Mining News and Discussions

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caltrek
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Pacific Deep-Sea Mining Hotspot Contains a Wealth of Biodiversity
by Karen McVeigh
May 27, 2023

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) Scientists have discovered more than 5,000 new species living on the seabed in an untouched area of the Pacific Ocean that has been identified as a future hotspot for deep-sea mining, according to a review of the environmental surveys done in the area.

It is the first time the previously unknown biodiversity of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a mineral-rich area of the ocean floor that spans 1.7 million square miles between Hawaii and Mexico in the Pacific, has been comprehensively documented. The research will be critical to assessing the risk of extinction of the species, given contracts for deep-sea mining in the near-pristine area appear imminent.

Most of the animals identified by researchers exploring the zone are new to science, and almost all are unique to the region: only six, including a carnivorous sponge and a sea cucumber, have been seen elsewhere.

Contracts for mining exploration in the CCZ have been granted to 17 deep-sea mining contractors in an area covering 745,000 square miles. The companies, backed by countries including the UK, US, and China, want to exploit minerals including cobalt, manganese and nickel, in part to sell to the alternative energy sector.

In July the International Seabed Authority, a quasi-UN body based in Jamaica that regulates deep-sea mining, will begin accepting exploitation applications from these companies.

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/environmen ... -mining/
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China Is Drilling a 10,000-Meter-Deep Hole Into the Earth

Thu, June 1, 2023

Chinese scientists have begun drilling a 10,000-meter (32,808 feet) hole into the Earth’s crust, as the world’s second largest economy explores new frontiers above and below the planet’s surface.

Drilling for what is set to be China’s deepest ever borehole began in the country’s oil-rich Xinjiang region on Tuesday, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Earlier that morning, China sent its first civilian astronaut into space from the Gobi Desert.

The narrow shaft into the ground will penetrate more than 10 continental strata, or layers of rock, according to the report, and reach the cretaceous system in the Earth’s crust, which features rock dating back some 145 million years.

“The construction difficulty of the drilling project can be compared to a big truck driving on two thin steel cables,” Sun Jinsheng, a scientist at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, told Xinhua.

The project will provide data on the Earth’s internal structure, while also testing deep underground drilling technologies, according to China National Petroleum Corp., which is spearheading the project.

https://news.yahoo.com/china-drilling-1 ... 13032.html


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Mining in Pakistan:
Towards Climate-Proofing Projects
by Isha Gupta and Imran Ahmed
May 30, 2023

Introduction:
(Institute of South Asia Studies )Mining is a key source of income for Pakistan, given its enormous mineral deposits spanning an area of 600,000 square kilometres. Pakistan possesses the world’s second-largest salt mines and coal reserves, the fifth-largest copper and gold reserves and the second-largest coal deposits. Additionally, the country has abundant gravel, sand and limestone deposits spread across all four provinces. Minerals are crucial in construction, manufacturing, energy supply and agriculture, among others.

Nevertheless, if not properly restricted and regulated, mining has the potential to inflict severe damage on the environment, leading to pollution, deforestation and disruptions to the delicate ecosystem. Therefore, it is crucial to strike a balance between promoting economic growth and preserving the integrity of the environment. Extensive deliberation on this matter took place during the proceedings of the civil petition (No.55 of 2022) before the Supreme Court of Pakistan, presided over by Justices Syed Mansoor Ali Shah and Ayesha A Malik. The court’s judgement shed light on this issue, providing a comprehensive analysis and examination of the subject matter. The petitioners, in the public interest, contested the lack of sufficient environmental approvals regarding the issuance of licences or leases for small-scale mining.

Read more here: https://www.isas.nus.edu.sg/papers/min ... projects/
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‘Great news’: EU hails discovery of massive phosphate rock deposit in Norway

29 Jun 2023

A massive underground deposit of high-grade phosphate rock in Norway, pitched as the world’s largest, is big enough to satisfy world demand for fertilisers, solar panels and electric car batteries over the next 100 years, according to the company exploiting the resource.

Phosphate rock is an essential element used in the production of phosphorous for the fertiliser industry and was included in the European Commission’s March proposal for a Critical Raw Materials Act.

The Norwegian deposit is estimated to be worth 70 billion tonnes at least, which is just under the 71 billion tonnes of proven world reserves as evaluated by the US Geological Survey in 2021.

By far the largest phosphate rock deposits in the world – around 50 billion tonnes – are situated in the Western Sahara region of Morocco. The next biggest are located in China (3.2 billion tonnes), Egypt (2.8 billion tonnes), and Algeria (2.2bn tonnes), according to US estimates.

“Now, when you find something of that magnitude in Europe, which is larger than all the other sources we know – it is significant,” said Michael Wurmser, founder of Norge Mining, the company behind the discovery.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy ... in-norway/


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wjfox wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2023 10:27 am ...pitched as the world’s largest
...larger than all the other sources we know
...over the next 100 years


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A Fossil Fuel Economy Requires 535x More Mining Than a Clean Energy Economy

29 Mar 2023

Decarbonizing the world’s economy will require an enormous amount of minerals like copper, lithium, nickel and cobalt. Everything from electric vehicles to solar panels to transmission lines will require these raw materials.

In some cases, mining these minerals has disastrous consequences for workers, indigenous communities, and the environment. This has led some clean energy skeptics to argue that decarbonization will be bad for both humans and the environment.

But transitioning to clean energy will mean we no longer have to mine and extract vast quantities of fossil fuels each year. A clean energy transition will help us avoid the worst effects of climate change; it will save millions of lives currently lost to air pollution each year; and, importantly, it will reduce the total amount of environmentally and socially harmful mining each year.

In 2020, 7 million tons of minerals were mined globally for low-carbon energy, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). (These are often referred to as “transition minerals.”) In order to limit warming to 2 degrees celsius, we’ll need to scale up that production to about 28 million tons per year.

That’s a lot of transition minerals. But how does it compare to the mining and extraction of today’s fossil fuel economy?

https://www.distilled.earth/p/a-fossil- ... medium=web
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More Nations Are Growing Wary of Deep Sea Mining
by Karen McVeigh and Chris Michael
July 11, 2023

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) The list of countries calling for a pause on deep-sea mining continued to grow this week ahead of a key moment that mining companies hope will launch the fledgling industry, and its opponents hope could clip its wings, perhaps for good.

Ireland and Sweden became the latest developed economies to join critics, including scientists, environmental organizations, and multinationals such as BMW, Volvo, and Samsung. The carmakers have committed not to use minerals mined from the seabed in their electric vehicles.

No deep-sea mining contracts have yet been authorized, but efforts by the industry and some states, including Norway, have accelerated the race to mine for metals in the planet’s last unexplored frontier.

It is a critical time. With a deadline due to expire on Sunday, commercial applications for deep-sea mining could be given the green light despite the absence of any regulations. From Monday, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the quasi-UN body in charge of those regulations, will meet in Kingston, Jamaica until July 28 to resume negotiations.

Much is at stake. Scientists have warned of large-scale, severe, and irreversible harm to global ocean ecosystems, already threatened by the climate and biodiversity crises, if deep-sea mining goes ahead. Too little is known about the ocean’s abyss even to draw up regulations, they say.
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... nerals/
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wjfox wrote: Mon Jul 03, 2023 10:27 am ‘Great news’: EU hails discovery of massive phosphate rock deposit in Norway

...
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy ... in-norway/
More on that from Courthouse News here:

Extract:
(Axel) Müller (senior geologist with the Natural History Museum of Oslo University) explained that the grade or concentration of phosphate in the hard rocks in Norway is around 4-5%, whereas it is commonly over 10% in the soft, sedimentary rocks in Africa or Asia. That makes it harder and more complicated to compete make use of the mined mineral in the Nordics.

Today, northern Finland is the only place in Scandinavia where phosphate is successfully extracted from hard rock. The new discovery in Norway could move the country in an interesting direction — from being a traditional exporter of oil to one of minerals.
Müller did warn, however, not to believe the number 70 billion tons. He said that it probably refers to phosphate content of the entire rock body not considering what is mineable.
Read more here: https://www.courthousenews.com/geologi ... k-deposit/
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When Deep-Sea Miners Come A-Courting
by Rachel Reeves
July 25, 2023

Introduction:
(Hakai) The Cook Islands’ main harbor is a small indentation in the island of Rarotonga, which is the most developed of the nation’s 15 islands, yet still the kind of place where you give directions in mango trees and neighbors, not house numbers and street names. The harbor has a few long-term residents and a lone police boat that monitors an area roughly the size of Mexico for illegal fishing by vessels from Europe, North America, and Asia. There are also vessels that transport building materials and basic food such as flour and rice to outer islands, some of them 1,200 kilometers away, where more than one-quarter of the Cook Islands’ 14,600 residents live, fish, forage, and harvest.

Visitors to the harbor include fuel tankers and a cargo ship that arrives twice a month from New Zealand to deliver almost all of the country’s groceries. These are the largest vessels that enter the harbor; cruise ships that feed the islands’ primary industry—tourism—have to anchor at sea and transfer passengers ashore in tenders. There isn’t room on Rarotonga to permanently accommodate the ships that have come to scope the potential of the deep sea for commercial mining. One came from Galveston, Texas, in February; another is returning this year from a fit-out in Wellington, New Zealand. Both can call into Aitutaki, a nearby island with a population of about 1,800, when Rarotonga’s port is occupied. The Cook Islands government began widening and deepening Aitutaki’s harbor in 2021, several months before awarding three companies licenses to explore the country’s territorial waters for polymetallic nodules. This is the official name for the lumps found on the seabed, between 3.5 and six kilometers deep, that contain multiple minerals, including manganese and cobalt, a component of batteries in cellphones, laptops, electric vehicles, and other technologies considered essential to the energy revolution. Time magazine called the nodules a “climate solution”; to Mark Brown, the prime minister of the Cook Islands, they’re “golden apples” ripe for picking.
Read more here: https://hakaimagazine.com/features/whe ... ourting/

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