Mining Archives – Stephen Andrew Kickstart Queensland

A Very Black Day for Queensland Coal Mines

At around midday yesterday, a 27 year old man was crushed to death between two vehicles at an open-cut coal mine in Central Queensland.

The man was working with a colleague in the fuel bay area at the Saraji coal mine, near Dysart, which is operated by BHP Mitsubishi Alliance(BMA).

Apart from anything else, this tragic incident is just so incredibly sad and my heart goes out to the man’s family, friends and work colleagues for their unimaginable loss, as well as the first responders who attended at the scene.

According to the Mining and Energy Union (MEU), the whole Qld mining community are shocked and saddened by the incident.

Operations at the mine have been suspended, pending an investigation by the Resources Safety and Health Queensland (RSHQ) and Union safety inspectors.

Without wishing to pre-empt this investigation, it is worth noting that this latest event follows the tragic death of 49 year old bulldozer operator, Allan Houston, at Dysart’s Saraji Mine on 31 December 2018.

Also worth noting is the recent suspension of operations at the Saraji Mine by RSHQ due to a number of serious safety concerns.

These concerns prompted acting regional mine inspector, Paul Brown, to issue multiple directives to the mine’s site senior executive (SSE) in October 2023.

The directives listed a number of major safety issues at the mine that SSE were instructed to address. The regulator also raised concerns over tractors working across slopes “near a body of water which had insufficient controls in place to manage the risk”.

“To be clear this is a fatal hazard” the MRE said.

The regulator also called out the “competencies of supervisors” at the mine, saying the SSE needed to develop an action plan to address “root cause or contributing factors involving less than adequate supervision”.

The directives carried a deadline of 31 October 2023.

There have now been 11 miners killed at work in Queensland Mines and Quarries since 2018.

This pattern of ongoing deaths and serious injuries is completely unacceptable.

Clearly there are still significant problems around mine safety and something substantive must be done this time to get to the bottom of it all.

For now, however, the community’s focus should be on comforting and supporting the family, the responders, the workmates, the friends, the supervisors and managers, all of whom are victims of this tragic event.

My thoughts and prayers are with them all.

RARE EARTHS ARE THE “NEW OIL”

Russia and Ukraine combined are a treasure trove for all the raw materials the West desperately needs to power its planned digital and green revolution.

The breakaway territories of the Donbass contain abundant reserves of ‘new economy’ materials including lithium and titanium.

Everything from smart cities, the digital economy, Internet of Things, AI, renewables and the surveillance state relies on the West gaining unrestricted access to, and control over, the worldwide supply of rare earths.

Russia in particular is home to one of the biggest and richest rare-earth deposits in the world.

It could well be the biggest, given the full extent of Russia’s reserves has never been properly mapped or exploited.

The Ural mountains alone contain some of the most diverse polymetallic resources on the planet, including manganese, copper, zinc, high-grade nickel and neodymium.

Another of its vast repository of ‘new economy’ minerals is Siberia, which also contains one of the three biggest reserves of Niobium globally.

Niobium is used in everything from jet engines, rockets, beams/girders for buildings and oil/gas pipelines, to particle accelerators, MRI scanners and NMR equipment.

Russia also supplies most of the elements needed for making the world’s semiconductor chips, particularly C4F6, Neon and Palladium.

Neon is almost 100 percent sourced from Russia’s steel plants, while the country also supplies 45 percent of palladium globally.

According to TECHCET, “Russia is a crucial source of C4F6 which are indispensable for advanced node logic device etching and advanced lithography processes for chip production”.

C4F6 and Palladium are used to make permanent magnets, a key component of modern weapon systems and other military technology.

They are also key components in the production of EVs.

80 per cent of the world’s sapphire substrates are supplied by Russia.

These are thin plates of artificial stone used in opto- and micro-electronics, including every processor in the world – AMD and Intel included.

Another key ingredient for the West’s military-industrial and transportation capabilities is antimony. It is used in everything from armour-piercing bullets to night vision goggles.

According to traders, much of the world’s supply of the rare earths on which the military-industrial complex depends, come from Russia.

The prices of all these elements are now skyrocketing and we are seeing a growing worldwide shortage of materials like steel, titanium, nickel and aluminium.

These are all materials needed to fill orders of countless downstream industries from aviation to shipbuilding.

Without them, the world’s manufacturing base will grind to a halt.

Rare earths ARE the “new oil”.

That’s why instead of “oil wars”, we will see more and more “rare earth wars”.

Welcome to the Fourth Industrial Revolution!