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By K Broadley

Risk and dispute resolution are linked. Dispute resolution techniques are brought to bear on a dispute - which is an outcome of a risk being wholly or partially realised. There has been an increasing awareness by business of risk as a component of doing business. There is an accompanying awareness of the need to manage risk - including legal risk. Many companies have undertaken a systematic review of their potential risks and endeavoured to put in place systems to help to avoid or manage risks. A legal risk management program will not prevent disputes arising. However, such a program should prescribe how that dispute will be managed. The management of the dispute will involve consideration of the dispute resolution procedure to be adopted. The most appropriate processes will take into account the practical, personal and commercial considerations surrounding the dispute and be as efficient, cost-effective and user friendly as achievable in the circumstances for the benefit of all the parties. Carrying on business in South East Asia, whether as an explorer or a mining operator, brings additional considerations to bear in legal risk management and the dispute resolution process. A significantly different perspective is required due to the varying nature of the legal systems in many South East Asian jurisdictions. These jurisdictions often have relative uncertainty as to the law. This impacts on the dispute resolution processes and also raises further timing and cost issues. The authors contend that this is all the more reason to endeavour, as practically as possible, to adopt a legal risk management and dispute resolution profile which will provide business with the greatest prospects of maintaining control of the dispute resolution process. This presents a greater chance of a successful outcome to the dispute. In these times of increasing pressures on profitability because of low mineral prices, all costs of a minerals business are being reviewed. In such times, a significant legal dispute may have even greater potential to adversely impact on the companies concerned, together with the careers of the people involved. In this paper possible approaches to managing disputes and a case study a legal dispute in which Freehill Hollingdale and Page were involved are discussed. The dispute concerned an international mining company developing a gold mine in Indonesia and one of its contractors in Indonesia. Described is how that dispute was resolved. This achieved a very satisfactory result for the client - all things considered. Given the æadditionalÆ problems associated with ascertainment and enforcement of ærightsÆ in South East Asia, the longer the parties can retain control over their dispute the better off they will be. For this reason, the authors set out in this paper the main additional dispute resolution tools available - that are appropriate for use throughout South East Asia.

Jan 1, 1999

By William H. Schiffbauer

One of the safety and health research programs of the former U.S. Bureau of Mines Pittsburgh Research Center was the evaluation of technology that will provide remote-controlled operation of mechanized equipment in underground room-and-pillar mining. The purpose of this effort was to enable workers to be located away from the hazardous and unhealthful coal extraction area (the face). As part of this program, advanced machine navigation and control technologies were developed for underground room-and-pillar and highwall coal mining that can be applied to commercially available mining equipment. These technologies use off-the-shelf components and a flexible control software architecture to minimize the effort required to adapt them to mining equipment. An accurate, reliable navigation system that can provide the mining machine's heading and location is a critical requirement for a remote-controlled mining system. After investigating several different types of navigation sensors, researchers selected the Honeywell Ring Laser Gyro Inertial Navigation System (INS) as showing the most promise. It was installed on a continuous mining machine at our Mining Equipment Test Facility. Extensive testing at an open pit (OP) site was also performed. This report describes the INS as it was employed on the mining machine in the laboratory, in the field, and OP tests, and provides the accuracy and performance results of the OP and highwalltests.

Jan 11, 1997

The Telfer main dome open pit is operated by Newcrest Mining Limited at a current production rate of 50 Mt/a from a pit dimension compromising 2 km strike length, 1 km width and 250 m depth. As part of the refeasibility of the Telfer operation undertaken early this decade, Newcrest identified that an underground sublevel cave (SLC) operation along with an increased scale of open pit would support a new plant targeting the processing of gold and copper ore at 17 Mt/a rates. The SLC was initiated in late 2006 and broke into the open pit in late 2009. This situation is unique across the mining industry where a cave breakthrough was planned and occurred within an active large open pit operation. The SLC broke though into the west side of the Main Dome open pit into a specially prepared bench that was left at the 5384 RL of cut-back stage 3. A main haulage ramp is within 100 m from the edge of the cave breakthrough zone and this ramp passes down to the active levels which are progressing toward the 5200 RL. This paper presents insight into the mine planning and risk management associated with continued operation of the open pit operation while an active SLC breaks through. The cave breakthrough presents unique areas for risk management as there is potential for rapid propagation and subsidence. To support the undertaking, mine design and major hazard management planning has been carried out. Focus areas include; dual ramp system design, preloading the breakthrough area, monitoring of cave propagation and air gap using a seismic system and deep hole extensometers, wall stability and subsidence monitoring using radar and prism systems, and key trigger and response planning.

May 1, 2010

By P. E. J. Pitfield, S. D. G. Campbell

The regional structure of shear and deformation zones in the belt, which is recognisable in plan view on Landsat TM images, is interpreted in terms of a conjugate-shear model. Gold mineralisation is related to this framework at a variety of scales. The principal recurrent structural geometries hosting deposits at mines such as Motapa, Durban, Charliesona, Cecil, Sunace, Turk group, Queens district, How, Peter Pat, Matabele Sheba, Goodenough, Old Nic and Bushtick are associated with shear zones and folds and include conjugate systems (shears, shear intersections, kink sets), side-step systems (en echelon segmentation, duplexes, monoclinal inflections, antiform-synform couplets) and interactions of the two. Linear sections of shear zones are generally poorly mineralised. The same geometries are identifiable on all scales from local to regional, so sections of regional structural lineaments or areas within mines should be prioritised for further investigation or development on the basis of the gold-bearing geometries observed to be dominant locally

Apr 1, 1996

The Bureau of Mines analyzed the cycle of secondary gold to determine the quantity of gold not being recovered from scrap, and to identify areas for research to increase the supply of gold from scrap. Secondary gold in 1967 was estimated to be 2.4 million troy ounces; this excludes secondary gold which is recycled within consuming plants. Firms contacted included consumers using about 41 percent of the gold in 1967, And refiners that recovered about 90 percent of the secondary gold. Results of the study indicate that loss of gold is small, and refiners and consumers are accelerating programs designed to reduce recovery costs. With the increasing generation of low-grade industrial scrap, research is needed to improve present recovery techniques and to develop methods to accelerate the flow of secondary gold back to supply.

Jan 1, 1970

By R. A. Franks, G. F. Friel, J. C. Edwards, L. Yuan

Two mine-fire experiments were conducted in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health's (NIOSH) Safety Research Coal Mine (SRCM) at the Pittsburgh Research Laboratory (PRL) which demonstrated that smoke from diesel-fuel fires of 500 kW and 660 kW heat-release rates in a return airway can develop, without causing a complete air flow reversal, into a roof layer that can migrate upwind forming a counter flow to the primary airflow in a crosscut. Subsequently, smoke can penetrate into an intake airway and create a hazardous atmosphere in the intake airway upwind from the fire. Visibility conditions less than 13 m were created by the smoke in the intake airway downwind from the crosscut. Modeling of the event with a three-dimensional, time-dependent, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program correctly represented the smoke movement.

An underground mine disaster is an accident of major proportions that takes a significant toll in human lives. A disaster usually disrupts the normal functioning of a mine and may result in entrapment of miners whose normal egress from the mine is cut off. A disaster often necessitates a rescue operation and a means of keeping the trapped miners alive while they await rescue. Explosion, fire, inundation of water or toxic gases, and collapse of a major portion of a mine are among the causes of mine disasters. Miners threatened by such an occurence must either bring the situation under control (e.g., by extinguishing a fire) or remove themselves from the danger. If control is unsuccessful, they must retreat to a place of safety. Four different activities may be involved: evacuation, escape, survival, and rescue. Evacuation is the orderly exit of people from the mine using previously identified escapeways and following a previously determined evacuation plan. Miners whose normal evacuation routes are blocked may be able to find alternative exit routes and escape by their own efforts. For those who cannot, the issue becomes survival while waiting to be rescued. The survival period may last for many days while rescue efforts are mounted from outside the mine.

Jan 1, 1981

By Forrest T. Moyer

The overall injury experience, excluding officeworkers, at metal mines and mills during the period 1961-63, reported by operators, was 174 fatal and 11,357 nonfatal disabling work injuries during an aggregate worktime of 451 million man-hours. These injuries occurred at a frequency rate of 25.55 per million man-hours, comprising 0.39 for the fatal and 25.17 for the nonfatal injuries. The combined severity rate of the disabilities was 3,779 days lost or charged per million man- hours, consisting of 2,314 for the fatal and 1,465 for the nonfatal injuries. The average severity of all disabilities during 1961-63, was 148 days per injury. The number of days lost and/or charged, ex- cluding officeworkers, at metal mines and mills during the period 1961-63, was 1,440,000 days charged to fatal injuries and 661,290 days lost from nonfatal injuries. An average of 70,966 men were at work daily. The outstanding cause for fatal injuries was the fall of rock or ore from the back, while most of the nonfatal injuries were caused by handling materials, slips or falls of persons, machinery, falls of rock or ore from back and side, and haulage. Injury experience at primary nonferrous smelters, refineries, and reduction plants during 1961-63, excluding officeworkers, was 23 fatal and 3,214 nonfatal disabling injuries during a total work- time of 277 million man-hours. The injuries occurred at frequency rates of 0.08 per million man-hours for the fatalities and 11.61 for the nonfatal disabilities. The severity rate for all injuries of 1,085 days lost or charged per million man-hours comprised 498 for fatal and 587 for nonfatal injuries. The number of days lost, excluding officeworkers, at primary nonferrous smelters, refineries, and reduction plants during 1961-63 was 138,000 from fatal injuries and 162,385 from nonfatal injuries, An average of 34,938 men were at work daily an active plant days during the three year period. The injury experience for officeworkers at metal mines and mills during the period 1961-63 was 20 nonfatal disabling work injuries, (there were no fatal injuries reported), during an aggregate work-time of 28,694,244 man-hours. These injuries occurred at a frequency rate of 0.70 per million man-hours. There were no fatal injuries reported for officeworkers at non-ferrous smelters, refineries, and reduction plants during 1961-63, but seven nonfatal injuries were reported during an aggregate work-time of 30,814,772 man-hours. The frequency rate for these injuries was 0.23 per million man-hours for this period.

Jan 1, 1967

By W. L. Dare

Tri-axial strains in pillars, created by pillar robbing, were measured in an experiment at the Dysart No. 1 uranium mine near Grants) New Mexico. At this mine, room-and-pillar stoping is used on the advance, and pillars are recovered on the retreat. The are deposit is, for all practical purposes, horizontal. Measuring devices were installed in pillars approximately 90 to 200 feet from the break line, and strains were recorded over a 4-to 6-week period. The measurements indicate that, in general, the algebraic magnitude of vertical strains increased, and the horizontal strains decreased, in turn, indicating that vertical (or near vertical) loads on the instrumented pillars lessened as pillars were recovered.

Jan 1, 1962

By Roberto J. Guardia, Tim Shell, Robert A. Robinson, Steve Rodolf

Our aging infrastructure includes numerous tunnels that provide easy access through topographic and societal obstacles. These tunnels are renewable resources that require periodic maintenance and rehabilitation to extend their useful lifespan to hundreds or even thousands of years. However, as with any structural rehabilitation project, tunnel liner rehabilitation requires an inordinate amount of evaluation and care due often poorly documented original construction and subsequent repair construction methods and materials. This paper documents the investigation, planning, design, and construction efforts of the rehabilitation of a 74-year old, 216-meter (713 foot) long two-lane highway tunnel in moderately fractured to highly sheared basalt on the Oregon coast. The tunnel consists of four sections lined originally with timber and subsequently overlaid with concrete, and three unlined sections.

Jan 1, 2005

By S. P. Singh

Drifts are an integral component of underground mining. They provide access for men and material, means for transporting ore and rock and serve as air passageways. In view of their importance on the overall safety, economy and productivity of mines, empirical guidelines for controlled blasting design in drifts have been developed in this study. The application of the proposed concept was described by generating blast hole patterns for a mine with the help of a computer program. The mechanism of blast damage and the need for controlled blasting to alleviate ground control problems in underground mines have been outlined in this paper. The economic analysis between normal-and controlled blasting was performed based on the information from an operating mine. In addition, the review of drift blasting practices and problems in Canadian mines was also carried out in this study.

Jan 1, 1990

By Mustapha A. Raji, Alafara A. Baba, Christianah O. Adeyemi, Aishat Y. Abdulkareem, Rafiu B. Bale, Malay K. Ghosh

The increasing demand for pure aluminum and aluminum compounds of industrial quality from kaolinite ore cannot be overemphasized. Nigeria is one of the African countries endowed with abundant solid mineral resources that have not been sufficiently exploited to assist its indigenous industries. A wide array of applications of pure aluminum and its compounds are available, such as paper filling, refractories, adsorbent, catalysis, and paint additives. In this study, the upgrading of a Nigerian biotite-rich kaolinite ore by a hydrometallurgical route was investigated in oxalic acid media. During leaching studies, the effects of parameters including reaction temperature, lixiviant concentration and particle size on the extent of ore dissolution were examined. At optimal conditions (1.0 mol/L C2H2O4, 75 °C), 92.0% of the initial 10 g/L ore was reacted within 120 min. The dissolution curves from the shrinking core model were analyzed and found to conform to the assumption of surface diffusion reaction, and the calculated activation energy of 33.2 kJ/mol supported the proposed model. The unreacted product (~8.0%) analyzed by XRD was found to contain siliceous impurities and could serve as a valuable by-product for certain industries.

By Mustapha A. Raji, Alafara A. Baba, Christianah O. Adeyemi, Aishat Y. Abdulkareem, Rafiu B. Bale, Malay K. Ghosh

The increasing demand for pure aluminum and aluminum compounds of industrial quality from kaolinite ore cannot be overemphasized. Nigeria is one of the African countries endowed with abundant solid mineral resources that have not been sufficiently exploited to assist its indigenous industries. A wide array of applications of pure aluminum and its compounds are available, such as paper filling, refractories, adsorbent, catalysis, and paint additives. In this study, the upgrading of a Nigerian biotite-rich kaolinite ore by a hydrometallurgical route was investigated in oxalic acid media. During leaching studies, the effects of parameters including reaction temperature, lixiviant concentration and particle size on the extent of ore dissolution were examined. At optimal conditions (1.0 mol/L C2H2O4, 75 °C), 92.0% of the initial 10 g/L ore was reacted within 120 min. The dissolution curves from the shrinking core model were analyzed and found to conform to the assumption of surface diffusion reaction, and the calculated activation energy of 33.2 kJ/mol supported the proposed model. The unreacted product (~8.0%) analyzed by XRD was found to contain siliceous impurities and could serve as a valuable by-product for certain industries.

By Paul Girodo

Government Approval For Foreign Workers 1.Service Canada Work Permit Tasks: i. Prove there are no Canadian Journeymen; ii. Use heavyweight stakeholders; iii. Understand the FWU transformation taking place today. Government Approval For Foreign Workers 2.Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) i. Build relationships; ii. Use heavyweight stakeholders; iii. Continually demonstrate benefits to the Province from foreign Journeymen. Government Approval For Foreign Workers 3.Letter from Union Supporting Temporary Foreign Workers i. Easiest path to approval ?CLAC model

May 1, 2006

By A. Gibson

Most methods for the treatment of scrap printed circuit boards do not reclaim the components in working order as the boards are either fed to a copper smelter, to recover the valuable elements, or, simply landfilled. This work reports the dissolution of the solder in fluoroboric acid containing Ti4+ ions which was particularly selective for solder, allowing the components to be recovered. The solder was subsequently electrowon from the leachant. The boards were then shredded and the copper dissolved in ammonium sulfate and, then treated via solvent extraction to give an electrolyte suitable for electrowinning. The remainder of the metals were dissolved aqua regia, silver remained unattacked by the aqua regia, palladium precipitated as Pd(NH4)Cl6 in the presence of zinc and nickel, the gold was removed by solvent extraction and precipitated as nanoparticles. The aqua regia was then diluted and the zinc and nickel separated by solvent extraction.

Jan 1, 2009

By Boyd Wise

A jet pump injector was developed and successfully tested, thereby demonstrating the feasibility of a jet injector for introducing coarse coal into an operating slurry face haulage system: In Phase I a variety of injection concepts were evaluated, and the jet pump was identified as best, due to its simplicity, compactness and performance potential. In Phase IIA subscale jet pump injector tests were conducted, and a computer model of a jet pump injector was developed whose performance predictions correlated well with subscale test results. In Phase IIB various system configurations were defined for integrating a jet pump injector into a fully operational underground coarse slurry face haulage system, further highlighting the feasibility and practicality of such a system. In Phase III a full-scale mobile haulage vehicle embodying a jet pump injector and coal sizing equipment was detail designed into a practical vehicle with attractive performance characteristics. More importantly, fully operational full scale jet pump injector -and feeder/breaker subassemblies were tested and proven successful in their ability to down-size coal to 3" in all 3 dimensions and to consistantly provide slurry of 4217 weight concentration at 6.4 TPM throughput under a wide range of operating conditions including zero to maximum feed rate within 5 seconds.

Jan 1, 1985

Continuous pH and Pulp Potential Measurements During Complex Sulfide Ore Flotation

Sep 13, 2010

By Cardm Jeffrey W.

The decay of 222 Rn yields a series of short-lived decay products which become attached to the surface of a plate or wire exposed in a 222Rn-bearing atmosphere. The alpha-activity of two of the decay products, 218Po and 214Po, can be measured by simple counting techniques. This phenomenon may have direct application to uranium exploration. Laboratory studies have shown that: (a) radon decay products can be collected on a wide variety of materials (including various kinds of metals and plastics); (b) activity increases as a function of the surface area of the 'collector; and (c) the collection of the decay products is enhanced by applying a negative charge. The new technique was used in situ to delineate the anomaly above the South March uranium-copper occurrence. A related technique was developed to measure radium in soil samples. The results of both studies compared favourably with those obtained from conventional methods.

Jan 1, 1979

By R C. Schodde

"An EXTENDED ABSTRACT is available for download. A full-length paper was not prepared for this presentation. Over the last decade (2005–2014), a total of 439 significant deposits of gold and base metals were found in the world. Twenty (or 4.6 per cent) of these deposits were in the Pacific/South-East Asia (Pacific/SE Asia) region. In terms of contained metal, the region accounted for 1.6 per cent of gold and 13.8 per cent of copper found in the world. With regard to nickel and zinc/lead, the region’s contributions were insignificant.Over the same period, the Pacific/SE Asia region accounted for 6.6 per cent and 12.6 per cent of all gold and copper exploration expenditures in the world respectively. After adjusting for by-product credits, unreported discoveries and likely growth in resource, the unit discovery cost for the region was US$199/oz (compared to a world average of US$50/oz). For comparison, the unit discovery costs for the previous decade were US$55/oz and US$25/oz respectively. The region’s unit discovery cost for copper was US$0.036/lb (versus a world average of US$0.040). For comparison, the unit discovery costs for the previous decade were US$0.026/lb and US$0.008/lb Cu respectively.The region’s mediocre discovery performance doesn’t reflect its distribution of known mineralisation. Some countries within the region have a very good endowment per square kilometre.It is noted that the intensity of exploration (and resulting success) would be boosted if governments provided a more mining- and investment-friendly business environment and generated better precompetitive geological data sets (to identify new exploration targets and boost the country’s perceived mineral prospectivity). A multivariable regression analysis of a decade of data from the Fraser Institute’s mining company surveys found that a ten point increase in the Policy Perception Index or a 0.1 point increase in the Mineral Potential Index could boost (in the short term) exploration expenditures by 1.9 per cent and 2.7 per cent respectively. The resulting economic benefits of an expanded mining sector would be significant. The same story applies elsewhere in the world.CITATION:Schodde, R C, 2015. Discovery performance for gold and base metals in the Pacific/South-East Asia – 2005–2014, in Proceedings PACRIM 2015 Congress, pp 25–34 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne)."

Mar 18, 2015

By B. W. Gandrud

The upper part of the Alabama deposits of crystalline graphite consists of an oxidized ore derived from, the underlying unoxidized ore through prolonged weathering. The degree of oxidation in different sections and at different depths within the bed is nut. uniform. The original ore is hard and blue-gray; the weathered product is soft and brown and is the only part that has been mined to any extent. Samples of both oxidized and unoxidized ores were obtained from two of the large graphite deposits of Clay County. Three additional samples of oxidized ore were obtained from different portions of a third property in the same region. In this report, ores 1 to 5 are of oxidized material and ores 6 and 7 of unoxidized.

Jan 1, 1934