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By Samantha James THE Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) has welcomed Foreign Affairs minister Julie Bishop’s announcement that she will sign a cooperation agreement to supply uranium to Ukraine for use in power generation at the fourth global Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC. In a statement Ms Bishop said the contract with the Ukraine would “complement similar agreements Australia has with countries including Canada, China, France, India, Japan, Republic of Korea, Russia, the UK and the US” and assist in maintaining strong international cooperation on nuclear security. MCA executive director of uranium Daniel Zavattiero said in a statement that the agreement would offer Ukraine additional diversity of uranium supply, and Australia access to an important and growing market. “This...

By Reuben Adams THE arrival of three seafloor production tools (SPTs) at Duqm Port in Oman for extensive wet testing represents a major milestone for Nautilus Minerals’ Solwara 1 project. The SPTs will cut and extract high grade copper and gold from the seafloor at the Solwara 1 project site in the Bismarck Sea off the coast of Papua New Guinea, with production to start in the first quarter of 2018. The SPTs were designed and assembled in Newcastle upon Tyne by UK company Soil Machine Dynamics, which was awarded the contract for the world-first deep sea mining vehicles in 2007. The SPTs and associated equipment weigh more than 1000t. The wet testing would examine control systems operations and feedback;...

By Samantha James WA junior Perseus Mining has announced an all-scrip bid worth $85 million to take over London-listed Amara Mining, aiming to pool the companies’ respective West African gold assets. Perseus and Amara agreed to a recommended scheme of arrangement in late February which would see Amara shareholders own 35.1 per cent of the merged company – a mid-tier gold producer worth about US$242.3 million. The merger would combine Perseus’ producing Edikan gold mine in Ghana (90 per cent ownership) and Sissingue development project in Cote d’Ivoire (86 per cent) with Amara’s Yaoure gold project in Cote d’Ivoire (90 per cent) and Baumahun project (100 per cent) in Sierra Leone. An optimised pre-feasibility study at Amara’s flagship 7.3 million ounce Yaoure...

By Samantha James BHP Billiton has been forced to cut dividends by more than half and rearrange executive ranks after its underlying profits slumped to their lowest in decades in the second half of 2015. The company reported a net loss of US$5.7 billion and its underlying profit slumped to  US$412 million for the reporting period ending December 2015 – well below market expectations of US$720 million profit. It also slashed its dividend to US$0.16 under a new policy that would pay out 50 per cent of underlying attributable profits each half. At this time last year the company’s dividend was US$0.62; it is the first time BHP has cut its dividend since 1988 and the lowest payout it has...

By Samantha James RESEARCHERS in the UK have discovered a new way to find large copper deposits by identifying chemical markers in porphyry rock. A study co-authored by University of Exeter geologist Dr Ben Williamson detailed a new chemical exploration tool that could be used to find porphyry-type copper deposits. These low quality but high quantity deposits are the most common copper deposits in the world, delivering about three quarters of global copper. Dr Williamson said the new technique would be the least expensive method of retesting core samples for copper and reassessing explored land. “We've compared the composition of that mineral between magmatic rocks that do form these deposits and those that don't, and we've found there's a chemical...