he said. "We share community disquiet about activities at Mt Gee.
"This Government has been promoting mining exploration and we have seen a 10-fold increase in exploration in this state over the last four or five years.
"Mining companies have to be good neighbours and while we are not the American wild west, we will not tolerate cowboys."
Resources Minister Paul Holloway said Marathon Resources had been ordered to safely excavate all the unauthorised buried drill sample material and return the site to, as close as possible, the original conditions.
"No new holes will be drilled there while their drilling operations remain suspended," he said.
Marathon Resources chairman Peter Williams said the company had essentially completed its authorised drilling activity at Mt Gee and had decided to demobilise the four rigs currently at the project.
He said the company had completed sufficient drilling to enable it to conduct the next exploration phase including environmental and other studies.
Mr Williams said the company would commission an independent report into the company's environmental practices and use the findings of the report to improve its operations, where necessary.

[Wayno]

Man, these guys give me the shits! Do yourselves a favour and never buy Marathon Resources shares (no, I didn't buy any - ever - they're waaaay to shonky for my liking). This is from today's 'Tiser:

Mining operations suspended in Arkaroola wilderness
GREG KELTON, STATE EDITOR
February 12, 2008 01:00pm
<snip>

I love the last 5 words in that article - "improve its operation, where necessary" haha - you need to keep an eye on these "titans of industry" all the time - just like children:
* Govt: "Did you leave that mess in the backyard little johnny?"
* LJ: "No but, yeah but, it wasn't me, it was - umm, oh ok i'll not do it again, grumble"

[crawf]

Disgusting, ban it for good. We already have plenty of mines underway in SA

[Wayno]

SA Mining: 2007 vs 2012

Is Half A Billion dollars per annum plus ~20,000 extra jobs the sort of outcome you are expecting from our mining boom?

A bunch of facts and guestimates:

• * 2007 - Current SA Mining industry earnings = $2b
  * 2012 - Expected SA Mining industry earnings = $4b
  
  * 2007 - Current SA Mining industry jobs = ~7800
  * 2012 - Expected SA Mining industry jobs = ~10,000 (30% increase, generating an extra ~$60million income tax)
  
  * 2007 - Current SA Peripheral jobs = ~25,000
  * 2012 - Expected SA Peripheral jobs = ~40,000 (60% increase, generating an extra ~$110million in income tax)
  
  * 2007 - Current SA Govt Mining Royalties = $150-$200m per year (e.g. $37 royalty per ounce of gold produced)
  * 2012 - Expected SA Govt Mining Royalties = $250-$350m per year

Assuming a linear ramp-up in SA mining activities across the next 5 years:

• * The Govt will receive additional mining royalties totaling ~$1b over the next 5 year period
  * The Govt will receive additional personal income tax of ~$600m over the next 5 year period
  * Then from 2012, the govt should receive an additional ~$500m per year until the boom ends ($350m royalties, $150m income tax)

Note: Accurate distilled info on this topic is hard to come by. I manually pieced the above together from a variety of sources (PIR SA, ABARE, SA Treasury Dept, saplan.org.au, etc). Also note, many of our "nearly open" mines only have 7-10 year lifespans, with some lasting as few as 3 years. The exception being Olympic Dam which they say will last 100 years. The SA Govts presumption of a "lasting generational mining boom" must factor in the belief that new mines will start as old ones expire...

[skyliner]

Some excellent stuff to look at Wayno.

To bolster this and get some perspective.QLD has 33 coal mines in the Bowen basin - all now not operating due to floods. Due to these mines QLD has mining boom. On your first set of stats in an earlier post I added up 32 operating in SA in the timeframe you gave. It is not hard to see a boom here too. Only one difference, we are supposed to have the biggest mine in the world as well!

Great days ahead for SA. We wont know Adelaide CBD.

[Wayno]

Some excellent stuff to look at Wayno.

To bolster this and get some perspective.QLD has 33 coal mines in the Bowen basin - all now not operating due to floods. Due to these mines QLD has mining boom. On your first set of stats in an earlier post I added up 32 operating in SA in the timeframe you gave. It is not hard to see a boom here too. Only one difference, we are supposed to have the biggest mine in the world as well!

Great days ahead for SA. We wont know Adelaide CBD.

Hope you're right skyliner. I'll be jumping for joy if 70% of the mining potential comes to fruition in the next 3-7 years. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Quite frankly, without extra mining royalties the SA Govt won't be able to build new infrastructure worthy of note in our lifetime...

[AG]

Jobs bid from the mining industry
MARIA MOSCARITOLO SOCIAL ISSUES EDITOR
February 19, 2008 12:00am
SOCIAL Inclusion Commissioner David Cappo will prod the consciences of mining bosses and ask them to create low-skilled jobs which may not currently exist in the mining sector to help the long-term unemployed.

Monsignor Cappo plans to meet mining executives in the coming months after Premier Mike Rann asked him to draw on the state's mining boom to find work for the thousands of long-term unemployed.

Monsignor Cappo said he hoped to encourage the industry to create new jobs, perhaps by "splitting" the unskilled work out of otherwise skilled positions.

"In my vision of it all, I will want to ask the question, can we look at the redesign of a lot of the positions and jobs so we can in fact involve a wider range of people . . . in the mining industry or ancillary industries?" he said.

"Yes, we need to skill people, but there's going to be a significant number of people we're not going to be able to skill to a high level.

"I'd like to talk to them about their sense of social responsibility on all this . . . I am not naive, I know it's a hard-headed industry, but we're talking about massive profits and I want to talk to them about a significant social contribution to the state so we don't have a divide between the wealth of the mining boom and the rest of SA."

The South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy said the sector already catered for low-skilled workers and anticipated hundreds of extra positions would be created in the next decade.

SACOME chief executive Jason Kuchel said the sector expected the surge in operational mines - from four mines in 2000 to an expected 40 in 2020 - to create an extra 14,000 jobs by 2015, about 3500 of which would be semi-skilled (requiring on-the-job training).

Unqualified jobs currently include truck driving, maintenance labouring, cleaning and catering jobs such as kitchenhand positions and water carting. They all require some level of training and supervision.

"The industry is actually quite advanced in terms of thinking on ways to engage with the unemployed . . . we will be employing more people, there's no doubt about that," Mr Kuchel said.

He said mining companies already provided extensive training and jobs to local residents and indigenous people, but the government also had a role to ensure the basic health and literacy of the long-term unemployed was adequate.

[Wayno]

mining on Kangaroo Island could start again...

Mining revival possible on Kangaroo Is
Posted Tue Feb 19, 2008 1:48pm AEDT

A South Australian exploration company says Kangaroo Island's mining industry could be revived for the first time since the 1940s as a result of a new drilling program.

Monax Mining has stepped up exploration activity at its tenement near Parndana after initial results indicated the presence of zinc and lead grades.

Company managing director Michael Schwarz says while the prospect looks promising, it is still in the early stages.

"It's not something you can do overnight," he said.

"Because of all the necessary environmental and governmental approvals everything has to be done very thoroughly, plus all of the economic modelling for the resource as well, to see whether we could make money out of it.

"Obviously we're not going to do it if we lose money, we want to make sure that it's going to be profitable and we want to do it in the most sustainable way as well.

"So we have to do all the right things and jump through all the right hoops to get that to happen."

[Wayno]

a lovely picture of media mike accompanied this article in Gulf News
http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/08 ... 93612.html

South Australia invites UAE to invest in mining
By Saifur Rahman, Business News Editor
Published: February 29, 2008, 00:30

Adelaide: The South Australian government has urged investors from the UAE to participate in the state's massive mining boom, which has triggered $45 billion worth of projects and will accelerate the region's economic growth.

"The massive mining boom witnessed by the state is helping create $45 billion worth of projects including infrastructure and others," Mike Rann, Premier of South Australia, told Gulf News. "We enjoy an excellent relationship with the UAE. We encourage overseas investors, and certainly from the UAE. We would very much want the UAE to be part of that development."

Australia's exports to the UAE jumped 45 per cent to reach A$2.4 billion, while imports from the UAE jumped 162.3 per cent to $1.7 billion of which $1.5 billion is crude oil.

Bilateral trade between the UAE and Australia stood at $4.1 billion. More than 15,000 Australians live in the UAE, while 300 Australian companies have presence in the UAE.

"We are an economy in transition," he said. "We are rich in minerals, however, the resources were under explored. A few years ago we took a mining initiative that resulted in a 10-fold increase in mining activities.

"South Australia is open for business. From a base of four mines six years ago, we have nine under operations and 30 more in the pipeline. We'll see the deployment of the world's biggest fleet of trucks carrying 1.5 million tonnes of rocks per day," he said.

He said his state is looking for joint ventures, partnerships and investment from the UAE.

"We are obviously very excited by the opportunities but also aware of the challenges. Chinese and Indian investors have already begun investing and we are interested to see the UAE investors also participate in our development," he said.

"The UAE has a very good infrastructure from which we could benefit. DP World is a good example. Their involvement in Port Adelaide has been extremely successful and we are benefiting from their expertise and resources."

Expertise
The premier said his state has a good expertise in reducing carbon footprint. "We are in a very good position to help Abu Dhabi's Masdar project, which could benefit from our experience and knowhow."

The South Australian premier said, his state is keen on expanding bilateral air traffic. He wants UAE airlines to serve Adelaide, the state capital.

"Nearly one third of our Middle Eastern tourists are from the UAE and this is due to the strong air connectivity between the two countries," Rann said.

"The revised air services agreement signed between the two countries last year provides opportunities for a gradual increase in flights that will help increase the flow of tourists."

This is one more step towards financial perpetual-motion in the SA mining industry. Probably in the form of BIG $$$ contracts signed well in advance to buy our minerals...

[Wayno]

it's raining mines, hallelujah, it's raining mines...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008 ... 179612.htm

Gold mine for Adelaide Hills
An Adelaide-based mining company is moving forward with plans for a gold mine in the Adelaide Hills.

In a statement to the stock exchange, Maximus Resources says it is encouraged by the latest drill results from its Bird In Hand prospect near Woodside.

The company says the site has an estimated resource of between 200,000 and 250,000 ounces of gold.

A pre-feasibility study into a commercial gold mine is expected to start by mid-year.

The standard royalty contract is $37 per ounce so this little mine should bring another ~$10m to the state coffers, plus a few more jobs of course...

[bobdown]

Mindarie, which is in the Murray Mallee a little north-east of Karoonda, is already producing Zircon and shipping it by rail to Adelaide about once a fortnight. Production is expected to increase to 3 trains per fortnight.

I worked on the construction and commissioning crew, pre Christmas, good to see it is finally up and running

[Wayno]

From the ABC website:

Centrex defends Port Lincoln export plan
A company planning an iron ore mine on Eyre Peninsula in South Australia has rejected concern that exports through Port Lincoln would damage the city's image.
Centrex Metals wants to use Port Lincoln or nearby Proper Bay to ship its ore overseas.
Port Lincoln councillor Michael Bascombe says there is growing opposition to the plan.
"We would be sacrificing our clean, green image for tourism and aquaculture for the sake of somebody else making millions out of mining," he said.
But Centrex managing director Gerard Anderson says residents have nothing to fear.
"We think there's still a long way for us to go to actually detail all of our plan and I think that's one of the key issues."
Centrex says a pre-feasibility study of the company's port options should be completed by the end of the month.

Comments? Should they be shipping out of Port Lincoln or Whyalla? Or, if there's enough ore to warrant rail transport, should it go out of Thevenard?

Hey Rhino, it appears this is not a problem anymore. According to an article in todays Independent Weekly, Centrex have acquired a 99 year lease to ship ore from Proper Bay (5km out of Pt Lincoln). Centrex are also developing/expanding the wharf infrastructure to create a multi-user facility which they will sub-lease to other mining companies. They are also building a new ring road to keep trucks away from suburbia. Declared a win-win for everyone...