Best wishes for a Happy New Year

Global Melt-down and mining industry

The euphoria has been short lived with the demands either disappearing or slowing down and commodity prices not matching expectations. China’s demands and globalization had brought in fringe players with threshold deposits into the focus but the present crisis could as well ease out many fringe players and shut down threshold deposits. But this is also looked upon as an opportunity to shed overweight and  clean up houses which under normal circumstances deemed difficult.  No urgency is therefore seen for implementation of projects in place or go in for capacity expansions either.

Urgent steps are being taken at the highest Government levels like in India where the Prime Minister takes a positive move to interact with the industry majors. Majors like Rio see no upward surge immediately, and Vale from Brazil as well as ArcelorMittal SA decided to scale down its operations. The liquidity crunch and commodity prices force shutting down mines, delay start ups like in Burkina Faso and Russia. Miners have even taken up farming in Bolivia.
Maybe we are witnessing a re-alignment of  players and emergence of a  financial driven strategy and consolidation taking place.

Focus

Resource Links

Optimizing Dewatering Processes in Mining Operations (pdf)

Mining companies, environmental groups can work together

Mining Technology Development, New Mining Exploration Method

Waste Oil Management Machine/ Purifier/ Filtering/ Recycling System

Lessons from past clean-ups to Wonderfontein pollution

Resources

Mineral Exploration Primer from AMEBC

The blurb says that this series is intended as a general outline and "user friendly". This is more than that. The Primer divided into four parts is fairly exhaustive and very informative, covering a wide range from types of ore deposits, exploration methods, sampling and assaying  as well as mining methods.. The full primer is in PDF format.

"Hydrofracing" and Horizontal drilling

The focus is now on the development of horizontal wells using hydrofracing technology where water mixed with sand and chemicals is pumped at high pressure to fracture the rock and release the gas. While this process is considered efficient and safe the issues of sourcing, and handling the “flowback” water is getting serious attention  due to the necessity to source huge amounts of water and handle the flowback which is contaminated and look at the whole issue in a larger scale of protection to watersheds. As in the case of Marcellus, The Susquehanna River Basin Commission has already initiated regulatory measures.  While the implications and remedial measures are getting in place, methods like “closed loop system”,  which handles the processing, and recycling of the water at site are being developed.
related:
Horizontal drilling
Horizontal and vertical well production
How Oil And Gas Wells Are Drilled Horizontally 

Technology
 

Joint Venture - Uganda and Russia

A spokesman from the Department of Geological Mines and Surveys, Uganda confirms issuing licenses to Ugaruss Trading House Ltd, Russia. The venture involves mining and exporting tantalite, tin ore and other minerals and initially covers parts of Mbarara and areas near Uganda-Tanzania border. Uganda is looking to tap the mineral potential in the Country and is seriously engaged in exploration.
more at:
Investing in Uganda’s mineral sector
Map from Geology.com
Mineral wealth of Uganda

Joint Ventures

Equipment

Caterpillar working together with Computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University plans to completely automate its largest truck. The truck equipped with necessary software is capable of haul loads up to 240 tons is powered by a 3,550-horsepower, 24-valve engine will have a robot at the wheel. The truck will be designed to move up to 42 miles per hour.

Equipment