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Gold/Mining/Energy : Mining News of Note -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LoneClone who wrote (44622)	10/6/2009 10:32:36 PM
From: LoneClone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 196350

Minmetals Leak Won’t Disrupt Australian Zinc Supplies (Update1) bloomberg.com By Jason Scott Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) -- China Minmetals Corp., the nation’s largest metals trader, said Australian supplies from the world’s second-biggest zinc mine won’t be “threatened” after a pipe leak shut down production. “We still have sufficient concentrates at the shed at Karumba to meet our customers’ requirements,” Sally Cox, a Melbourne-based spokeswoman for MMG, a unit of China Minmetals, said in a phone interview today. “The shipping schedule is not threatened in any way.” Operations at MMG’s Century mine and mill at Karumba in Queensland state’s Gulf of Carpentaria in Australia were suspended yesterday after a faulty pipeline caused about 300 metric tons of zinc slurry to be discharged in the area. MMG has almost 70,000 tons of zinc concentrate stored at Karumba and ships about 500,000 tons of the material from the port a year, Cox said. Zinc metal is used to galvanize steel. “Until the pipeline fault is repaired and the pipeline is fully functioning with no threat of the same issue reoccurring, the pipeline won’t be operating,” Cox said. “Realistically when the pipeline is fixed, the clean up could continue.” MMG may announce by tomorrow how long the mine will remain shut, Cox said, declining to comment on the possibility of the company declaring force majeure. Force majeure is a legal clause that allows a company to miss deliveries because of circumstances beyond its control. “We’ve deployed a full team out to the area today to commence a full investigation into the fault, the required repairs and how long it will take to clean up the spill,” Cox said. “Our first priority is to make sure we clean up the spill sufficiently and fix the fault so it doesn’t happen again.” MMG also owns the Rosebery zinc and lead and Avebury nickel mines, both in Tasmania state, and the Golden Grove mine in Western Australia. To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Scott in Perth at Jscott14@bloomberg.net; Last Updated: October 6, 2009 02:16 EDT