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Gold/Mining/Energy : Canadian Diamond Play Cafi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jrhana who wrote (3880)	3/14/2006 11:38:40 PM
From: Letmebe Frank	Respond to of 16206

Global warming... my backyard will be a tropical paradise before I die... ----------------------- Miners hampered by fragile Arctic ice road March 14, 2006, 1:26 pm By Rachelle Younglai TORONTO (Reuters) - For a small window of time, temperatures become cold enough to freeze some lakes in Canada's Arctic, creating an ice road that allows companies to send truckloads of crucial supplies to their remote mining sites. But mild weather has thrown a wrench into the ice making process this year, slowing down the transportation of goods along the road, which runs some 568 kms (353 miles), and leaving miners racing against time to get supplies in before the winter road melts. "The problem has been the speed at which the ice has thickened. In other winters when you have a lot of minus 40 or minus 35 (degrees Celsius), you get up to full capacity very fast," said Tom Hoefer, a spokesman for the Diavik diamond mine which along with BHP Billiton Ltd. and Kinross Gold Corp., operates the road. "But this year we have had such warm weather, that (the ice) has been slower at thickening and we just haven't reached that full thickness now." The winter road opened later than expected this year and has not yet reached full capacity because the ice needs to be 42 inches thick and is currently only 38 inches thick. This has been the warmest Canadian winter in nearly six decades with temperatures averaging 3.9 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit), warmer than normal from the end of November 2005 to the start of March 2006. "Basically what the thinner ice means is that we will have to haul more loads than expected and reduce the size of shipments, which means more shipments," said Hoefer. "Whether we can get them all in or not (depends on) if we have a late spring or if we have an early spring." The ice road has become more traveled in recent years with Tahera Diamond Corp. bringing its diamond mine on stream in Nunavut. De Beers Canada is also getting ready to bring its first Canadian diamond mine -- Snap Lake in the Northwest Territories -- into production. This is on top of the normal slate of supplies hauled along the ice road to two other operating diamond mines in the Northwest Territories, Aber Diamond Corp. and Rio Tinto Plc's Diavik and BHP Billiton's Ekati. The winter road operators project that more than 9,000 truckloads of fuel, explosives, construction supplies and equipment and assorted freight will be traveling across the ice road. "We have seen an increase in the number of trucks that we have to send," said Cathie Bolstad, with De Beers Canada. De Beers had planned to send 2,000 truckloads to its Snap Lake project and now is forecasting 2,200 truckloads. As of Monday, it had transported 1,337 loads. The company, part owned by Anglo American Plc , has already managed to drive its cranes and generators to the project and Bolstad said she is "confident" that it will be able to transport all the heavy loads before the road closes. "Our challenge is to get our fuel in," said Bolstad, who hopes that the winter road will be open till the end of March. Tiny diamond explorer Peregrine Diamonds Ltd. said costs are higher as the company was forced to send only partial loads of fuel to its Northwest Territories site. The road typically allows around 200 trucks a day, with a truck leaving every 20 minutes. Unusually warm weather has already forced the operators to issue one safety warning to snowmobilers due to the considerable amount of overflow and water alongside the road. As soon as the road closes, companies will know if they have enough supplies to last until the next winter road opens in 2007.