Asia and the Pacific Rim

Argyle
Argyle is located in the far north east of Western Australia.	An aerial view of the process plant and the surrounding area at Argyle.	The landscape around the AK1 open pit.
Mining benches in the AK1 open pit at Argyle.	A drill rig operating in the AK1 pit.	One of the mine’s haul trucks operating in the open pit.
An aerial shot of the AK1 open pit, taken in February 1999.

Atlas Wodgina Project
Atlas acquired Wodgina from Talison Minerals in February 2008 and commenced drilling in the following November.	Greater Abydos Project 2.	The project is located 100km south of Port Hedland in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

Batu Hijau Copper-Gold Mine
Batu Hijau is located on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. Minahasa, also shown on the map, is another Newmont operation.	Aerial view of the Batu Hijau open pit.	Blasting in the open pit.
Haul trucks moving ore at Batu Hijau.	Aerial view of the concentrator at Batu Hijau.	The mine's dedicated port facilities at Benete Bay.
Reclamation reseeding through geotextiles used to prevent erosion of the ground surface by the weather.

Boddington Gold Mine, Perth
The Boddington site is the largest undeveloped gold mine in Australia and is set to become its highest producing mine once production ramps up over the next few years.

Burton
The Burton coal mine, Queensland, Australia.	The Burton coal mine processing plant.	The shovel/truck terrace mining method.
A Liebherr R996 excavator loading a haulage truck.	The coal wash plant and product bins.	Burton coal loading facilities.
Coal is hauled to the port in trains that carry 7,500t.

Cannington Silver and Lead Mine,
When in full production, Cannington will become the world's largest single silver producer, representing about 6% of the world's primary silver production.	The Cannington mine is located in north-west Queensland (Australia), 200km south east of Mount Isa, near the township of McKinlay.	The hoisting shaft head frame. The excavation method involves stripping out a 1.8m-diameter raise drilled pilot hole and installing a concrete lining working down from the surface.
Boxcut development at the start of the decline back in 1993.	Processing plan layout schematic. Waste water will be pumped to a tailings dam with the overflow.	Metroliner landing at Cannington.

CGA Mining Masbate Gold Mine
The new CGA Mining project is on a brownfield site on the island of Masbate in the Philippines.	The process plant at the Masbate mine will be a conventional carbon-in-leach (CIL) facility.	Open-pit mining at the Masbate site is due to start in the second quarter of 2008, with commissioning set to be complete by the end of the year.

Challenger Gold Mine
The Challenger mine was discovered in 1995 and was developed in 2002 as an open-pit operation.	High-grade rough gold minerals are found in combination with slightly disseminated arsenopyrite, loellingite and pyrrhotite.	Challenger was commissioned in September 2002 and on 24 October 2002 the first shipment of gold bullion was achieved.

Christmas Creek Iron Ore Mine
The railroad will be an extension of an existing 260km rail line that connects Cloudbreak to Port Hedland.	Christmas Creek has the capacity to produce 6mt of ore per year.	The current reserve of Christmas Creek is estimated to be 997mt, with proven reserves of 3.4mt of high-grade minerals.
Christmas Creek is composed of flat-lying ore deposits.

Crinum
The Crinum Mine location, 62km north east of Queensland's regional centre, Emerald.	An operator monitors the longwall operation underground at Crinum. Unlike a number of current longwall projects, the mine has elected to use longwall components from a number of different suppliers.	Products are held in a 100,000t-capacity stockpile before being transported 380km by rail to the shiploading terminals at Gladstone.
A 10km overland conveyor transports Crinum coal directly from the Crinum stockpile to the Gregory wash plant.	The Crinum overland conveyor incorporates the most up-to-date technology, including a modular lightweight design and concrete steeples.

Curragh Mine
A Curragh belly dumper.	Curragh is a coal mine located 14km north-west of the town of Blackwater in the bowel basin of Central Queensland, Australia.	The mine covers an area of 12,600ha.

Dawson Complex
The Moura mine location. Moura is one of the longest established coal mines in central Queensland.	Dragline stripping of overburden. Moura has a total of four machines: a Marion 7901, a Bucyrus-Erie (B-E), and two Marion 8200s.	Coal loading using CAT 992 wheel loaders with bottom-dump haulers.
The highwall mining system, ready to launch. The launch vehicle weighs 350t, the continuous miner 70t and the addcars 12.6t each.	Holes are mined at regular intervals along the highwall, using a highly sophisticated HORTA guidance system.	Coal flowing from a conveyor car on the highwall miner launch vehicle. Moura produces both soft-coking coal and thermal coal products.

Ernest Henry
Ernest Henry lies about 35km northeast of Cloncurry in central Queensland and 150km from MIM's main operations at Mount Isa.	An overview of the Ernest Henry mine and concentrator, soon after commissioning.	Stockpiling ore during the mine construction period.
Loading in the open pit, using a Liebherr 996 shovel and Caterpillar 793 haulers; Thiess Contractors provided the initial mine development service.	Tipping ore into the primary crusher hopper.	The SAG and ball mills in which the run-of-mine ore is ground before the copper and gold can be recovered.

Forrestania Nickel Project
The Flying Fox mine contains some of the highest grade nickel in the world.	The company has a production target of 750,000t per annum.	Western Areas plans to develop five mines at the project site by 2011.

George Fisher Lead, Zinc and Silver Mine,
Headframe at the George Fisher mine, which supplies feed to the main processing and recovery plants at Mt Isa.	Map of Qeensland showing Mount Isa.	An exploration rig operating in the Mt Isa district. MIM’s geologists discovered both the Hilton and George Fisher deposits
Geologists marking out the ore zone underground at George Fisher.	Drilling underground at George Fisher.	Pouring silver that has been refined from lead ores from Mt Isa and George Fisher.

Goro Nickel Project
The Goro Nickel mine is one of the largest mining projects under construction in the world.	Around 4 million tons of dry ore are expected to be removed each year at the Goro Nickel site in New Caledonia.	Equipment for the Goro Nickel plant is being supplied by Komatsu, ABB, Cimprogetti.
Haulage will be undertaken at the site in New Caledonia by a fleet of dumper trucks.	At full capacity, Goro will produce 60,000t annually of nickel in the form of nickel oxide.	As of late February 2008, Goro said that construction at the mine was around 70% complete.

Grasberg Open Pit
The Grasberg Open Pit – originally a 4,100m-high mountain, which has been mined down to 3,000m.	The Grasberg Pit is in the foreground with remnants of the Puncak Jaya glaciers behind. The summit of Puncak Jaya is at the far end of the central rim.	False colour satellite image. The rocky limestone summit ridges appear red or pinkish, with the pit showing up deep purple and grey.
Mine vehicles on the access road; the mine operates a fleet of nearly 170 haul trucks.	A mine LHD.

Hamersley Basin
Location of the Hamersley Basin.	Hamersley Iron in Western Australia, is one of the world's largest iron ore producers with major customers in Europe and South East Asia.	Landscape of the mining operations.
Blasting in operation.	Single slewing boom bucket wheel and rail-mounted product reclaimer.	Hamersley iron ore conveyor between Hamersley's Channar and Paraburdoo mines.

Jacinth-Ambrosia Mineral Deposit
The Jacinth-Ambrosia mineral sands deposit contains an estimated 9.5 million tons of heavy minerals with a grade of 6.5%.	The Jacinth-Ambrosia mineral sands deposit lies in the tertiary age sediments of the Eucla Basin.	On average, the heavy minerals assemblage in the deposits is 48% zircon, 28% ilmenite and 4% rutile.
A A$25m haul road is being constructed for transporting the minerals. The road work started in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Jembayan Thermal Coal Mine

Kaltim Prima
Kaltim Prima is one of the major export coal mines developed in Kalimantan, Indonesia, over the last ten years.	Thick, regular seams make for straightforward mining conditions.	One of the mine’s Hitachi hydraulic excavators, working with Cat hauler.
Kaltim Prima has six Liebherr R996 Litronic excavators, used with Cat 789B haulers for overburden removal.	Five of the mine’s fleet of Caterpillar 789B haulers. Truck scheduling is carried out using a Mincom dispatch and management system, based on a global positioning system (GPS) to locate and track individual vehicle movements.	A luffing and slewing stacker (foreground) and a bucket-wheel stacker-reclaimer (behind) at Kaltim Prima’s port stockpile.
One of the two quadrant shiploaders which together can load bulk carriers of up to 180,000dwt at 4,200t/h.

Kangaroo Flat Gold Mine
Steve Bracks, Victoria's Premier; opening the mine in October 2006, he described it as the start of 'a great second gold rush' for the State.	Gold nuggets in quartz; most of the Kangaroo Flat's deposit is coarse gold of this type.	Bendigo Goldfield – area of operations.
Garden Gully Line, where two new reefs – Grenfell East and Grainger – have been discovered.

Kanowna Belle
Overview of the Kanowna Belle recovery plant.	Exploration has been continuing in tandem with underground development at Kanowna Belle.	Hauling development rock from underground through the Kanowna Belle open pit.
Marking out on a mining bench for grade control, with samples being taken every 2m from 10m-long reverse circulation holes.	Contractor Eltin Underground Operations has been using a Tamrock Minimatic, two-boom jumbo for development of the access decline.	Raiseboring has been used for ventilation shafts and rock passes.

Kermadec Licence, Neptune Minerals
Neptune Minerals has been granted exploration licences for an aggregate of 261,146km² in the territorial waters of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.	Seafloor sampling.	A sulphide chimney.

Lihir
Lihir Island is located in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) New Ireland Province, about 700km north east of Port Moresby.	Drilling during construction at Lihir.	Overburden stripping during site construction, using Caterpillar hydraulic excavators and articulated dump trucks.
Wharf construction.	Opening up the Lienetz oxide ore deposit, using a Cat 5130 excavator and 985B trucks.	Lihir has been very successful in using silt curtains to limit the spread of run-off solids into the harbour.

Martabe, North Sumatra
The Martabe gold project is located in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia.	Mining of the Purnama deposit, a significant source for the Martabe project, will be undertaken by conventional open-pit methods.	Exploration of mineralisation in other parts of the area around the Martabe CoW is ongoing.
The Martabe project is located close to existing infrastructure and facilities.

McArthur River Mine,
Northern Territory map.	McArthur River is located in the Northern Territory outback, halfway between Darwin and Mount Isa.	Underground drilling at McArthur River.
A mechanic working in one of the mine's underground workshops.	The enclosed storage facility and barge-loading wharf at Bing Bong, which ships out all of McArthur River's concentrates.

Melton Project
Aerial view of the site.	A uranium sample.	Yorke Peninsula.

Minry Diamond Mine
Siberia-Federal areas.	In 2009, the mine is expected to supply 150,000t of diamond-bearing ore for processing.	In its operation between 1957 and 2000, the mine produced $17bn-worth of diamonds.

Misima
Misima Mine, on Misima Island, 200km east of mainland Papua New Guinea (PNG).	Open-pit operations at Misima.	Loading a truck at Misima.
Misima mill flowsheet.	Misima Mine is a boost to local employment.	Revegetation is part of the environmental programme at Misima.

Mount Isa Copper Mine,
Map of Queensland showing Mount Isa.	Overview of the Mount Isa complex where copper mining began in 1953.	Section through the Mount Isa ore zone showing the separate copper and lead/zinc orebodies.
A longhole drill rig in the 1,100 orebody at Mount Isa.	A development haulage in the Enterprise section of the copper mine.	Handling copper cathodes in the electrolytic refinery at Townsville.

Mount Isa Lead, Zinc and Silver Mine,
Map of Queensland showing Mount Isa.	Aerial view of the Mount Isa complex, located in northwestern Queensland.	Section through the Mount Isa ore zone, showing the separate copper and lead/zinc orebodies.
An Atlas Copco Wagner LHD carrying ore underground.	Sampling molten lead during pouring at the Mount Isa smelter.	The Northfleet metals refinery in the UK, where Mount Isa's lead and silver are refined.

Mount Owen
Mount Owen, located in the Upper Hunter Valley of New South Wales, 20km north of the township of Singleton, was the first coal mine in Australia to operate under a ‘partnering’ agreement.	A unique cantilevered stacker supplies dewatered coal products to a 300,000t stockpile. From this, coal is loaded into unit trains at a rate of 4,000t/h using a specially designed, automated batch weighing system that gives an accuracy of 0.05% per wagon.	Mount Owen is a shovel-and-truck open pit, relying on hydraulic excavators for both overburden stripping and coal production. The dipping structure of the deposit means that the pit is laid out with benches spaced at regular vertical intervals.

Mt Arthur Coal Mine,
Mt Arthur is the biggest coal mine in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales, Australia.	Coal from the local stockpile is transported to the Liddell and Bayswater power stations by a 10km overland conveyor.	The company announced an expansion plan for the mine on 24 July 2009 to boost coal production from 11.5mtpa to 15mtpa.

Mt Freda Gold Mine
Mt Freda is located 39km south-east of Cloncurry in Queensland, Australia.	Rock sequences in the area are intruded by a number of metamorphic intrusions.	The mine hosts over 100,000oz of gold.

Mt Muro Gold Deposit

Murrin Murrin
The trial pit used to obtain bulk samples for process testwork in 1996.	The refinery complex.	Grade control sampling in the open pit.
Ore mining during the pre-production phase.	Transporting one of the autoclaves to the mine site.	View through the giant fans at the Murrin Murrin power station.
Acid leach autoclave with the slurry heating tower behind.

Northparkes Copper and Gold Mine,
Northparkes Mines is a copper-gold mine near the remote Australian town of Goonumbla, about 27km north-north-west of Parkes, a regional centre in central-west New South Wales.	Following an initial open-pit operation at Northparkes, underground block-cave mining has been undertaken since 1997.

Nullagine Iron Ore Project
The Nullagine iron ore deposit is located 140km north of Newman in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.	FMG is developing a rail line near Christmas Creek, which can be accessed via the private haul road, to transport the ore.	The Nullagine iron ore project is being developed over an area of 1,500km².

Olympic Dam
A remote-controlled load-haul dump machine moving ore from the stopes to an orepass underground.	Water for processing the ore is brought to Olympic Dam from two borefields. Development of the new Borefield B involved burying over 100km of pipeline.	The new autogenous grinding mill.
Checking equipment for sinking the third vertical shaft at Olympic Dam.	The copper smelter.	The electro-refinery, which takes smelted copper metal and produces high-quality copper for sale.

Osborne
Block diagram showing major rock types and structural features.	Monitoring wells enable assessment of any change in water quality of the underlying aquifers.	Boring for underground access at Osborne.
Diagram of access drives and production areas.	Resource model and development.	Tailing delivery and return lines are located in an earth-bound containment system.
Fresh floatation tailing cell, containing more than 1Mt of tailing.

Ovoot Tolgoi Coal Mine
The Ceke border crossing will allow daily distribution of Ovoot Tolgoi coal to customers in China.	Annual production at the Ovoot Tolgoi mine is expected to be 1,000,000t for 2008.	All of the equipment at the Ovoot Tolgoi site is diesel powered.
Coal from Ovoot Tolgoi will be shipped and sold without processing.

Oyu Tolgoi
Oyu Tolgoi’s location within Mongolia.	Headframe and hoisting room - January 2006.	Headframe and hoisting room nearing completion - November 10, 2005.
Headframe under construction - September 15, 2005.

Peak Hill Gold Mine
Map of New South Wales area.	The Peak Hill area is covered by Silurian sediments.	Although the original mine shaft had a depth of 200m, production was limited to 150m.

Platinum Australia Smokey Hills
Blasted stope ore is scraped down to mucking bays in the reef drives and loaded by LHDs, tipping into haul trucks for transport to the processing plant.	The processing plant is a standard UG2 plant incorporating milling and flotation, and recovery is put at 85%.	The plant has been designed to produce about 95,000oz of 4E PGMs per year.
Ore production from the open pit has been built up to 40,000tpm, with a pit life of some 14 months.

Porgera Gold Mine
The open-pit mine at Pergora. Porgera is located in Enga Province about 600km north west of Port Moresby.	Cross-section of underground deposits.	The open-pit truck and shovel fleet was expanded with larger equipment in October 1995 to increase production rates.
The plant at Pergora. Mineralisation occurs within the Porgera intrusive complex.	The mill flowsheet. Low-grade stockpile ore and open-pit ore are crushed using a 1,067mm gyratory crusher.

Prominent Hill Gold/Copper Mine
As of July 2007 three large Liebherr excavators and 14 Caterpillar 793D trucks are on site at Prominent Hill.	Aerial view of the Prominent Hill open-pit mine.	The Caterpillar 793D trucks have been collecting overburden from the open pit.
The Prominent Hill mine is expected to produce 117,000t copper, 86,000oz gold and 390,000oz silver in 2009.	The dimensions of the initial open-pit mine will be 480m deep × 1.4km × 1.2km.	Prominent Hill is situated 130km south east of Coober Pedy and 130km north west of BHP Billiton's Olympic Dam.

Pujada Nickel Mine
Operations at the project are predicted to generate $500m in gross sales.	The project is funded by BHP.	The Philippine Government will potentially gain $10m in annual excise tax.

Ravensthorpe Nickel Operation
The Ravensthorpe process plant.	The process plant at night.	A Ravensthorpe haul truck.

Ridgeway Gold and Copper Mine
A gold and copper mine, Ridgeway is 100% owned by Australia's Newcrest Mining, and is one of three operations owned by the company in the province. The others are Cadia East and Cadia Hill, the largest of the three.	Ridgeway is an open cut mine, like this open-pit copper mine in Mexico.	Ridgeway-Cadia is the second-largest open-cut mine in Australia after the super pit at Kalgoorlie (pictured).

Sebuku Coal Mine
Mining in the Tanah Putih Pit.	Community projects on Sebuku Island. Before the mine, the population had absolutely no infrastructure serving its 4,000 or so residents save for walking tracks

Solwara Project
Sulphide mineralisation on the seafloor.	ROV at night	The ROV on the Nautilus project

South Kal Project, Kalgoorlie
Kalgoorlie location; the South Kal project lies between Kalgoorlie and Kambalda.	Kalgoorlie gold mine; the South Kal tenements yield an annual production of 80,000oz of gold.	Location map of the South Kal, Penfolds and Frog's Leg projects. Acquiring the South Kal mine complements Dioro's interests in the region.
Mineralised, laminated quartz vein exposed in the Frog's Leg Open Pit.

Sunrise Dam
The Sunrise Dam gold mine lies on the eastern shore of Lake Carey in the northern goldfields of Western Australia.	The conversion of the mine’s diesel power station to liquefied natural gas (LNG) went according to plan in 2007.	Gold ore at Sunrise Dam is structurally and lithologically controlled within gently dipping high-strain shear zones and steeply dipping brittle-ductile low-strain shear zones.

Tarrawonga Coal Mine,
Tarrawonga is an open-cut mine situated in New South Wales, Australia, and is a venture between Whitehaven Coal and Idemitsu.	The Tarrawonga mine is expected to produce up to 1.5 million tonnes per year of low-ash, low-sulphur thermal coal via open-cut methods over the next eight to ten years.	In FY2007 Tarrawonga open-cut produced about 0.5Mt of semi-soft/PCI and thermal coal.
Truck and excavator methods will produce up to 1.5 million tonnes of export coal per year from the Tarrawonga mine.

Tritton Copper Mine

Whim Creek Copper Project
Whim Creek Copper Project located near the North West Highway.

Worsley Alumina Refinery
Construction of a mine site and refinery began in 1980 and the first alumina was produced in April 1984.

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