Copper market’s biggest whale fuels speculation of a major shift
The world’s single biggest buyer of copper, State Grid Corp. of China, has slowed its purchases of copper wire this year.
A river near the city of Norilsk in Siberia, the eponymous home of the world’s top nickel and palladium producer, turned blood red recently with various social media outlets posting pictures of the crimson flood.
In a statement updated on Friday, Norilsk Nickel denied that accidental discharge or leaking from a nearby processing plant is responsible for turning the Daldykan river red, but said it would be reducing production at the smelter and conduct tests.
Russia’s natural resources and environment ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that it too was investigating the event which was possibly caused by a break in the mining company’s slurry pipe carrying concentrate to the plant. The city of Norilsk does not rely on the Daldykan river for drinking water.
Norilsk is a top ten mining company with its ADRs trading in New York affording the company a $25 billion market value. The company produces roughly a fifth of the world’s nickel, mainly used in steelmaking, and half the world’s palladium used in autocatalysts to reduce emissions. Its operations in Russia, Australia, Botswana and South Africa also produce significant quantities of copper and cobalt, platinum, gold and silver as byproducts.
??#Sibérie : La rivière Daldykan qui devient rouge sang, On ne sait pas ce que c’est, des analyses sont en cours. pic.twitter.com/kpOZP4KaM2 — ¶ ¬ T ¬ A (@PorteTonArme) September 7, 2016
The town of Norilsk is located in the Arctic circle with a population of 100,000. Construction started in 1936 after the discovery of the rich nickel deposit and today most inhabitants of the isolated city work in the metal and mining industry.
Click here for a fascinating photo essay of life in Norilsk by the Meduza project.
6 Comments
Wayne Waters
Just another sign how Humans are destroying this Wonderful Planet
Mark Harder
In the Soviet era, smelters’ discharges were so dirty that you could make money scraping up the flue dust on the ground and reselling to the smelters. That’s what I read, anyway. It’s an oft repeated misconception that nickel is not toxic. Well, compared to cadmium in NiCad rechargeables, it isn’t. But in the quantities that were (still are??) dumped into the air, it’s bad stuff. Of that much, I’m sure.
Mark Harder
I wonder how much dough you could make running the river through some process to recover the Ni and Pd? Just a thought…
Mark Harder
Hopefully, that’s just iron oxides. There are pyrrhotite (Iron monosulfide), pentlandite (nickel iron sulfide), and some magnetite (mixed valence iron oxide) in the ores, so there is plenty of iron present. More disturbingly, to me at least, is the presence of sperrylite – platinum arsenide. How is this ore treated? What is done with the arsenic compounds?
steven terry holder
Maybe the Ruble is printed in the same color !
Anastasia Ka
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4ca4b38e39e0e99f0a60f90cb489ebd34b137977b09b53fb193f6fcd36b5dced.jpg
Some journalists have written that Norilsk is a horrible place to live, almost like living in hell. Most of them haven’t been in my city neither have spoken with anybody that lives here. Or some just stay here for some days, take pictures of the worst spots of my city and then insist that the rest is just like that. I must acknowledge that living under Norilsk’s weather conditions could be impossible for a lot of people, but I have found Home in here. And like me, thousands of people call Norilsk their home. There are a lot of things going on in here, like the Nickel plant that is shutting down this year. This plant was the major source of air pollution within the urban limits and its shutdown will undoubtedly improve my life quality and all the other inhabitants of Norilsk