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.
Latin American currencies softened against a stronger U.S. dollar on Thursday, a day after the U.S. Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady, while most regional stock markets broadly fell along with their global peers.
Brazil's Real and shares rose on Monday, recovering after declines last week, while the currencies of oil exporters such as the Mexican and Colombian pesos weakened as crude prices dipped.
Brazilian prosecutors plan to file criminal charges against Vale SA and employees of the mining giant over the deadly collapse of a mine-waste dam in January, the lead investigator told The Wall Street Journal.
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 mining agency (ANM) has ordered Vale to suspend operations at its Fabrica and Vargem Grande complexes, as part of an ongoing crackdown following last month's deadly dam break at the iron producer’s Corrego do Feijão mine.
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.
Around 200 residents were evacuated from an area near a tailings dam in Brazil operated by Vale SA late on Saturday, amid fears that it was structurally weak and could burst like a similar barrier failure last month that killed some 300 people.
Brazilian authorities arrested eight employees of mining giant Vale on Friday over a dam collapse at one of its mines three weeks ago that killed at least 166 people and left 147 missing, presumed dead.
A group of international non-governmental organizations on Tuesday demanded that Brazilian miner Vale SA be excluded from the United Nations' corporate responsibility pact, after a mining dam burst that killed an estimated 300 people.