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Geology News
Mining Current Events

The need for skilled mining industry professionals in Canada is going up faster than Canadian schools can gradate students. They need 600 engineers per year but schools only graduate between 120 and 150. The nine schools granting those degrees do not have the capacity needed to meet the demand.

An increase in the number of mines is facing some resistance in the western United States. Lots of new people have been attracted to these states, primarily motivated by the environment. After they arrive they are not happy when a new mine is proposed.

Newmont Mining may have to lay off up to 750 mine workers because of permitting delays. Indonesia and many other countries have revised permit requirements in an effort to protect the environment from the impact of mining.

Google Earth / WVDEP

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has a KML file that any visitor to their website can click and view permitted mining areas as a Google Earth layer. The pubic can now view them superimposed on satellite images and click icons to get detailed information on the company and mining operation. Just a few years ago, anyone who wanted this information had to travel to a state office and view it on paper. This is a cost effective and convenient way to share public domain data that is already in a GIS format.

Wyoming is a top producer of coal, oil and natural gas. It is also a state that has a lot of pristine land. These often come into conflict as explored in this New York Times article.

An article at the GEOTIMES website presents information on hematite mining in Peru about 2000 years ago. The Nasca people produced over 3000 tons of hematite for use as a pigment.

National Geographic Related Article

We recently updated our geology jobs page adding links to over 200 employers, headhunters and articles relevant to the job market for geologists. If you know anyone looking for earth science employement or anyone who advises geology students we invite you to share the URL with them.
http://geology.com/jobs.htm

Google has added contour lines to their terrain maps. They are not quite as detailed as USGS topos but for free-to-use maps they are very nice. Contour intervals vary depending upon local relief.

There were many mercury mines in Oregon in the early 1900s. The miners dug up the ore, heated it and then cooled the vapors to condense the liquid mercury. Now, a century later some sites in the Ochoco National Forest and on private lands remain contaminated from these activities.

The Diavik Mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories has produced over 41.5 million carats since mining began in 2003. All of this has been from surface production. Now operators at the mine owned by Rio Tinto and Harry Winston Diamond consider going underground.

Mineral prices are at all time highs. That is good news for countries such as the Philippines who have a large untapped resource. This GEOTIMES comment explores the controversy and challenges behind developing a country’s mining potential.

An article at the Financial Post explores the business model of several mineral exploration/development companies. They are willing to invest their exploration budgets in countries where the political and environmental risks are very high. This gives them first mover advantage should a market in those areas become strong.

While in Tucson last week, we saw lots of mineral specimens that were priced at many thousands of dollars each. Who is buying these extremely expensive specimens. I don’t know very many geologists who will part with that kind of money.

Arizona produced over $7 billion in non-fuel minerals during 2007, making it the leading non-fuel mineral producer in the United States. This is the third consecutive year that Arizona has been the US leader.

The people of Peru mined hematite over 2000 years ago - predating the Inca Empire. It is believed that the hematite was used as a pigment for painting ceramics. Other speculated uses include: paint for adobe walls, pigment for coloring textiles, and body paint.

Workers in the deep gold mines below Yellowknife, Northwest Territories have always known about the geothermal gradient. Now there are proposals to tap the heat from a couple of mines that remove gold from over two kilometers below the surface.

A new gold deposit has been found in Colombia that some people think could double Colombian production by 2011 and be one of the ten largest deposits in the world.

The mountaintop removal mining method stirs lots of controversy in the Appalachian states. Although this method displeases environmentalists the companies who use it operate within the mining regulations.

Earth Observatory also has a satellite image of the state that can be compared with a map of permitted mining activity. Some of the mountaintop removal mines are thousands of acres in size and clearly visible on the satellite image.

A coal mine explosion last week in the Shanxi Province of northern China killed 105 workers. Mine managers are in trouble for not reporting the accident immediately and for mining a seam that was not authorized for production.

Powertech is looking to open a uranium mine that will produce some of the estimated 9.7 million pounds of uranium that lies beneath an area in northern Colorado. The company acquired ownership of much of this resource in a purchase from Anadarko Petroleum. Many people are upset about this mine.

Barrick Gold needs a silver recovery plan for their Veladero gold mine in Argentina. They are offering a $10 million US prize to the best plan to recover silver from a silica-encapsulated ore. They will provide research funding, consulting fees and more.

The Bureau of Land Management will not renew a mining permit in New Mexico because the mine site contains Permian-age trackways.

After almost one month the rescue efforts to find and save the six miners trapped in the Crandall Canyon Mine have been called off. The amount of time that they have been trapped is more than double the length of time that a person has survived in an underground mine collapse before. Seven holes to locate the miners have found no signs of life and three miners were killed trying to clear debris to reach them.

From the article: “The Crandall Canyon Mine’s co-owner has said this hole, the sixth drilled more than 1,500 feet into the mountain, will be the last effort to find a sign of the men, who may not have survived the massive cave-in Aug. 6.”

Mine Rescue Capsule MSHA.gov Image

The use of a mine rescue capsule has been ruled out for the trapped Utah Miners. This procedure would involve drilling a large diameter hole down to the mine. The hole would need to be about two feet in diameter - large enough permit passage of a steel cage (the capsule) that can hold one miner at a time. Then the capsule (see photo at right) would be lowered down to the mine. The miners would one-by-one enter the capsule and be hoisted up to the surface. Drilling such a large diameter hole would be very slow work, there are very few companies who have equipment that is capable of drilling such a large diameter hole to such a great depth, and it could be difficult to get the drilling equipment to the proper location. The procedure has been used successfully in the past - the capsule shown at right was used in 2002 to rescue nine miners from the Quecreek Mine in Pennsylvania.

A fourth hole drilled into the Crandall Canyon Mine has found no signs of life. Rescue efforts have been suspended after three workers were killed trying to clear debris in an attempt to reach the trapped miners.

A cave-in on Thursday night at the Crandall Canyon Mine killed three rescue workers and injured several others. These workers were clearing a tunnel through rubble in an effort to reach six miners who have been trapped in the mine for 11 days. Officials were considering the dangerous conditions and trying to decide if the rescue effort should continue.

National Public Radio has a story about mining methods and previous collapse at the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah. A former consultant for Murray Energy reports that a similar collapse occurred in March 2007, forcing the mining company to move activity to a new location in the mine.

The second hole drilled into the Crandall Canyon Mine was silent and video equipment lowered down the hold did not see any sign of the trapped miners. The drill rig has been moved to a new site and third hole has been started. This hole targets a location in the mine where the miners would have gone to if they encountered bad air.

A video camera lowered into a mine where six miners have been missing for more than five days shows “survivable space,” a federal official said Saturday, but attempts to signal the miners were met by silence. (video reports accompany the story)

The first hole to penetrate the Crandall Canyon Mine found no signs of the miners and less than optimal oxygen. A second and larger diameter well is hoped to penetrate the roof of the mine on Saturday.

Rescue workers drilling a 2 1/2 inch diameter hole into the Crandall Canyon mine are within 300 feet of the roof of the mine. If this hole hits a mine opening and not a solid block of coal it will allow a line of communication, food, air and water to the trapped miners - if the miners have access to the part of the mine where the hole penetrates.

There is no word yet on the fate of the six miners trapped in the Crandal Canyon Mine. Efforts to reach them are expected to take at least three days. The miners are trapped over 1500 feet down and over three miles from the mine entry.

A mine collapse in Utah has trapped six coal miners about 1500 feet below ground. There are many reports about what happened. Some say that the collapse was reported as an earthquake and other say that an earthquake triggered the collapse. Which of these is true will depend upon the timing of these two events - which may be difficult to determine. (Linked to Google News for the most up-to-date information.)

Anybody understand what happened?

USGS Image

Mike Thomas of Buffalo Wyoming has a house with an abandoned mine below. Its been said to be one of the largest voids seen by the Wyoming Abandoned Mine Lands Division.

Powertech, Inc., a Canadian mining company hopes to mine uranium from a site near Nunn, Colorado. The company estimates that there are about ten million pounds of uranium beneath the site. The project will create jobs and local income but it also comes with environmental concerns. Here’s a report on a public meeting related to the project.

The book tells the story of Herbert T. Young, reopening the Orphan Boy Mine (also known as the Allan Emory Mine), located west of Denver, in the Colorado Rocky Mountains after World War II. The book includes some previously unpublished photographs as well as history and stories about the area.

House.gov Image

A short article at AZ Central describes several historic Arizona Mining scams. Stories of salting real estate with gold, diamonds and other precious minerals to add value to otherwise worthless properties; deceptive stock sales; pump-and-dump stock sales and presenting false assay reports. These schemes have taken investors and others for millions of dollars.

MSHA Image

New mine safety research and regulations are changing mining practices in underground coal mines. Many of these are in response to the January 2006 disaster at Sago Mine in Upshur County, West Virginia. These regulations will cause engineering, investment, training, and lost productivity costs for the mining industry but will likely save lives at some future time. Many mines are presently struggling to remain profitable and the new requirements might cause some to close.

China is now the world’s fourth largest gold producer. Beijing’s interest in foreign investment and two Australian mining companies (who were willing to develop difficult deposits) are fueling a new production increase. Sino Gold is opening the Jinfeng Mine in southwestern China’s Guizhou province. It is expected to be the second largest gold mine in China. The Australians are learning a lot more than geology.