The benefits and pitfalls of mining automation

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA--(Marketwire - Oct. 13, 2011) - Robert Friedland, Chairman, and Peter Reeve, Chief Executive Officer of Ivanhoe Australia Limited (TSX:IVA)(ASX:IVA), are pleased to announce that Ivanhoe Australia has finalised its acq...

Australia Labor Party pushed the carbon tax through the lower house of Parliament on Wednesday in a close vote of 74 to 72. Protestors in the public gallery shouted and tried to disrupt the proceedings. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott of the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia accused Prime Minister Julia Gillard of lying to the Australian people during last year's election, an election which Gillard narrowly won.

The Australia Coal Association makes a pitch for coal with a recent video on YouTube showing how important the industry is to Australia and the country's ecocomy. Coal has been under pressure from the left-leaning Australian Labor Party. The government recently introduced a carbon tax set to kick in 2012. The coal industry claims that the tax will hurt the industry and shut down mining operations.

Australia on Monday gave environmental approval for BHP Billiton to expand its Olympic Dam mine but set more than 100 environmental conditions on the uranium, copper and gold project. The $30 billion expansion of the existing Olympic Dam underground operation will create an adjacent open pit mine that would be the worlds biggest. An idea of the olympian effort required to construct the mine and the size of the undertaking is clear from the fact that trucks will haul overburden 24/7 for five to six years just to reach the ore body. The combined operations would mine 72 Mt ore per year and would produce 750,000 tonnes refined copper, 19,000 tonnes uranium oxide, 800,000 gold ounces and 2.9 Moz of silver per year.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports Australia's Gillard government has opened the week of the crucial vote on carbon tax by revealing that big fuel users such as airlines want to sign on to the scheme, while the coal industry counterattacked with a report estimating that the tax risks the jobs of 21,000 miners. The government's bid to boost the carbon tax comes as a new coal industry-commissioned report says the tax would force the premature closure of 17 per cent of existing black-coal mines in Australia, including 15 in NSW. Today the Australian Coal Association will release the results of an ACIL Tasman consultants study that concludes an estimated 27 per cent of employment in coalmining projects would be under threat with a carbon tax.

John Garnaut identifies a disturbing trend for iron ore exporters, with Chinese steel prices falling and iron ore prices expected to follow, he writes in the Sydney Morning Herald. Garnaut quotes Chinese analysts saying that capacity utilization is declining because steel demand and prices are falling, while the prices for raw materials used in steelmaking — namely coal and iron ore — remain high. The steel and iron ore markets were bracing for "volatility on a declining trend", said Yin Jimei, an analyst at Iron & Steel Information Website in Tangshan. Xu Xiangchun, at Mysteel in Shanghai, said market anxieties over the global economy have coincided with softening domestic demand including a decline in railway construction due to a series of scandals in the Ministry of Railways.

The WA Government has urged apprentices to stick with their training after new figures indicating four out of ten drop out. At some major training providers up to half of all apprentices quit in their first year, with many moving on to highly paid but unskilled mining jobs.

A Chinese company has made another bid to secure iron ore and other metals beyond its borders. On Tuesday Hanlong Mining said it will buy Perth-based Sundance Resources for US$1.57 billion. AFP reported that Hanlong will acquire Sundance through a scheme of arrangement, after lifting its offer to 57 cents cash per share from 50 cents back in July.

The price of coking coal is likely to remain buoyant despite a recent price cut by Wesfarmers and softening Chinese demand for steelmaking inputs. Wesfarmers, an Australian conglomerate based in Perth, over the weekend cut the price it receives for its Curragh coal to US$280 a tonne over the next three months. The move prompted analysts to consider whether coal, like several commodities like copper, nickel, and zinc, is the next domino to fall as slowing global growth pinches commmodities.