Methane-spewing coal mines are climate test for Australia’s new leader
Bloomberg News | June 17, 2022 | 

Most of Australia’s coal mines are in the Hunter Valley (pictured), Bowen Basin and Surat Basin regions. (Image: Max Phillips (Jeremy Buckingham MLC) | Flickr.)

Australia’s coal mines cause more planetary warming in a typical year than emissions from all of the country’s cars. If Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants to meet tougher climate targets, he’ll need to fix that.


Satellite observations suggest the best place to start is the Bowen Basin, the major coal hub in Queensland state, and an area where scientists have estimated the methane intensity per unit of production is 47% higher than the global average.

A satellite earlier this month spotted a plume of the potent greenhouse gas that geoanalytics firm Kayrros SAS estimated originated within about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) of coal mines operated by Anglo American Plc, BHP Mitsubishi Alliance and Stanmore Resources Ltd. None of the companies answered questions from Bloomberg asking if their mines emitted methane the day of the satellite observation.

“Methane leaking from coal mines has been ignored for many years, but tackling it is the ‘low hanging fruit’ in Australia’s effort to combat climate change,” Sabina Assan, an analyst with environmental think tank Ember, wrote in a report released this month.

The Bowen Basin has become a global example of the disparity between reported coal mine methane emissions and independent measurements, according to the report. The powerful green house gas can leak from underground and open-cut coal mines and has 84 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere.

The most recent release, observed on June 3rd by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite, was estimated to have an emissions rate of about 12 metric tons of methane an hour and could have come from several mines, according to Kayrros. Coal production typically runs 24 hours a day, so methane is often emitted constantly from mines. Release levels might fall during maintenance, or rise if miners hit a gas pocket.

If the rate estimated by Kayrros was consistent for a year, the gases would have the same short-term warming impact as the annual emissions from roughly 1.9 million US cars.

Australia’s new government, voted into office last month, on Thursday confirmed an election pledge to lower carbon emissions by 43% from 2005 levels by 2030, tightening a previous commitment for cuts of 26%-28%.

When contacted about the June 3 release, Australia’s Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources didn’t say if it was aware of the emissions or investigating them. “Making reliable, ‘top-down’ estimates of emissions from the satellite data is difficult for a number of reasons, including challenges associated with a lack of ground-truthing, instrument and modelling errors, and attribution,” the department said.

The agency emphasized that coal-mine operators are required to estimate and report company and facility level greenhouse gas emissions under reporting guidelines and that the country’s Clean Energy Regulator publishes reported emissions data annually.

But Australia has had problems with some operators who report their own emissions. Peabody Energy Corp. said in January it had made errors in data filed to the local regulator, and appointed an auditor to review its processes.

In February, Australia disclosed it had revised the method used to calculate methane pollution from open-cut coal mines and said the change means total national emissions were on average 0.3% higher than previously stated for each year since 1990. That revision was prompted by the use of satellite data, which has improved capacity to estimate emissions, the government said.

In Australia’s latest report to the United Nations, the government reported that active and abandoned coal mines released about 1 million tons of methane in 2020, while cars generated about 40 million tons of carbon dioxide.

(By Nicholas Swee Yang Lua and Aaron Clark)

Oil producers are planning the world’s biggest floating wind farm

Bloomberg News | June 17, 2022 

Whitelee wind farm in the UK. (Reference image by eltpics, Flickr).

A group of oil and gas producers including Equinor ASA, Shell Plc and TotalEnergies SE are considering building what would be the world’s largest floating wind farm off Norway to power their fossil-fuel activities.


The companies are looking at options to build a 1-gigawatt wind farm to power operations in the Troll and Oseberg oil and gas fields, they said Friday. It’s an example of the complex road to cutting global carbon emissions, where deep-pocketed fossil-fuel firms with strong engineering expertise could play a key role in renewables growth even as they continue their polluting businesses.

Offshore wind farms are one of the fastest-growing sectors of renewable energy. But the vast majority of existing and planned projects are in shallow waters where turbines can be placed on foundations built up from the seabed. Developing floating technology could drastically expand the sea area suitable for generating wind power.

The technology has so far only been used on small pilot projects. Equinor pioneered the concept at a Scottish site and is building a bigger one in Norway. The new project being considered, named Trollvind, would be more than 11 times larger than the Norwegian one, pushing floating wind to a scale that will be needed for it to make a real contribution to global efforts to cut emissions.

Equinor and its partners, which also include Petoro AS and ConocoPhillips, would buy all of the electricity from the project to power their fossil-fuel activities in the North Sea. The wind farm would be connected to land so that it could also potentially feed homes and businesses.

“Trollvind is a concept where renewable energy works to facilitate several objectives; helping cut emissions through electrification, delivering power to an area where shortages have already created challenges for new industrial development,” Equinor Chief Executive Officer Anders Opedal said in a statement.

The companies plan to make an investment decision next year and have the project operational by 2027.

Emissions from oil companies’ own operations and energy needs account for just a small fraction of their overall climate impact. For example, Equinor last year produced about 12.1 million tons of carbon dioxide from activities it owns and operates, but the total impact of its business exceeded 250 million tons.

Still, investment in projects like Trollvind are in important step in scaling up renewables technology to reach global green targets.

(By Will Mathis)

Bolivia delays decision on lithium mining tie-ups to December
Reuters | June 17, 2022 

Bolivia’s Salar Uyuni, near the border with Chile, holds more lithium carbonate 

reserves than anywhere else. (Image: Benedikt Juerges | Shutterstock.)

Bolivia’s government will not make a final decision on potential lithium mining tie-ups with private partners until December, six months behind its initial schedule, a senior official told state television on Friday.


The government is currently evaluating six companies to help mine the country’s untapped lithium riches. One or more could eventually be selected to partner with state-owned Yacimientos de Litios Bolivianos (YLB).

Alvaro Arnez, vice minister of high energy technologies, told the state broadcaster that the government now plans to have proposals ready for companies to consider by the end of October, with a final deal or deals in place by the end of December.

The government had previously planned to announce its final selection last month. It hopes private partners can help jumpstart lithium extraction in Bolivia’s sprawling salt flats, home to the world’s largest deposits of the white metal coveted by rechargeable battery makers.

Despite decades of attempts, Bolivia has yet to achieve any commercial lithium production. Demand for the ultra-light metal has surged in recent years.

This month, the government narrowed the final selection from eight to six suitors, after disqualifying American startup EnergyX and Argentine energy firm Tecpetrol.

Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in the Americas, faces steep challenges to meet its target of producing lithium-ion batteries locally by 2025.

A Reuters report last month highlighted the technological challenges, social resistance, legal obstacles and political scrambles undermining Bolivia’s extractions plans.

None of the short-listed firms have exploited lithium at a commercial scale before.

(By Daniel Ramos and Isabel Woodford; Editing by David Alire Garcia and David Gregorio)

New mapping method may lead to discovery of new geothermal energy, green metal resources

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | June 19, 2022 

Geothermal energy. (Reference image by Simon, Pixabay).

Researchers at the University of Twente developed a new method to analyze the earth’s continental crust, which lays the groundwork to predict geothermal energy sources and other critical resources on earth and other planets.


In a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, lead researcher Juan Carlos Afonso explains that, normally, earth scientists look at one aspect of the earth’s crust at a time using specific data sets. However, it is actually both the crust’s chemical structure and the small differences in temperature that inform geoscientists on the origin and evolution of the planet and on the location of resources beneath our feet.

Yet, combining multiple data sets for this purpose remains a major challenge.

Despite those difficulties, Afonso managed to formally combine multiple satellite data sets with land-based data sets to see further into the earth than previously possible.

“It is a completely new way of ‘seeing’ what’s below there,” Afonso said.

The researcher pointed out that previously, the only reliable approach for deep resource exploration was the analysis of xenoliths, and rock samples brought to the surface by volcanoes.

“When you’re dependent on volcanoes, you can imagine that such samples are hard to come by. They are scattered in space and time and still have large uncertainties,” Afonso said.

The scientist and his team focused on central and southern Africa. The Kalahari, Tanzanian and Congo cratons—ancient and stable parts of the earth’s two topmost layers—in the area proved useful.

“Central and Southern Africa is a natural laboratory that helps us answer fundamental questions about the formation of cratons,” Afonso said. “And there are plenty of datasets on those needed xenoliths that helped us prove our method.”

According to Afonso and the co-authors, this approach adds to the development of the next-generation planetary models and supports the search for resources aimed at producing cleaner technologies. It also lays the groundwork for innovative resource exploration frameworks for earth, and other planets.

“Maybe Mars and/or the Moon can be next,” he said.

UN experts want better gold data as trade fuels Congo violence

The UN experts documented multiple rapes, killings and forced labor by the groups.

Bloomberg News | June 19, 2022 

DRC gold. (Image by USAID Land, Flickr).

Governments need to improve and make public their gold trade data to help stem smuggling and violence around mines in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations independent group of experts on Congo said in their annual report Friday.


The report documented inter-ethnic fighting over gold deposits and widespread mineral trafficking involving armed groups and security forces across Congo’s border with Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania. The experts also traced gold to Dubai and India, with Chinese nationals involved in the trade as well.

The report recommended that UN member states “publish, on a yearly basis, complete production statistics, and complete and disaggregated statistics, on the import and export of natural resources, including gold, coltan and tourmaline.” Coltan is used in mobile-phone batteries, and tourmaline is a gemstone.

Congo’s natural resource trade has fueled conflict in its mineral-rich east for more than two decades, but high gold prices since 2020 have led to a surge in informal gold mining.

The violence has been particularly acute around the massive Mongbwalu gold deposits in Congo’s Ituri province, where rebels from the Cooperative for the Development of Congo, or CODECO, which says it represents the interests of the Lendu community, have fought with a rebel group called Zaire, which says it represents the Hema community.

The UN experts documented multiple rapes, killings and forced labor by the groups.

CODECO also kidnapped eight Chinese nationals involved in gold mining for about a month at the end of 2021, causing the Chinese embassy to advise its citizens to leave Congo’s eastern provinces. The mines ministry responded by prohibiting the involvement of foreign nationals in artisanal mining, which makes up a large portion of the gold production in eastern Congo.

Congo Gold Raffinerie Sarl is set to launch the country’s sole gold refinery this year in the eastern city of Bukavu, and its owners told the experts that it will source gold only from “credible cooperatives” and “green” sites approved by the government that have no links to armed groups.

The company told the group it hoped to refine around two tons of gold monthly.

(By Michael J. Kavanagh)

Vedanta selling halted copper smelter, four years later

Cecilia Jamasmie | June 20, 2022

Vedanta’s smelter closure dented India’s copper output by almost half and turned the country into a net importer of the metal. (Image courtesy of Sterlite Copper.)

Shares in Vedanta Ltd. (NSE: VEDL) fell more than 12% on Monday after the oil-to-metals Indian group put up for sale a copper smelter complex shut for four years after the death of 13 protesters in an alleged police firing.


The Mumbai-based company, India’s largest miner, said potential buyers had until July 4 to submit expressions of interest.

Vedanta was ordered to shut its 400,000 tonnes per annum copper smelter in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state in May 2018. The decision followed week of violent protests against the company’s plans to expand the plant’s capacity, which locals blamed of polluting their air and water.

The round of protests that ended with the death of 13 people was condemned by a working group of United Nations’ human rights experts for the “excessive and disproportionate use of lethal force by police”.

Vedanta, controlled by billionaire Anil Agarwal, has fought multiple court battles to restart the smelter, which was operated by its unit Sterlite Copper.

The case rests now with the country’s Supreme Court, which hasn’t set a date to hear the case.

Vedanta’s smelter closure dented India’s copper output by almost half and turned the country into a net importer of the metal.

In the first two years of the shutdown, refined copper imports rose more than three times to 151,964 tonnes in the financial year ended March 2020, while exports fell 90% to 36,959 tonnes, according to a government statement.

(With files from Reuters)

How platinum can help clean up wastewater, make it potable

Staff Writer | June 20, 2022

Platinum. (Image by James St. John, Flickr).

Researchers at the University of Southern California have found that platinum is a key ingredient to help clean even the most stubborn toxins from wastewater.


As wastewater treatment for potable reuse becomes a more viable and popular option to address water shortages, the scientists began thinking about how to address the presence of aldehydes, which are chemicals that stubbornly persist through treatment and that are toxic to humans.

In a paper published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, the researchers introduce the idea of using platinum to clean the toxins in water in the same way the metal is used in catalytic converters to clean up air pollutants in car exhaust. In their view, the precious metal can be employed to speed up oxidation to transform once-toxic aldehydes into harmless carboxylic acids.

“When wastewater is recycled the resulting water is very pure, but not 100% pure,” Dan McCurry, one of the study’s co-authors, said in a media statement. “There’s still a tiny amount of organic carbon detectable and these carbon atoms could be attached to molecules that are very toxic or completely innocent. This has perplexed people for years, particularly because the carbon is able to make it through so many treatment layers and barriers.”

According to McCurry, a study conducted at UC Berkeley revealed that one-third to one-half of these molecules are present in the form of aldehydes.

Aldehydes are chemical compounds characterized by a carbon atom that shares a double bond with an oxygen atom, a single bond with a hydrogen atom, and a single bond with another atom or group of atoms. They are also generally toxic to humans, meaning that their long-term consumption could result in a variety of chronic and life-threatening illnesses such as cancer.

Until now, however, catalytic oxidation of organic pollutants in water without electrochemistry, the addition of electron-accepting oxidant chemicals, or photochemistry, had not been sustainably demonstrated.

Enter platinum, one of the few oxidants that is non-toxic and can utilize the oxygen in water to catalyze a reaction abiotically, that is without the use of microbes.

McCurry explained that there are about eight milligrams per litre of dissolved oxygen in water. While O2 is a potent oxidant from a thermodynamic perspective, the reaction is slow. With platinum, the process speeds up. For a while, McCurry and his team of researchers used platinum to oxidize different pharmaceuticals as a matter of experimentation. After a year of trial and error, the idea of using platinum in water treatment to oxidize contaminants emerged.

“It would happen essentially for free, and because the oxygen is already in the water, it’s the closest you could get to a chemical-free oxidation,” the researcher said.
The price of platinum

McCurry acknowledged that platinum is expensive, but also noted that the cost, like for a car’s catalytic converter, is relative. “Your car probably has between one and 10 grams of platinum in it. The amount isn’t trivial. If it’s cheap enough to put in a Honda Civic, it’s probably cheap enough to put in a water treatment plant,” he said.

The scientist clarified that his breakthrough is not as relevant for most existing water reuse plants, as many of them favour indirect potable reuse. This is where, after all the water treatment and recycling processes are complete, water is pumped back into the ground—so they are essentially creating new groundwater whose aldehydes are likely eaten by some microbe.

“But more and more people are talking about direct potable reuse,” McCurry said. “Where we are talking about a closed water loop where water goes from the wastewater treatment plant to the reuse plant and then either to a drinking water plant or directly into the distribution system into homes and businesses.”

In these cases, aldehydes could potentially reach consumers. While they are currently unregulated, McCurry suspects that the presence of aldehydes in recycled wastewater will soon attract regulatory attention.

“This is the problem we didn’t realize we had a solution for, but now we know, this catalyst, which we had been using to oxidize random pharmaceuticals for fun, works great on oxidizing aldehydes—and would allow for direct potable reuse water to meet future regulatory guidelines and safety standards,” the researcher said.

Fission Uranium signs agreement with Indigenous communities for PLS project in Saskatchewan

Staff Writer | June 20, 2022

Summer exploration at Patterson Lake. Credit: Fission Uranium

On its way to develop what could be the next low-cost uranium operation in Canada, Fission Uranium (TSX: RCU) has reached another major milestone with the signing of an engagement and capacity agreement with the Ya’thi Néné Lands and Resources Office (YNLR).


YNLR is the representative body of the Athabasca nations and communities of the Nuhenéné, on whose territory Fission’s Patterson Lake South (PLS) project sits in Saskatchewan. Fission is currently advancing the project through the feasibility study and environmental assessment phase.

This agreement outlines a process for Fission and YNLR to engage meaningfully in respect of the PLS project, and it strengthens the positive and constructive working relationship the parties have developed. During this stage of engagement, Fission and YNLR will work to identify potential areas of interest or concern related to Indigenous rights and culture, traditional land and resource use, and community interests, and options to address those matters.

The capacity funding provided by Fission to YNLR as part of this agreement will facilitate the sharing of information between the parties with respect to the environmental assessment and other aspects of early planning and design for the PLS project.

“This agreement is built upon the mutually respectful and constructive relationship that Fission and the YNLR have developed. Its purpose is to establish a framework for ongoing engagement and to facilitate YNLR participation as the PLS project advances,” Fission CEO Ross McElroy said in a statement.

According to Fission, this agreement reflects its commitment to building strong relationships with rights holders, including first nations and Métis communities, throughout the life of the PLS project. The company has met with and continues to engage regularly with representatives of rights holders and communities in the Patterson Lake area.

The goal is to ensure that all rights holders remain up to date regarding the PLS project’s current status and future plans. Early in 2023, the company plans to expand its engagement program to seek input from key stakeholder groups including local municipalities, subject matter experts, land users, and regulatory agencies.

The PLS property, located in Saskatchewan’s renowned Athabasca Basin uranium district, is host to the region’s largest high-grade deposit (Triple R), with 2.2 million tonnes of indicated resources grading 2.1% uranium oxide (102.4 million lb. of uranium oxide) and 1.2 million tonnes of inferred resources averaging 1.22% uranium oxide (32.8 million lb. uranium oxide).

A 2019 pre-feasibility study on the PLS project highlighted a seven-year operation that would mine 2.3 million tonnes of ore at a grade of 1.61% uranium oxide for about 81.4 million lb. of uranium oxide. The project would take three years to construct, with an initial capital cost of C$1.18 billion ($910m).

Surging energy prices force Japanese steel giant to revisit coal

Bloomberg News | June 20, 2022 |

Credit: Nippon Steel Corp.

Nippon Steel Corp. is prepared to make more investments in coal mines after the energy source surged in price, as Japan’s biggest steelmaker looks at ways to stabilize the supply of one of its key raw materials.


International prices of coking coal, the variety shoveled into blast furnaces to manufacture the alloy, have spiked to unprecedented levels in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, Japanese steel mills, most of which are reliant on imports, are grappling with ballooning costs after a dramatic slide in the value of the yen.

It’s a dynamic that’s led Nippon Steel to study whether investing further in coal projects makes sense, particularly as miners come under pressure to divest those assets because of fears over global warming, Kiichi Yamada, the general manager of the company’s raw materials division, said in an interview in Tokyo last week.

Nippon Steel currently has minority stakes in six coking coal assets, mostly in Australia, including the Moranbah North project led by Anglo American Plc with production capacity of 15 million tons a year, according to the company’s annual factbook.

Yamada didn’t give any details on possible new investments. In the news, Japanese trading firm Mitsui & Co. has begun seeking buyers for its 20% stake in a joint venture that operates coking coal mines in Queensland, according to a report in the Australian Financial Review, which didn’t name its sources.

Nippon Steel’s potential move to bolster its upstream presence underscores how energy price inflation is forcing companies to prioritize their short-term operational needs over longer-term ambitions to cut carbon emissions. Manufacturing steel is intensely pollutive. In both China and Japan, the world’s no. 1 and no. 3 producers, it’s estimated to account for around 15% of each country’s total emissions.

For its part, Nippon Steel has promised to become carbon neutral by 2050, a plan that involves making more steel from melting scrap and replacing coal with hydrogen. The first means an expensive switch to electric arc furnaces, while the second involves substantial investment in a technology that’s promising but still uncertain. Mindful of the costs of getting to net-zero, the company has lobbied the government for billions of dollars in state aid.

In the meantime, coal mines that were being shunned for their baleful impact on the atmosphere are being given a new lease of life. Nippon Steel’s interest coincides with BHP Group’s U-turn just last week on its plan to exit from thermal coal, the kind used by power plants. The Australian mining giant’s about-face came after surging prices made the assets more valuable and a shift in investor attitudes eased pressure on the company to stop digging up the dirtiest fossil fuel.

Still, Yamada expects the market for coking coal to remain tight. It’s mined in fewer places around the world than the more ubiquitous and cheaper thermal kind. Japan bought about 70 million tons last year, over half of which came from Australia. Moreover, the broad shift to net-zero makes it harder for miners to finance new projects, entrenching the dominance of producers like BHP Group.

Prices are more than twice where they were a year ago, and given the limited opportunities to expand supply, “it’s structurally difficult for coking coal prices to fall,” Yamada said.

The Japan Iron and Steel Federation, which represents more than 100 producers and traders including Nippon Steel, has warned there’s a mismatch between steel prices and the cost of the raw material, and has set up a team to investigate. In India, the second-biggest producer, the steel industry is seeking government help to check the soaring cost of the raw material, the Business Standard newspaper reported last week.

Part of the problem, according to Yamada, may be how coking coal prices are reflected in the market. Five years ago, the company switched to using price assessments as the basis for procuring supply because the spot market had grown too volatile. But China’s ban on imports of Australian coal in 2020 has significantly cut the number of deals struck and left pricing less liquid. It may mean that prices don’t “fairly reflect the supply-demand balance,” he said.

Nippon Steel has begun discussing the problem with its suppliers. Resolving the issue will involve either enhancing the credibility of index-linked pricing or finding an alternative, Yamada said.

(By Masumi Suga, with assistance from Swansy Afonso)

Eighth and last missing miner found dead in flooded Burkina Faso mine

Reuters | June 20, 2022 

Drillers underground at Trevali Mining’s Perkoa zinc mine in Burkina Faso.

 Credit: Trevali Mining

The body of the last of eight miners who drowned in a Burkina Faso zinc mine owned by Trevali Mining Corp when it flooded on April 16 was found on Monday, the government said.


The seven other bodies have been recovered gradually from the mine’s underground passages since May 24, when the first four were discovered.

Hopes of finding any survivors had already dissolved by then, as rescue teams had found no one inside a chamber in which there had been a slim chance that the eight missing miners who had not managed to resurface might have sought shelter.

“After 66 days of searching, the eight miners who disappeared after the flooding… have finally all been found dead,” the government said in a statement.

The victims were six Burkina Faso nationals, one Tanzanian and one Zambian.

The Perkoa mine was flooded after torrential rain fell unexpectedly during the West African country’s dry season.

Both the government and Canada-based Trevali have opened investigations into the incident.

(By Thiam Ndiga and Sofia Christensen; Editing by Sandra Maler)