Rio Tinto has completed commissioning of the AU$2.6 billion Amrun bauxite mine on the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland. The mine and associated processing and port facilities will replace production from Rio Tinto’s depleting East Weipa mine and will increase the company's bauxite export capacity by around 10 million tonnes each year. Rio Tinto Chief Executive J-S Jacques said Amrun was completed early and under budget, demonstrating Rio Tinto’s productivity and innovation capabilities. “Amrun will provide jobs, support businesses and contribute to growth in the region for the next 50 years, buil... more

OzMinerals has completed a scoping study into a potential $1.3 billion expansion of its Carrapateena copper mine, which is located approximately 470 kilometres north of Adelaide. The Carrapateena copper mine is considered to be one of Australia’s largest undeveloped copper deposits and is second in size to South Australia’s largest copper mine, BHP’s Olympic Dam - the fourth-largest copper deposit in the world. The project is currently a 4.25 Million tonne per annum underground operation and holds an estimated mine life of 20 years. According to the scoping study, the Carrapateena Block Cave Expan... more

Monadelphous Group Limited has just been awarded a major construction contract at BHP’s South Flank Project in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. BHP’s South Flank Project is set to fully replace production from the 80 Million tonnes per annum (Mtpa) Yandi mine, which is reaching the end of its economic life. The South Flank Project expands the existing infrastructure at Mining Area C and involves the construction of an 80 Mtpa crushing and screening plant, an overland conveyor system, stockyard and train loading facilities, procurement of new mining fleet and substantial mine development and pr... more

Aus Tin Mining Limited has commenced tin mining at its Granville East Mine, which is located approximately 20 kilometres north of the historic mining town Zeehan, on the west coast of Tasmania. The Granville Tin Project comprises two mining leases (21M/2003 and 9M/2006) and is approved for Level 1 operations, an open cut pit (Granville East) and a processing plant. Run‐of‐Mine material from the first mining block is set to be transported to the processing plant, enabling plant feed to transition from low‐grade stockpiles to high‐grade mine material. The first mining block is located at the sout... more

Sheffield Resources Limited has secured a 15-year agreement with Woodside Energy Limited and Energy Developments Pty Ltd (EDL) for the supply and delivery of 1,950 terajoules per annum of liquified natural gas (LNG) to the Thunderbird Mineral Sands Project, in northern Western Australia. As per the agreement, LNG will be supplied from Woodside’s Pluto LNG Truck Loading Facility near Karratha and transported to Thunderbird’s LNG storage facility by a newly formed joint venture between Woodside and EDL. The Woodside-EDL joint venture will own and operate a purpose-built road tanker fleet to deliver the L... more

Western Australia’s single largest user of natural gas, Alcoa of Australia Limited has secured three new gas supply agreements which in full will supply close to 25 per cent of the company’s gas requirements from 2020. The agreements with BHP, Woodside and Chevron coupled with other gas supply contracts, which were announced in 2015 (Quadrant Energy and Santos), complete Alcoa’s gas portfolio to fuel its Kwinana, Pinjarra and Wagerup alumina refineries for the mid-term. The company consumes approximately 40 per cent of the gas supplied to the south west of Western Australia and about 25 per cent of t... more

Perdaman Chemicals and Fertilisers Pty Ltd and Woodside Energy Limited have signed a historic Gas Sale and Purchase Agreement (GSPA) for the supply of pipeline gas to the proposed Perdaman Urea Plant on the Burrup Peninsula in Karratha for a period of 20 years, with the option to extend to 25 years. The 2 million tonnes per annum (tpa) Urea Plant will be Australia’s first urea export project supplying the demand in the growing Asia Pacific region. It is expected to create in excess of 2,000 direct jobs during the project’s three-year construction phase and hold a permanent staff of 200 to operate the plan... more

INPEX has just announced that they have officially commenced operations at the Ichthys LNG Project, which is located in the Ichthys Gas-condensate Field, offshore of Western Australia. The large-scale project is expected to be operational for over 40 years. The project is set to produce and ship approximately 8.9 million tons of LNG, along with approximately 1.65 million tons of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) per year. Aside from this, it is predicted that the project will further produce approximately 100,000 barrels of condensate per day during its peak. The produced gas will be gathered within the Centr... more

The Western Australian Government has launched the Onslow Renewable Energy Pilot - the second stage of one of Australia's most cutting edge microgrid projects. Onslow is a coastal town in the Pilbara region of Western Australia (positioned roughly 1,386 kilometres north of Perth) that has a rising demand for electricity. Power is a critical piece of infrastructure in Onslow that needs to be further developed to ensure reliable and safe supply to the local community. The Onslow Microgrid Project aims to achieve this. Stage One of the project saw the construction of a gas-fired modular power station, designe... more

The Australian Government has announced that it will provide $56 million to fast track the development of a second interconnector across the Bass Strait. The first interconnector, Basslink, is a 300 kilometre, 500 Megawatt (MW) high-voltage direct current cable that links the electricity grids in Victoria and Tasmania. The Government's funding announcement follows a recently released report by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and state-owned company, TasNetworks, into the feasibility of a second interconnector across the Bass Strait, named the ‘Marinus Link’. In the initial report, TasNet... more

SA Water has awarded a $304 million contract to local equipment company, Enerven to install roughly half-a-million solar panels across South Australia. The framework agreement will see Enerven (a wholly owned subsidiary of SA Power Networks) install approximately 154 megawatts of new solar photovoltaic generation and 34-megawatt hours of energy storage across almost 80 SA Water sites over the next two years. The investment in more than 500,000 solar panels is expected to deliver a return on investment in six years, and help SA Water reach its ambitious goal of achieving zero net electricity costs from 202... more

Parts of Victoria’s electricity grid will soon receive a technical overhaul thanks to a $2.2 million trial which will explore how existing infrastructure can effectively integrate with solar power and other new technologies. The trial, Creating Solar Friendly Neighbourhoods, is being developed through a partnership between leading energy infrastructure company AusNet Services, Victorian electricity distributor Jemena, the University of New South Wales and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA)- which will contribute $1.1 million in funding to the project as part of their Advancing Renewables Program... more

Premier of Western Australia Mark McGowan, and Federal Minister for the Environment Melissa Price, have officially ‘turned the sod’ at Australia’s first thermal waste-to-energy facility in Kwinana, Western Australia. The facility, named Avertas Energy, will use state-of-the-art technology to process 400,000 tonnes of household, commercial and industrial waste each year to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 400,000 tonnes (equivalent to taking 85,000 cars off Perth’s roads). Once operational in 2021, the facility will generate and export 36 megawatts of baseload electricity t... more

Australian Future Energy Pty Ltd's (AFE) $1 billion Gladstone Energy and Ammonia Project is now one step closer to delivery thanks to the release of terms of reference for the project’s environmental impact statement (EIS). The project is expected to convert 1.5 million tonnes of coal to produce up to 230,000 tonnes of ammonia and 12 petajoules of synthetic natural gas per annum. Ammonia can be used to make a range of products in the agricultural and mining industries, such as ammonium nitrate as an explosive in mining and nitrogen bases fertilisers in agriculture. While ammonia is produced elsewhere ... more

On Friday 15 February, Minister for Transport Rita Saffioti, Mining and Pastoral Region MLC Stephen Dawson and Pilbara MLA Kevin Michel joined Roy Hill staff and executives to open the completed Roy Hill Rail Bridge in Western Australia.  The Roy Hill funded bridge is an $18.66 million single span rail bridge carrying the Great Northern Highway over the Roy Hill rail line, leading into Port Hedland’s port. The new bridge replaces an existing level crossing, enabling traffic to freely move over the rail line and removes the potential for a railroad accident at the intersection. Since August 2018, Main... more

Jobs and investment are set to flow into Port Augusta following an agreement by Flinders Power Partnership to sell the site of the former Port Augusta Power Stations to CU-River Mining Pty Ltd. South Australian iron ore magnetite producer, CU-River, plans to turn the site into an iron ore and grain transshipment port facility, with the acquisition expected to provide a substantial jobs boost for the Upper Spencer Gulf town. Once feasibility and approvals are completed, the proposed $250 million port facility is forecast to hold an initial capacity up to 15 million tonnes per annum (TPA), with future potent... more

The world's first and China's largest battery energy storage system (BESS) multi-mixed energy power station was recently completed and integrates wind (400MW), photovoltaic (200MW), concentrated solar power (50MW), and an energy storage system (ESS) (100MWh) into one system on the grid. The first of its kind in China, the station coordinates three different renewables, with fluctuating sources of energy and is required to respond consistently to fluctuating demand, making its batteries and battery management system crucial to the reliability of the system. Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (CATL... more

Australian-based industrial minerals and technology company, Syrah Resources Limited has commenced commercial production at the Balama Graphite Operation in Mozambique.  The Balama mine in Mozambique is a high grade (17 per cent), long life (50 years) asset and is considered to be one of the largest graphite mines in the world. Operations at Balama commenced at the start of 2018 with Syrah ramping up production to nameplate capacity of 350 kilotonnes (kt) per annum. The company expects natural graphite production to reach 33 kt in Q4, to a full year natural graphite production of 104 kt. Syrah achie... more

Perth-based Lucapa Diamond Company Limited has announced an international competitive process for the sale of diamonds from the Lulo mine in Angola – closing on 31 January 2019. Lucapa’s Lulo Diamond Project is located approximately 630 kilometres east of the Angolan capital of Luanda and is the highest US$ per carat alluvial diamond production in the world. The Lulo Diamond Mine has produced 11 +100 carat diamonds in the past, including Angola’s two biggest recorded diamonds which weighed 404 carats and 227 carats. The sale is set to mark a significant milestone for the Angolan diamond mining in... more

On Tuesday 11 December, Newcrest Mining Limited and Joint Venture Partner Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Independent State of Papua New Guinea (PNG) as a confirmation to proceed with the Wafi-Golpu project. The MOU establishes a framework for the parties to progress with the project as quickly as possible in accordance with applicable regulatory processes and provides a framework of key terms to be included in the Mining Development Contract and other related agreements with the State. The MOU also re-affirms the parties’ intent to complete the permit... more