Category: Oceania

Production has begun at Ivanhoe Mines’ Kakula copper mine in the DRC. The company says that total production for this year is expected to be 80-95,000 t/a of copper in concentrate, with a phase two expansion to 400,000 t/a due to be completed by Q2 2022. Ivanhoe is working with China’s Zijin Mining on the development plan for phases 2 and 3 of the mine, as well as a feasibility study for the Kipushi zinc mine further to the east. Both projects lie close to the DRC’s southern border, with Angola and Zambia respectively. Phase 3 of Kamoa will lift capacity to an anticipated 600-800,000 t/a of copper in concentrate, making it the second largest copper mine in the world after Escondida in Chile. Canadian-based Ivanhoe expects to be digging 3.8 million t/a of ore at Kakula with 6% copper content in Phase 1.

Maire Tecnimont SpA says that its subsidiaries MET Development, Stamicarbon and NextChem have collectively begun work on a renewable power-to-fertilizer plant in Kenya. MET Development has signed an agreement with Oserian Development Company for the development of the plant at the Oserian Two lakes Industrial Park, on the southern banks of Lake Naivasha, 100 km north of Nairobi.

A consortium has unveiled plans to build one of the largest green hydrogen plants in the world in a bid to make Oman a leader in renewable energy technology. The $30 billion project is being developed by Oman’s state-owned oil firm OQ, green fuels developer InterContinental Energy and Kuwait government-backed renewables investor EnerTech. Construction is scheduled to start in 2028 in Al Wusta governorate on the Arabian Sea. It will be built in stages, with the aim to be at full capacity by 2038, powered by 25 GW of wind and solar energy. Two years has already been spent on solar and wind monitoring analysis for the development. According to the consortium, the site chosen has the optimal diurnal profile of strong wind at night and reliable sun during the day, and is also located near the coast for seawater intake and electrolysis.

Ineos subsidiary Inovyn has announced the permanent closure of its ‘sulphur chemicals’ (mainly sulphuric acid) plant at its Runcorn site, and its withdrawal from the UK sulphur chemicals market. The company said in a statement that the decision follows a management review of the business in the light of recent events. Specifically, in October 2020, an unexpected interruption to the third-party power supply to the Runcorn site resulted in the plant being taken offline, and during restart, it was identified that a number of critical plant components had suffered significant damage. As a result, to ensure the safety and integrity of the plant it was taken back offline. Since then, in spite of significant effort and investment to rectify these issues, Inovyn says that it has become clear that it will not be possible to safely restart the plant for at least a further 18-24 months, and the company has decided to close the plant permanently.

The Chemical & Process Technologies business unit of thyssenkrupp Industrial Solutions is celebrating a milestone in 2021. It is one hundred years since engineer and entrepreneur Friedrich Uhde founded his own plant engineering company in a barn at his parents-in-law’s farm in Dortmund-Bövinghausen on April 6th, 1921. Now, in this centenary year, the origins of the firm are to become visible in its name again: thyssenkrupp is changing the business unit’s name to thyssenkrupp Uhde.

Storm Uri which blanketed the southern states of the US with snow, and led to widespread power outages in Texas, has had a major impact upon US Gulf Coast and Southern-Midwest refined products supply. Most Gulf Coast refineries were shut down or forced to operate at reduced rates. IHS Markit estimated that more than 5.2 million bbl/d of Gulf Coast capacity and 730,000 bbl/d in PADD 2 was impacted by the winter weather at its height, and close to 20% of lower 48 US natural gas production was shut-in in the first half of February. A drop in crude oil production of between 2.2 and 4 million bbl/d was estimated.

Copper major Freeport-McMoRan is reportedly on verge of finalising a $2.8 billion deal with China’s Tsingshan to build a copper smelter in Weda Bay, Indonesia. The Indonesian government said that the companies were aiming to conclude negotiations by the end of March. It also said that most of the financing will be borne by Tsingshan, with Freeport possibly only needing to provide funding for 7.5% of the total project cost. The smelter would have a copper concentrate input capacity of 2.4 million t/a.

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) says that it plans to build a $3 billion methanol plant on Brass Island in the Niger Delta to produce up to 10,000 t/d of methanol using from gas supplied by Shell. A final investment decision was made by NNPC, DSV Engineering and the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, a state agency set up to ensure Nigerian involvement in oil and gas projects. Around 70% of funding for the project will come from international lenders, including the China Export-Import Bank, the African Development Bank and international commercial banks, with the rest funded from an equity issue. BP has signed a 10 year offtake deal for the plant’s output with the Brass Fertilizer & Petrochemical Company, the entity set up to operate the plant. Construction of the plant is expected to be completed by 2025.

Building on its long experience and leading position within global ammonia production, logistics and trade, Yara says that it aims to capture opportunities in green shipping, agriculture and industrial applications; a market expected to grow by 60% over the next two decades. A major first step includes plans to fully electrify its ammonia plant at Porsgrunn, Norway, with the potential to cut 800,000 t/a of CO 2 , equivalent to the emissions from 300,000 passenger cars.

In early October Tesla held a ‘battery day’ event at its headquarters in Fremont, California. Speaking at the event, company founder and CEO Elon Musk outlined his vision for the electric car industry over the coming decades, and spoke particularly to his ambitions for the nickel industry. He had already called for more mining of nickel earlier in the year, and has said that Tesla is developing cathodes that will contain higher nickel and no cobalt. The latter comes after a lawsuit against Tesla and several other high-tech US firms for allegedly supporting human rights violations by buying cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Musk echoed the potential ‘reputational risk’ for the nickel market and called for more sustainable nickel production, dangling the prospect of a “giant contract” with any miners that could produce nickel in an “environmentally sensitive way.” Tesla is reportedly in discussions with Vale and BHP as well as the Indonesian government concerning potential investments in nickel production.