Vale Int Share Discussion Threads

[waldron] 04/4/2020 09:07

podgyted
4 Apr '20 - 08:45 - 3345 of 3345
0 1 0
Vale still struggling with its tailings dams:-

[the grumpy old men] 21/2/2020 08:57

Vale Swings to a Loss After Impairment Charges on Mines


Brazilian iron-ore miner Vale SA posted a net loss in the fourth quarter after taking impairment charges on a nickel mine in New Caledonia and a coal mine in Mozambique.

[waldron] 20/2/2020 15:20

Anglo American PLC, one of the world's largest miners, gave a full picture of fatalities related to its operations Thursday, a major shift in an industry that typically undercounts the number of deaths.

A Wall Street Journal investigation revealed in December that many mining deaths are not captured by global safety statistics, making the industry seem safer to regulators, investors and consumers.

Four Anglo American employees were killed at its managed operations in 2019, the company said in its full-year results. Taking into account other incidents -- including employees who died off-site in road accidents, two who died in 'security incidents' and one at a joint venture that Anglo doesn't manage -- a total of 18 miners died.

Miners don't report deaths at joint ventures they don't manage, despite having influence over health and safety policy, leaving dozens of fatalities off the books. Fatalities that occur during the transportation of mined materials are also often undercounted.

"We are not terribly good as an industry at reporting all incidents," said Anglo's Chief Executive Mark Cutifani. "They are our colleagues, we know them all, so we report all of those types of incidents," he said, talking of some of the deaths outside of mine sites last year.

Between 2010 and 2018, the world's three largest publicly listed miners, BHP Group Ltd., Rio Tinto PLC and Vale SA, reported 117 deaths globally at their managed operations.

There were an additional 89 deaths of workers during the same period at joint ventures the companies weren't running, according to a Journal analysis of company and government records, stripping out double counting.

Miners have reduced fatalities and injuries in recent decades, but a lack of reliable accounting in the most basic safety metric makes it difficult to determine the extent of any gains.

The pressure to improve safety and transparency is especially intense after a mine-waste dam operated by Vale burst last year, unleashing a river of mud in the Brazilian town of Brumadinho.

In another example of how mining deaths are underreported, the Brazilian government doesn't count many contractors who die in mining accidents. As a result, as many as 139 of the 270 people who died at Brumadinho weren't classified as mining deaths.

BHP, the world's largest miner, also recently began disclosing in some publications all deaths at all of its operations. Anglo went further on Thursday by tallying all deaths related to its operations high in its annual results announcement and placing that number alongside fatalities at managed operations.

Write to Alistair MacDonald at [e-mail]



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 20, 2020 09:50 ET (14:50 GMT)

[maywillow] 18/2/2020 10:19

Glencore Sees Carbon Emissions Falling as Coal Mines Fade Away

Thomas Biesheuvel, Bloomberg News








A bucket wheel excavates soil and rocks as a giant excavator operates at the open pit lignite mine, operated by RWE AG, in Hambach, Germany, on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Not far from Germany’s Rhine River, a fight to thwart giant excavators from grinding away what’s left of the 1,200-year-old Hambach forest came to a head this month as thousands of protesters faced off with police in a tense, and at times violent, showdown. Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg

A bucket wheel excavates soil and rocks as a giant excavator operates at the open pit lignite mine, operated by RWE AG, in Hambach, Germany, on Monday, Aug. 13, 2018. Not far from Germany’s Rhine River, a fight to thwart giant excavators from grinding away what’s left of the 1,200-year-old Hambach forest came to a head this month as thousands of protesters faced off with police in a tense, and at times violent, showdown. Photographer: Alex Kraus/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Glencore Plc, the world’s biggest shipper of thermal coal, has mapped out cuts in carbon emissions generated by its customers as the company slowly retreats from the dirtiest fuel.

The world’s biggest resource companies, from miners to oil majors, are under increasing pressure to account for the pollution created when their customers burn or process the materials they produce.

Glencore said on Tuesday its so-called Scope 3 emissions will fall by 30% in the next 15 years, predominantly as a result of depleting mines in Colombia and South Africa. That’s a projection based on its current mine plans, rather than a fixed target. Glencore did not say how much coal production would be cut to meet the projection.

Glencore has faced the brunt of a growing investor concern about climate change. While its biggest rivals are in the process of exiting coal, Glencore has been a staunch defender of the fuel, saying it’s essential to providing affordable and reliable power in developing countries.

Still, the commodity trader’s billionaire chief executive officer, Ivan Glasenberg, has been forced to make concessions to keep investors. Last year, Glencore agreed to cap coal production, albeit above its current output level.

The mining industry has yet to find common ground on how to deal with scope 3 emissions. BHP Group in July called on the mining sector to take ownership of emissions that result from product sales, a stance that’s been rejected by some rivals who argue it’s too difficult to calculate a supplier’s share. Rio Tinto Group is partnering with a Chinese steelmaker to develop methods to cut pollution and improve the steel industry’s environmental performance, while Vale SA has said it will develop ambitious targets to cut Scope 3 emissions.

Arguably, the Scope 3 emissions of the oil industry are even more difficult to calculate. That hasn’t stopped companies like Repsol SA and BP Plc from setting net-zero emissions targets for all the oil and gas they extract and their customers burn.

Glencore said the reduction in emissions will derive mainly from its Colombian coal assets, and to a lesser extent from its South African and Australian mines. The Colombian market is currently under pressure as it predominantly ships to Europe where countries are cutting their use of the fuel, while South Africa has challenges with labor relations and government policies.

“Our capital expenditure reflects significant current investments towards growth in production of battery and conductive materials required for the transition to a lower carbon economy,” Glencore said in the statement.

--With assistance from Akshat Rathi.

To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Biesheuvel in London at [e-mail]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Thomasson at [e-mail], Dylan Griffiths, Nicholas Larkin

[grupo guitarlumber] 30/12/2019 14:35

Brazilian mining firm Vale to divest stake in Longyu for $152m

MiningCoalMajor Commodities

By NS Energy Staff Writer 30 Dec 2019

Longyu operates two coal mines in the province of Henan, producing about 3.4Mtpy of metallurgical and thermal coal
handshake-3298455_640

Vale to divest stake in Chinese company Henan Longyu Energy Resources. Credit: Pixabay/Adam Radosavljevic.

Brazilian mining company, Vale has agreed to sell its entire 25% stake in the Chinese company Henan Longyu Energy Resources (Longyu) to the Yongmei Group (Yongmei) in a deal worth CNY1.065bn ($152m).

Longyu is operated by Yongmei, which is a subsidiary of Henan Energy and Chemical Industry Group.
Longyu operates two coal mines in China

Longyu currently operates two coal mines in the province of Henan in Central China’s Yellow River Valley, producing about 3.4 million tonnes per year (Mtpy) of metallurgical and thermal coal.

The deal is planned to be completed in the first quarter of 2020, subject to conditions precedent to the transfer of the stake.

The sale is a part of Vale’s strategy for capital allocation and business portfolio rationalisation.

In addition to China, Vale operates the Moatize mine in Mozambique. The mine, which produces hard coking coal and thermal coal, has been in production since September 2011.

Earlier this year, Vale announced plans to invest BRL1.8bn ($444.5m) by 2023 to strengthen the stability of the surviving structures near the collapsed Brumadinho tailings dam in the Minas Gerais state in Brazil.

The Brumadinho tailings dam, which is associated with the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine of the company, collapsed in January 2019, killing more than 240 people.

Vale said it was seeking ways to reduce the flow of tailings into the Paraopeba River, stabilise structures, and rebuild public facilities.

The company said that it had started various projects for the geotechnical safety of remaining structures at the Córrego do Feijão mine in the rural area of Brumadinho. As part of that, the company had also initiated the removal and proper disposal of tailings, and environmental repair, particularly along the impacted stretch of Paraopeba River.

In August, the world’s largest iron ore exporter, headquartered in Rio de Janeiro, recorded a second consecutive quarterly loss in 2019, seven months after the dam disaster at its mine.

[misca2] 30/11/2019 10:15

The Daily Telegraph: Diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz has lost a $2 billion legal battle with Brazilian mining giant Vale.

[florenceorbis] 05/9/2019 10:07

Shares in Kibo Energy PLC (KIBO.LN) rose Thursday after the company said it has signed a power-purchase term sheet and a coal-supply term sheet with Vale SA's (VALE) business in Mozambique for its Benga Power Plant Project.

The Africa-focused energy company said the power-purchase term sheet is for an offtake agreement for 37% of the power that it expects to generate in the first phase of the Benga Power Plant Project, in which it holds a 65% stake.

Kibo Energy also said that under the terms of the coal-supply term sheet, Vale will supply the total coal requirement for the plant over its modelled 25-year life.

The signing of the term sheets will pave the way for further integration possibilities between Vale and Kibo Energy, the company said.

Shares at 0813 GMT were up 6.7% at 0.80 pence.



Write to Oliver Griffin at [e-mail]; @OliGGriffin



(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 05, 2019 04:32 ET (08:32 GMT)

[waldron] 30/7/2019 06:52

MOTELYFOOL



Iron ore miners tumble: Are Fortescue, BHP and Rio Tinto a buy?

Lina Lim | July 29, 2019 | More on: BHP FMG RIO
Dominoes falling in a row

The iron ore spot price has stabilised around the US$120 per tonne mark while the S&P/ASX 200 (INDEXASX: XJO) index has just passed 6,800. This is in stark contrast to the ASX iron ore miners, which have struggled on the news that the world’s largest miner, Vale SA, would resume production at its Vargem Grade complex.

This news has resulted in the following price movements in the past week:

BHP Group Ltd (ASX: BHP) share price down 1.07% to $40.56 (at time of writing)
Fortescue Metals Group Ltd (ASX: FMG) share price down 4.6% to $8.30 (at time of writing)
Rio Tinto Limited (ASX: RIO) share price down 4% to $98.26 (at time of writing)

Is this a buy opportunity?

The iron ore bull run is perhaps at its cross roads as Vale SA slowly returns to form. The Brazilian miner said that the move to Vargem Grade will add approximately 5 million tonnes to annual production. We’ve known for a long time that Vale has been awaiting supreme court approval for the resumption of production at several mine sites.

Last month, Vale SA received court approval to enable the full resumption of wet processing operations at its Brucutu mine. Brucutu has an annual production capacity of approximately 30 metric tonnes per annum (Mtpa) of iron ore. This represents 8% of Value’s annual output. Fast forward to today, and the Vargem decision will enable the partial resumption of dry processing operations, which will total approximately 5 Mt of additional production in 2019.

If we piece together the initial statistics of the Vale disaster that resulted in a loss of approximately 90 million tonnes of an annualised supply of around 1.7 billion tonnes, it appears as though the market is very slowly coming back to equilibrium.

The plateauing bullish fundamentals overshadow Fortescue’s June 2019 quarterly production report, which highlight a 22% rise in total ore shipped while citing sustained strong demand from customers.
Foolish takeaway

I believe the recent falls in BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue share price are, to some degree, a market overreaction. However, I am going to make the bold call that the top is in for ASX iron ore miners.

On one hand, demand side fundamentals remain robust and the supply–demand imbalance will continue to persist in the short term. But it is evident that the market is slowly creeping back to an equilibrium and I find it highly unlikely that ASX iron ore miners will break out their old highs.