Resource exports still booming skywards with the rest far far behind.
Resource industries have little political pull, put up with constant denigration by media, greenleft and sundry, while the rural sector floods our parliaments and often has their hands out for taxpayers money for this or that reason. Mines occupy a minute area of Australia compared to vast areas covered by agriculture and pastoral.
It will be interesting to see how the Green Leftards are going to pay for the toy windmills when the Elephant in the Room gets Covid19 & sneezes snot all over their precious iSpys.
[ if they can keep them charged that is]
Resources have remained competitive on the world arena because of large scale and automation. There is a mine in NSW that has operated with no one underground and operation from a central control room. BHP now have driverless trains of huge capacity. Value adding as producing alumina (instead of exporting bauxite) and then further adding to make aluminium used to be world class with cheap energy but is now frowned on by stupid politics and greedy unions. Industrial manufacturing is moving out to China.
The service industry will soon decline because of “woke” university courses which will be no use in home countries and higher standards elsewhere. Two of the Universities in Singapore are in the top 15 of the world in Technology leaving Australian universities far behind. Chinese Universities ar rapidly rising in quality and world standard.
With Albo proclaiming Labor’s “net zero emissions 2050” target, should labor manage to win government how long before this insanity kills all economic activity? No doubt it will be sold with the softener “don’t worry it’s only an aspirational target”, but with Australia’s left leaning media cheered on by the loony/left how long before it becomes law?
cementafriend
> “There is a mine in NSW that has operated with no one underground and operation from a central control room”
Where is that ? I’ve not heard of it and I’ve just finished a project where such an example would have been extremely useful.
Fascinating.
Ianl , the mine is North Parkes and there is a video here www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnf8-VHwNtM. I downloaded it for a talk I gave on automation. I recall reading some years ago there was a mine in Sweden that was also operated from the surface. I think there are longwall coal mines that can now be operated remotely. Maintenance still needs people but there are robots which can at least recover equipment. Back some 15 years ago I visited mines in Canada where cemented backfill was operated from the surface. Stopes were drill and blasted, ore with drawn by remotely operated LHD loaders, then filled with cemented waste paste of sufficient strength so a stope could be blasted next to it.
cementafriend
Thanks for the video.
The problem I was grappling with is the situation where a combination of seam gas, very high in-situ stress, fault and dyke splinters, proven likelihood of rock and coal bursts, depths > 700m – all of these combined generated conditions for which we have as yet no safe technology.
” I think there are longwall coal mines that can now be operated remotely”.
Only until geological conditions turn sour. I’ve seen one such mine in Colorado, where the face was automated. This worked, for a while, so well that complacency set in. The operation slowly moved upflank over an unrecognised large-amplitude fold that – surprise, surprise – was heavily thrust faulted near the crest. Made a real mess …
Ianl, Many years ago I went down the West Cliff mine where they drew off CSG with horizontal very long drill holes in front of workings. The CSG was used to generate electricity in modified 1MW diesel (cat) engines not only for the mine but also export. There was very strong floor heave so in cross drives between the working drives (conveyor, personnel and third maintenance drive there were large diameter big bag concrete pillars to hold up the roof and contain the floor heave. As well as I remember the long wall in retreat was 600m wide and some 3 km long.
I think since then technology has advanced and there improved geology plans, stronger longwall supports, better & stronger roadway supports and robots that can be deployed in dangerous areas. Money is always a problem for smaller operations but skilled geologists and engineers with a clean safety record and organised quick change over of longwalls can lead to good profits