From the sky, the glistening emerald ponds of northern Chile are almost beautiful, but closer to the ground they harbor an ugly and dangerous secret: the reservoirs, filled with toxic waste from the country's mining industry, are ticking time bombs.
Iron ore prices look set to be stronger for longer, potentially delivering windfall profits for West Australia’s big miners for the next two years. As the iron ore price hit a five-year high of US$107.50/t this week, analysts have begun scrambling to revise their estimates as they start to digest the impact of supply disruptions out of Brazil and how long the outages could linger.
Eike Batista, once the richest man in Brazil, has been fined around US$134 million for insider trading, the securities commission said on Monday as the ex-billionaire remains under house arrest pending an appeal against a 30-year jail sentence.
The Argentine Chamber of Mining Entrepreneurs issued a report this week stating that it expects mining industry investments to reach US$ 29 billion and employ about 80,000 people in 2019.
Brazilian court has ordered Vale SA, the world's largest iron ore miner, to suspend operations at two more dams, demanding that it prove the structures are stable. The court decision dated Friday is the latest in a series of orders forcing Vale to halt operations at various dams that contain the muddy detritus of mining operations after one such barrier collapsed in January, killing some 300 people.
Brazil's government on Monday banned new upstream mining dams and ordered the decommissioning of all such dams by 2021, targeting the type of structure that burst last month in the town of Brumadinho, killing hundreds of people.
The White House warned traders on Wednesday not to deal in Venezuelan gold or oil following its imposition of stiff sanctions aimed at forcing socialist President Nicolas Maduro from power.
Brazil’s government weighed pushing for a management overhaul at miner Vale SA on Monday as grief over hundreds feared killed by a dam burst turned into anger, with prosecutors, politicians and victims’ families calling for punishment. By Monday, firefighters in the state of Minas Gerais had confirmed 65 people killed by Friday’s disaster, in which a burst tailings dam sent a torrent of sludge into the miner’s offices and the town of Brumadinho.
The Brazilian prosecutor running talks to settle a lawsuit over a 2015 tailings dam rupture at the Samarco mine says the deadly dam burst at the mine run by Vale in Brumadinho could scramble those sensitive negotiations.
Favorable international demand and a recent discovery of lithium reserves in Brazil caused a rush for the metal, used in electrical batteries, reports the Folha de Sao Paulo. Two ongoing projects will elevate Brazil to the status of one of the world's largest lithium-producing countries in the next decade, according to data from the National Agency for Mining, ANM..