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By Rees J. Llewellyn

High chromium white irons can be formulated to provide required combinations of abrasion and erosion wear resistance, toughness and capability to withstand corrosion attack. As a consequence, they are used widely in casting form throughout the mining/mineral processing industry, particularly as components for slurry pumps and also as mill and crusher liners, laminated wear plates in chutes and hoppers and in valves, nozzles and cyclones. Traditional cast chromium molybdenum and high chromium white irons for wear applications are covered in ASTM A532 Classes 11 and 111 and are also available as comparable proprietary alloys. They rely on heat-treated, hypoeutectic microstructures containing a high volume fraction of very hard eutectic/secondary metal carbides and martensite to provide extremely high wear resistance. The ability to increase the carbide volume fraction and hence achieve higher wear resistance, has been limited because of severe casting difficulties encountered when carbon and chromium contents are raised and hypereutectic alloys with structures also containing coarse acicular primary metal carbides are produced. The limitation has been overcome and cast hypereutectic chromium white iron pump components have established themselves in a wide variety of mineral processing service applications. Comparisons will be made between the microstructures and wear test performance data for the various alloy types and details will be provided of the service performance improvements that have been achieved through the use of hypereutectic chromium white irons.

May 1, 2004

By Donald Strickland, Peter Kresin, Dave Hall

"Have your parents or grandparents ever tried to share with you their wisdom and you ignored it because it did not relate to you‘? I have been ignorant and inevitably grew older and wished I had listened. The result: learning the hard way. As British Astronomer Fred Hoyle once said. “It is the true nature of mankind to learn from mistakes not from example.“ Hopefully we will continue to learn from the examples shared by our fellow mineral processors in these conference proceedings. It is the intent of this paper to share wisdom from the Musselwhite Mine that you may apply to your own operation.This paper is divided into three sections:1. Feasibility3. Operation3 . DesignKey points of the Feasibility and Design stages are summarized. followed by an analysis of actual operating statistics. An attempt is made to relate these statistics back to the feasibility and design with emphasis on areas of success and those with potential for improvement."

Jan 1, 1999

By Brigitte J. Dejou

The Red Dog sediment-hosted zinc-lead deposit is located in the Brooks Range thrust belt in northwest Alaska, approximately 1000 km northwest of Anchorage. The mine constitutes the primary deposit in a 400 square kilometre district, which hosts several other mineral occurrences. All the known mineralisation is hosted by the Mississippian Ikalukrok Member, deep basinal shale of the Kuna Formation, part of a Devonian to Cretaceous sedimentary sequence. The rocks underwent intense deformation during the Brookian Orogeny in Middle Cretaceous time. Several thrust faults juxtapose the stratigraphy. The Red Dog mine is composed of four deposits which together contain 105 Mt in resources and reserves for a total resource exceeding 18 Mt of Zn metal. The mine is an open pit with 25 foot high benches. The biggest challenge is not the Arctic conditions, but metal extraction, due to the fine grained nature of the mineralisation and the variability of the ore. The mine produces Zn and Pb-Ag concentrates that are shipped to smelters around the world from the Red Dog port facilities during the short summer period. Ore mineralogy is generally simple and consists of sphalerite, pyrite, galena and marcasite. The deposits are generally overlain by decametre thick exhalative barite horizons and exhibit strong silicification, which locally obliterates the original textures. Although described as a world class Sedex-type deposit, a large portion of the mineralisation exhibits sub-surface replacement textures. Moreover, unlike most other Sedex deposits, the reconstruction of the basin is made difficult by the structural complexity of the district. To assist exploration in the district, several assumptions are made regarding the deposit settings relative to metal source, growth faults or crustal extension.

May 1, 2006

By J. P. Cooney

Placer Dome is learning from experience in Latin America, Asia and Africa, as well as in North America, that contributing effectively to sustainable human progress in the areas of its operations presents unending challenges to think creatively, communicate effectively and remain culturally sensitive. People must be better off in terms of their economic circumstances, their social conditions and the quality of their natural environment not only during the life of the mines, but after mines close. Stakeholders, all those who are directly or indirectly affected by a mining project, should be able to participate in decisions which affect them. The development of sustainability strategies, the monitoring of sustainability performance and the implementation of sustainability programs are best done in partnerships with governments, communities, nongovernmental organizations and multilateral development institutions. Ultimately, the success, if not the survival of mining, will depend on our ability to get the sustainability equation correct.

Jan 1, 2000

By B. D. Pandey, D. Bagchi, Premchand

During the separation and recovery of metals from the ammoniacal leach liquor of Indian Ocean nodules by solvent extraction-electrowinning (SX-EW) in close-loop operation, the copper electrolyte containing ~40g/L Cu, 20 g/L Ni and 180 g/L sulphuric acid is bled-off to control the impurities. The recovery of copper and nickel as powders has been examined from the copper bleed solution following partial decopperisation, crystallization of mixed sulphate of the two metals and aqueous hydrogen reduction. From the dissolved sulphate solution containing 17.68 g/L Cu, 18.83 g/L Ni and 0.03 g/L Fe, the copper powder was precipitated at initial hydrogen pressure of 26 bar in an autoclave in 90 min at 140 °C. The residual copper from the spent solution was removed as sulphide and nickel powder was then recovered (99%) in two stages from a solution of pH 4.5 at 40 bar pressure and 190 °C. However, 98% nickel recovery in one stage was achieved when hydrogen reduction was carried out from an ammoniacal solution in the pH range 9-11. Copper and nickel powders were produced from the bleed solution with acceptable purity and specifications suitable for P/M applications.

Jan 1, 2004

By A. T. Robles, L. Buckingham

"When certain gold ores containing pyrite, graphite, humates and fumates or other organic compounds which are possibly adsorbed on clay minerals are treated with aqueous solution of alkali metal cyanide, the aurocyanide complex which forms is adsorbed by these ""pregrobbing"" species in the ore. Dissolution of gold proceeds until chemical equilibrium is attained between the cyanide complex adsorbed by the ore and in solution.Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) may be used to decrease the adsorptive activity of the prerobbing species in the ore. It has successfully improved recovery at Holt-McDermott Mine and is highly biodegradable.INTRODUCTION Precious metal-bearing ores containing preg-robbing species are poorly amenable to standard cyanidation techniques. The ""preg-robbing"" impurities with which they are associated tend to adsorb the gold cyanide complexes and carry them through the circuit to the tailings. Also, gold may be associated with these impurities in the ore and not be leached by the cyanide complexing agents used in conventional cyanidation techniques.Methods for dealing with the problem of preg-robbinq impurities in gold ores are:Carbon-in-Leach (CIL), in which granular activated carbon is added to compete with preg-robbing species for the gold cyanide complexes. This process can improve gold recovery in mildly preg-robbing ores especially when fine carbons with very high activities are used. However, with severely graphitic ore, the carbon associated with the rock may outperform the granular activated charcoal.Chemical Oxidation, in which the ore is subjected to preliminary chemical oxidation techniques to oxidize carbonaceous materials using such diverse reagents including ozone, sodium hypochlorite, calcium hypochlorite, chlorine gas, permanganates, perchlorates, chlorates and oxygen prior to subjecting the oxidized ore to standard cyanidation treatment to extract gold. This is generally a costly method and will not prove economical on a low-grade ore."

Jan 1, 1992

By François Robichaud

"The Laronde mill has been in operation since 1988. Actual milling rate ranges from 7,000 to 8,500 mtpd. Laronde uses SAG/ball mill grinding followed by copper and zinc flotation circuits. A cyanidation/Merrill-Crowe process recovers the remaining gold and silver in the flotation tails.In 1999, the carbon in pulp circuit was replaced by a Merrill-Crowe circuit in order to cope with a much higher ratio of silver/gold associated with the discovery of the Penna shaft. Marine type diatomaceous earth was used as filter aid in both clarifier pressure leaf filters and recessed pressure filter presses from 1999 to 2005. In 2005, this filter aid was gradually replaced by alpha-cellulose after several laboratory and plant filtration trials. The selected cellulose is considered to be much less sensitive to parameters such as pH and reagent concentration and have increased clarifier and filter press filtration performance. Also, since cellulose is exothermic, replacing diatomaceous earth with cellulose as filter aid in the filter presses has increased calcining and oxidation rates in the calcining ovens since cellulose is exothermic. Finally, better calcining conditions have resulted in energy and reagent savings at the arc furnaces.This paper describes how the filter aid replacement has contributed to increasing productivity and Net Smelter Return of the refinery while reducing worker’s hazards and operating cost.INTRODUCTIONAll Merrill-Crowe circuits in the world are operated with filter aids. For years, the market for precoat filter aid has been dominated by mineral filter aids such as diatomite and perlite. Flowsheet and equipment selection at the Laronde refinery were performed in the late nineties. At that time, some key parameters of the design criteria had clearly identified marine type diatomaceous earth (DE) as the most successful filter aid. Parameters such as reagent cost and availability, clarity of the filtrate solution and good historical filtration performance in other concentrators had designated DE as the best suited filter aid. Pregnant solution processed in the refinery from its start-up through 2001 was fairly stable in flow rate and reasonable in terms of impurity content (cationic and anionic compounds)."

Jan 1, 2007

By G. A. Bezuidenhout, J. Davis, S. Lefume, J. P. T. Kapusta, D. K. Chibwe

"Although the centennial of the Peirce-Smith (PS) converting process has recently been celebrated, the technology has essentially not changed much since its inception. PS converting is used extensively in the Cu, Ni and PGM industry to remove iron and sulphur from a molten matte phase. A typical PS converting process would use low pressure air supplied by a blower to bubble air through the molten bath. This bubbling injection regime is inherently inefficient from a process and energy consideration. In the late 70’s and early 80’s, Brimacombe and co-workers demonstrated at both laboratory and plant scales that sonic injection (jetting regime) into copper or nickel converters could reduce or eliminate the above hindrances characteristic of PS converting. Since then, in spite of these successes, very little industrial applications have made headway in the converting process of non-ferrous metal mattes on a commercial scale. As part of its operational improvement and energy reduction program (process efficiency), Lonmin Platinum decided to conduct a full scale industrial evaluation of sonic injection using air only to establish if punchless, high efficiency sonic injection was feasible in its small 3.05 × 4.57 m converters (10’ × 15’). A plant trial was run for four weeks in one of its three converters. This paper discusses the plant demonstration with a focus on the experience acquired by Lonmin together with the key learnings from the trials. Reference will also be made to the commercial aspects of a full scale implementation of sonic injection in all three converters in the smelter. INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVESAlthough the centennial of the Peirce-Smith (PS) converting process has recently been celebrated (Peirce and Smith, 1909; Southwick, 2009), the technology has essentially not changed much since its inception. PS converting is used extensively in the Cu, Ni and PGM industry to remove iron and sulphur from a molten matte phase. A typical PS converting process would use low pressure air supplied by a blower to bubble air through the molten bath. This bubbling injection regime is inherently inefficient from a process and energy consideration."

Jan 1, 2012

In this paper we present the results of preliminary investigations into the applicability of new laboratory scale tests for the prediction of operating gap and specific throughput in high pressure grinding rolls (HPGR). The work is a part of the CAMIRO HPGR research program being conducted at the University of British Columbia, which aims to develop a suite of small-scale tests and procedures for the selection and sizing of HPGRs. A focus of the presented study is to test sample types in terms of their terra-mechanics based characteristics and relate them to specific throughput and gap results from pilot HPGR testing on the same samples.

Jan 1, 2012

By Henrik Saxén, Mikko Helle

The operation of hot stoves used for preheating the blast in the ironmaking blast furnace has a strong effect on the consumption of reductants, economic performance of and CO2 emissions from the steelmaking site. Generally, it is recommended to maintain as high blast temperature as possible, because this minimizes the rate of reductants in the blast furnace. The blast temperature is affected in a complex way by the time periods of heating and cooling of the stoves, and by the amount of gas combusted in the stoves. Furthermore, as the hot stoves show degraded performance with age, it is a non-trivial task to select optimal operation parameters for the stoves. The paper addresses this computationally by applying a one-dimensional heat-transfer model of the hot stoves for optimization of the performance of the system. The complexity and strong coupling of the decision variables is demonstrated by numerical examples, where the blast temperature is maximized under different constraints.

Jan 1, 2015

By Barton G. Stone

The mining and exploration industries have been using Geostatistics (Matheron, 1963) for the past forty years. It has been extensively incorporated into three dimensional block modeling software whose usage has reflected the growth in the use of personal computers since 1980. Because of the utility of geostatistical models in mining and production planning, much of the modern reserve and resource modeling is done by mining engineers, geostatisticians and geological engineers. Explorationists are initially less concerned with three dimensional models until such time as a deposit has been roughly delineated. However, the concept of regionalized variables in ore deposits deals with the effect of spatial correlations between data points in a three dimensional sample space and should be useful for optimizing the spacing of drill holes to allow maximum bang-for-the-buck in drilling programs. This paper examines three common deposit types (porphyry copper, VMS and intrusive gold) to examine whether geostatistical methods have been used to minimize drilling costs because of better understanding of spatial correlations. The three model types were chosen from publicly available corporate websites of Canadian based Junior Mining Companies. They include the Wolverine polymetallic zinc deposit of Yukon Zinc in Yukon, Canada; the El Morro Deposit in Chile (30 percent ownership by New Gold Mining Company, and the Fort Knox Gold deposit in Alaska and 50 percent ownership by Nova Gold Resources). Typically, individual mining corporations post their technical reports as CNI 43-101 reports on their corporate website as indications of the favorability or progress on their more exciting properties. Data considered for this paper was not collected or generated by the author, but the information was extracted from these publicly available sites and had a variety of authorship.

Oct 1, 2009

By G. R. Brough

"Today it is more important than ever to get the maximum possible return on capital invested in the processing industry. To this end the plant is often operated continuously and the choice of equipment is, consequently, extremely important.Screening spans a wide range of particle sizes and there are many different types of screening elements. The following types are common:1. Cloths and elements of rubber.2. Wire mesh screens with round wires.3. Wire mesh screens with profiled wires.4. Perforated steel plates.5. Elements of plastic.6. Gratings of steel beams.7. Gratings of iron rods.We would like to deal with two of these types namely rubber and briefly on plastics.We first introduced rubber screens to the Canadian Mining Industry in November, 1963. This stemmed from a conversation with the superintendant of one of Canada's largest screening plants containing 48 vibrating screens, with an average wire cloth life of 10 to 12 days. We contacted the manufacturer of rubber screen cloths who had supplied rubber screens to a mine in Northern Sweden for a 50,000 ton per day plant in 1951."

Jan 1, 1983

"The Detour Lake Mine is located in northeastern, Ontario, approximately 300 kilometres northest of Timmins and 185 kilometres by road northeast of Cochrane. The mill processes a free milling gold ore using both gravity circuit and leaching with a state-of-the-art carbon-in-pulp circuit. The grinding circuit is a conventional SABC circuit with a tonnage of 55,000 mtpd at 95 microns with the addition of pre-crushing upstream of the SAG mill.The present paper will describe the methodology used to successfully prove that gold of the Detour Lake Mine ore is mostly concentrated into the fine size fraction of the blasted rocks. It will describe the various options possible to create value from this ore property.IntroductionThe purpose of this test work was to determine the grade of the pebbles and consider if there was value into discarding the pebbles and replacing the material by fresh feed.1. Pebble samplingThe pebbles were sampled and assayed for grade every day for 3 months. After 3 months of sampling, the results showed that the pebbles only carried 28% of the fresh feed grade. This phenomenon can possibly be explained by the fact the gold is located into area of fracture in the rocks.January-March 2014 – Pebble assay average• Line #1 = 0.222 g. Au/t• Line#2 = 0.275 g. Au/t• Head grade = 0.88 g. Au/t2. Crushing and grinding circuit surveysWith the above information, a grinding circuit survey was planned. The purpose of the survey was to build a JKSIMMET model of the grinding circuit for mill optimization but also to understand the deportment of gold into various size fractions that may explain why there is so little gold in the pebbles. All streams and size fractions was analysed for particle size analysis and for gold.Since Detour has dual grinding lines, both circuits were sample at the end of May. Two supplemental survey of the secondary crushers were also done and a survey of the gyratory crusher."

Jan 1, 2016

By Jonas Olsson

"The picture of China as an antiquated continent is changing rapidly and fast-forwarding progress is a fact in most infrastructural fields. Mining is not an exception. China is today the largest producer of aluminum, coal, steel, zinc, tin, lead and manganese and the country’s mineral resources comprising approximately 12% of the global reserves ranks them number three in the world after US and Russia.In order to feed the growth industry is needed to take extra ordinary strides to improve supply of raw material and Chinese mines are continuously being upgraded with the latest western technology to meet the increasing domestic demand of base metals.In Anshan located in China’s northeast province Liaoning we find one of the fastest developing mining companies, Angang Iron & Steel Group Co. Ltd. With their six mines that together process approximately 60 M ton iron ore/year Angang Iron & Steel Group Co. Ltd is the largest iron ore company in China. The group’s thorough pre-studies and technical evaluations over the past five years have made them very successful in both plant upgrades of existing operations and green field projects.INTRODUCTIONWe live in a time when the world market is gradually acclimatising to the global consequences of “The China effect”. An effect caused by a formerly sleeping giant nation that during the last years has awakened and developed beyond comparison, primarily because of booming infrastructure projects and demand for capital and consumer goods"

Jan 1, 2006

By James W. Cassie

The Snap Lake Diamond Project is located approximately 220 km northeast of Yellowknife, NT, Canada at an approximate latitude of 63?35?. The project location is within the zone of continuous permafrost; measured ground temperatures are about ?2?C at 10 to 20 m depth below surface. The site is located on a peninsula jutting into Snap Lake. The site is generally barren of vegetation, except for some isolated areas with low trees located in topographic lows and near the shoreline of Snap Lake. As part of phased evaluation process with regards to the mining project, an Advanced Exploration Program was undertaken in 2000 and 2001. This program included the underground extraction of a bulk sample of kimberlite, which was processed on site. A Processed Kimberlite Containment (PKC) area was required as part of this program. The area chosen as the PKC facility was a small inland lake, called Inland Lake #1, on the peninsula. Construction of the PKC area required the construction of two dams, one on either end of the lake. At the south end of the lake, Dam 1 was constructed partially on a talik and partially on continuous permafrost. Dam 2 was constructed entirely on permafrost. The effects of the remote location, selection of suitable construction materials and permafrost conditions on the designs of the dams are discussed. A description of the design elements and construction schedule are provided. A review of the performance of these two dams, in terms of settlement, deformations, pore pressures and thermal regime, over the last several years is provided.

May 1, 2003

By I. C. Brown

Introduction Many tables of nomenclature for igneous rocks have been introduced from time to time, and each has its strong proponents. As a result, any discussion of igneous? rocks is apt to prove confusing unless the names used for these rocks are defined. This ?became so obvious to a discussion group, formed by the members of the Geological Survey of Canada in 1948, that an attempt was made to establish a scheme of nomenclature that could be used by any member mapping anywhere in Canada. The writer was asked to co-ordinate the ideas presented by individuals in the discussion group, to arrange them in tabular form, and, later, to distribute copies of the resultant table to Canadian universities, provincial geological surveys, and some other geological discussion groups. Many useful suggestions and criticisms were received, were studied ?by members? of the original group, and, so far as practicable, were incorporated in the scheme of nomenclature. The result is the table presented here. This nomenclature of igneous rocks is at present being used by most members of the Geological Survey of Canada who are working with igneous rocks, and by some Canadian universities. We hope it will be found useful and be more widely accepted. With this idea in mind, certain principles were adopted in drawing up the nomenclature.

Jan 1, 1952

By Ilpo O. Auranen

Background: Mines of today are moving ever increasing tonnages of rock. The new ore bodies tend be of lower grade and located deeper in the earth?s crust. The industry?s focus to overcome this ?deeper but poorer? ore problem has traditionally been to lower the costs by increasing the scale of mining. This has resulted in an ever increasing size of mining equipment like drills, loading shovels, dump trucks. The main focus has been in reducing the cost per ton of mining. This cost focus has often resulted in increased waste rock dilution and more ore losses. From costs to value: Waste rock dilution means waste rock in the concentrator feed. It?s value in open pit mining is equal to the value of ore it replaces. In underground mining, waste rock dilution?s value is equal to the value of ore it replaces added to the costs of mining it. It is commonly accepted that waste rock dilution in open pit mining ranges between 5 and 20% and in underground mining between 5 and 40 % . In a typical large open pit mine ore value is from 20 to 60 USD per ton and mining costs are 1 to 3 USD per ton. One percentage point reduction in waste rock dilution represents savings corresponding to about 20% of total mining operation costs. The difficulty of reducing waste rock dilution comes from the complicated nature of the ores. Accurate ore waste-border detection has not been possible due to excessive costs. Core drilling combined with geochemical lab analysis is the most accurate method for locating ore waste borders. However, it is also expensive and time consuming, which is why it is often combined with somewhat lower cost methods like sampling drill cuttings from blasting drill holes or from reverse circulation drills and analyzing them in a laboratory. The main drawback with these methods, in addition high costs, lies in the sampling accuracy and in the quality control of the whole process when a large number of samples have to be handled manually. In every mine it is possible to halve waste rock dilution by using new on-line analysis technology .

Oct 1, 2009

By Mostafa Benzaazoua, Bruno Bussière, Philippe Poirier, Denis Bois

"Environmental desulphurisation is an attractive alternative for the management of acid generating tailings. Non selective froth flotation is the most commonly used method to produce desulphurized tailings, as shown from many previous works (McLaughlin and Stuparyk, 1994; Bussière et al., 1995; 1998; Benzaazoua et al., 2000a,b; 2002). This process can reduce the volume of problematic tailings to manage, by making a sulphide fraction concentrate. The desulphurized tailings can then be used as a moisture retention layer in a cover with capillary barrier effects to prevent acid mine drainage.In this paper, the authors present the results from different laboratory and pilot scale flotation tests which confirm that low sulphide, non-acid generating tailings can be produced by froth flotation. It is also demonstrated that the sulphide concentrates obtained from desulphurisation, when mixed with binders gave good long term results in terms of mechanical behaviour, thus demonstrating that the sulphide fraction can be used for paste backfill material. From previous work (Bussière et al. 1998, 1999) on the evaluation of the operating and capital costs of the desulphurisation process for different ore types, the use of desulphurized tailings to create a dry cover was then studied for several scenarios. The desulphurisation process was compared with other technologies (underwater disposal, engineered soil cover) currently used to prevent acidic drainage (AD) for a new mining operation and the advantages and disadvantages of desulphurisation are presented as well as the costs of this method of AD prevention.INTRODUCTIONThe principal environmental problem of the mining industry today is the generation of acidic drainage (AD) resulting from the natural oxidation of the sulphides in mine tailings. This phenomenon involves the generation of acidity which increase the amounts of toxic metals in the waste water released into the environment by a mine. The environmental impact of the AD has been described in detail in previous work (e.g. Down et Stocks, 1977; Ritcey, 1989; Gray, 1997; Ripley et al., 1996; Aubertin et al., 2002)."

Jan 1, 2004

By S. Luidold, A. Poscher, H. Antrekowitsch

"The rare earth elements (REE) are nowadays mainly used for permanent magnets, catalysts, hydrogen storage alloys in rechargeable batteries, for glasses, ceramics, and polishing agents. Other important areas of application are phosphors in different types of lamps (fluorescent tubes, energy-saving lamps, etc.). These lamps are often collected and treated at their end of life by disintegration and sorting. However, the obtained fine fractions comprise not only REE-containing phosphors but also small amounts of mercury and are therefore disposed till today in special landfills. Due to the enormous price increase of the rare earths during the last two years, a lot of activities started for extracting these elements from secondary resources such as for example phosphors. All recycling concepts for this task mainly work with hydrometallurgical methods. The large number of different compounds in phosphors with sometimes very different behaviors with respect to their solubility in aqueous phases forms a major challenge to achieve good yields as well as acceptable purities of the produced rare earth concentrates by a process with a reasonable number of operation steps. Therefore, this paper gives at first a brief overview about the compounds, used as phosphors and about existing concepts or investigations. It further describes our own process design and the results, obtained on laboratory scale. INTRODUCTIONThe rare earth elements (REE) have a central position in the industrialised world despite their marginal production volume in comparison to common metals such as aluminium, copper, zinc etc., because they are essential for many applications. They often cannot be substituted without a considerable loss on functionality and quality. This group of metals comprise the lanthanoids (f–block elements, lanthanum–lutetium) as well as scandium and yttrium.The estimated world mine production of REE amounted to 133,000 t rare earth oxide equivalent in 2010, whereat China accounted for 130,000 t or 98 % (Cordier, 2012). The European Union (EU-27) imported 23,013 t in 2008 to cover its demand. The figure 1 shows the fraction of the European member states in terms of the total imports of rare earth compounds from outside the EU-27 (Schüler, Buchert, Liu, Dittrich, & Merz, 2011)."

Jan 1, 2012

By Theophile S. Yameogo

Les ressources naturelles ont en général été le moteur du développement économique et social des nations. Les pays aujourd?hui développés sont pour la plupart d?anciens eldorado, charbonniers ou pétroliers. D?autres le sont toujours. L?Afrique fait cependant figure d?exception : même en étant comblé de ressources naturelles exceptionnelles, les pays de ce continent croulent sous le poids de la pauvreté et de ses acabits que sont les maladies, la famine, la guerre et l?insurrection sociale. On reconnaît néanmoins qu?il y a des cas particuliers comme le Botswana, la Namibie, l?Afrique du Sud. Face à cette situation, beaucoup de scénarii ont été proposés sans pour autant porté les fruits espérés. Le rapport Brundtland suggère que le développement durable est la clé du succès car elle veille à la prospérité économique, à l?équité dans la société et à la pérennité dans l?environnement. Pour l?Afrique, beaucoup de facteurs doivent être considérés et les solutions se doivent d?être pratiques et éthiques. Le futur ingénieur des mines qui a écrit ce rapport, apporte sa vision de la situation non sans avoir auparavant analysé les faits. Cette démarche, qui se veut avant tout éthique, inclut les aspects sociaux, économiques et politiques. Introduction In the 40s, 50s and the 60s, many economists, among which Harold Hotelling from South Carolina University, thought that developing countries could reach socio-economical success by extracting their natural resources such as oil and minerals. The current economical disaster seems to have contradicted that belief and critics like Davis Graham (Colorado School of Mines) and Michael Ross (University of California at Los Angeles) even suggested that extractive activities stop in Africa. But the experts of the World Bank (Mining Department) and some mining and oil companies are committed to reverse the tendency by implementing a new approach. Considering the principles of sustainable development defined in the Brundtland report (1987), we decided to analyze the possibility of giving the extractive industry a catalytic role in creating a socially, economically and environmentally development in Africa. In other words, can we continue to mine and extract oil in Africa for its blossoming future under the ruling of the sustainable development? In the following, we start by explaining the African socio-economic and political context. After a brief definition of the sustainable development, we explain why, for Africa, some believe in the extractive industry and some don?t. In the end, we draw out conciliatory arguments.

Apr 1, 2005