Monthly Archives: November 2011

Mine planning in the South Pacific

Le Phare Amédée has everything you’d expect from a South Pacific island; turquoise water, white sand, coral reefs and sea life in abundance. Sadly, the island – part of New Caledonia – is not being considered for a new Mintec branch office.

MineSight serves clients in some of the remotest parts of the planet. We take you there, as MineSight personnel report back on their work in the field. Senior MineSight specialist Melanie Bolduc, from Mintec’s Vancouver office, reports back from Vale Nouvelle-Calédonie’s Goro mine site in the South Pacific.

Recently, Mintec’s office in Perth supported a new client, Vale Nouvelle-Calédonie, with training requirements in the Special Collectivity of France, New Caledonia.  I was asked to travel the 34-hour journey from Vancouver to the Goro mine site to teach the fundamentals of MineSight followed by a custom class for short term planning. To embark on such a long journey, one should be armed with zen, focus and patience. Luckily, the Auckland airport is a chill hangout place after busy Los Angeles.

Vale Nouvelle-Calédonie owns and operates the Goro Mine. The site is in a remote location in the South part of New Caledonia’s main island, locally known as “Grande-Terre”. Most commuters access the site by a scenic 90-minute ferry ride.

The industrial site at the Goro mine, operated by Vale Nouvelle-Calédonie.

The Goro project is an opencast operating mine of Nickel and Cobalt in a laterite deposit. The first sight is of a massive industrial complex covering 22 hectares of land with installations to extract the nickel and cobalt by a unique process of hydrometallurgy and a component for waste treatment.

New Caledonia contains over 7,100,000 tons of nickel or about 10 percent of the world’s nickel reserves. The Goro project is considered one of the world’s highest in nickel content. The mineralization is mainly comprised in thick wet laterites and saprolites (up to 60 meters in some regions). The unique hydrometallurgical process developed by Vale Nouvelle-Calédonie is the key element to make this lower content deposit profitable.

The first part of the MineSight training sessions familiarized surveyors and mining technicians to the tools they will benefit from in their daily task. Many of MineSight’s import and export functions were successfully applied and will be implemented in Goro’s workflow. It was followed by a second session focused on advanced topics of the short term planning operation. The participation from the surveyors, mining technicians and engineers was enthusiastic and friendly. We even experienced a small earthquake, which permanently jarred the rest of my jet-lag out of me!

During some of my extra time, I did manage to get a glimpse of what New Caledonia has to offer. I booked a day trip to one of the nearby islands, called Le Phare Amédée. This was nothing short of what most people would picture from a South Pacific island; clear turquoise water, white sandy beach and one of the longest coral reefs in the world with turtles, sharks and sting rays.

It’s a rare opportunity for a Canadian to combine mine planning with shark sightseeing! The visit to New Caledonia was worth the long flight hours and if there is a next time, the Loyalty Island Arc would make my short list.

Grasberg a mine with a view – sometimes

MineSight specialist Kristin Trappitt above the clouds at PT Freeport's Grasberg Copper-Gold Mine.

MineSight serves clients in some of the remotest parts of the planet. We take you there, as MineSight personnel report back on their work in the field. MineSight specialist Kristin Trappitt, of Mintec’s Perth, Australia branch, writes from the Papua region of Indonesia, home to PT Freeport’s Grasberg Copper-Gold Mine. As is often the case, getting there was half the adventure.

Recently, I flew to PT Freeport’s Grasberg Copper-Gold Mine to help the engineering department install, implement and train employees in the use of MineSight Axis.

The trip from Perth to Denpasar in Bali, Indonesia was easy and the wait in Denpasar was typically long. After several similar trips to Grasberg, I am now quite familiar with the insides of the airport Starbucks. The late flight to Timika was going well until the cloud decided to hug the ground a little longer than normal. After the plane had circled Timika for 30 minutes the pilot gave up and continued on to Jayapura. After hopping off there for an hour, the return flight was able to land in Timika. There we discovered the 20-minute helicopter rides up to Tembagapura had been cancelled for the morning and that we’d all have to wait until 11 a.m. for the bus trip up the mountain.

Buses connect Timika and Tembagapura in a convoy with additional “Route Patrol” vehicles – landcruisers with three to five armed guards in each. So five hours of mountain climbing in a bus later we were up in Tembagapura. Then it was just a matter of searching for a key to get into the assigned guest building and settling in ready to begin work on Tuesday morning.

Being back on site meant our days from mess to mess were about 11.5 hours long, with almost two hours of the day covered by the drive up and down the mountain. It’s a beautiful drive if the clouds allow it, with most of the drive being along the sides of the mountains and a good series of switchbacks as the access road approaches the pit entrance. Mornings usually provide a good panorama of the valleys and surrounding ridges, as well as the pit, which you cross to get to the mining office complex. In the afternoons however, the views are usually limited to cloud and windscreen wipers. Most of the time on site was spent with Ore Control Engineer Rama Martono, who is an experienced MineSight user.

Another busy day at Grasberg, the largest gold mine and third largest copper mine in the world.

The first morning on site involved a planning meeting where the aims and initial timeline for the trip were set out. A new MineSight project folder was set up with a rotated 3D block model. It would provide the basis for the new MSAxis Grade Control process. The next relatively simple job was to set up the Grade Control Process Manager. This only needed slight modifications to match exactly what the client requested. All the users were impressed by the ease with which they could update the different requirements of the process, particularly when cut-off grades changed.

By the weekend we were setting up MineSight Interactive Planner, (MSIP) and configuring the attributes and outputs to suit the current process being used on site. Due to some of these requirements an existing site script was kept in place to provide some of the more specific outputs.

The last few days on site were spent familiarizing users with the various processes, utilities, and changes to the system so that using the MSAxis process would be straightforward. This was made simple by the capable users on site. We also looked at the new options available in MSIP, specifically Cut Clipping and Surface Sets, which were well received.
With the job done it came time to go home. The usual plan involves an early morning start and a 20-minute helicopter ride back down the mountain to Timika. There was little hope of this happening given the previous six days of rain and fog.

Sure enough, waking up and stepping out into the cloud meant that a bus ride loomed. So after waiting around for a few hours the buses were ready and at 10 a.m. we set off in convoy. Fortunately, descending is a lot quicker than going up and we arrived at around 1 p.m.  Visa processing here takes a little time, which necessitates a night at the excellent Rimba Papua Hotel.

This was a great time to make use of an evening, not in front of a pool, but training for a marathon. With visa requirements completed, I took a late-morning flight back from Timika to Denpasar and then on home.

The travel may not have been exactly as planned, but there are always positives to be taken from any trip: The successful implementation of a process, working with great people, or just seeing a different side of the world. But it is always nice to have a day or two off to help recharge after a work trip.

Work at the highwall face at Grasberg, Indonesia.

Insight from MineSight

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