These 2 loads came through the port of Georgetown by ship and left by truck through the middle of town today. They are bound for the Haile Gold Mine in Kershaw SC. http://hailegoldmine.com/ I think this is a SAG mill, or possibly a ball mill. Here is info about the mine equipment on the way, off the website of the mine's parent Co. http://www.romarco.com/Newsroom/News-Releases/News-Releases-Details/2012/Romarco-provides-general-update1132209/default.aspx Equipment The Company anticipates its Ball and SAG mills will arrive on site early in 2013. Currently, these mills are in route from India and Germany respectively and are scheduled to arrive during December 2012 at the ports of Wilmington, NC and Charleston, SC, respectively. In early November, the Hitachi shovel arrived from Japan. The local dealer, Flint Equipment Company ("Flint") is storing the shovel in Savannah, GA. In the current agreement with Flint, the Company will take delivery of the shovel not later than February 2013 and the final payment will be approximately $2 million. As previously announced, the Catepillar mobile mine fleet is currently being held in South Carolina by the local dealer, Blanchard Machinery Company ("BMC"). In the current agreement with BMC, the Company will take delivery of this equipment upon the final payment of approximately $28 million on or before September 30, 2013. Here are a few pics, hopefully I will post a few more in a day or two.
Great catch Mitch. I did some poking around, and the found the rest of the equipment fleet. It will vary a bit as the operations ramp up, but ultimately, here is what they will run for a mining fleet. 1 EX1900-6 hydraulic shovel 3 992K loaders 24 777F haul trucks 5 Sandvik D25KS drills 1 Sandvik DC560 drill 3 D9T dozers 1 D10T dozer 2 14M graders 1 834H wheel dozer 2 773F water trucks 2 773F haul trucks 1 988H loader 1 336DL excavator 1 Bomag BW-213DH-40 compactor So, all in all, not a bad fleet.
mitch504 - I find the statement "the Caterpillar mobile mine fleet is currently being held in South Carolina by the local dealer", a little strange. This statement indicates that the fleet has already been manufactured, and is being held in storage. Why would a company order all the mining plant around 9 or 12 mths ahead of schedule, and instruct a dealer to store it? I've never heard of a deal like this before, and it doesn't seem like a sensible idea to me. I know there are sizeable delays in acquiring mining fleet (my nephew told me new D9's and D10's have a 12 mths wait list - and he's only just taken delivery of a new D10 that he ordered in January 2012) - but arranging to have a fleet ready 9 or 12 mths ahead of when it is going to be required doesn't make sense to me. There will be huge financing costs involved, as well as storage costs - and equipment that has been lying idle for 12 mths will start to have problems caused by inactivity. The deal doesn't add up to me. Are there some other factors involved that would make sense of the deal?
Oz, the delays in the startup are due to the government launching environmental assessments late in the game, which it had not forseen as necessary while the schedule planning was underway. The Army Corps of Engineers decided after the schedule had been set, and equipment had been ordered, that an environmental impact statement was warranted. Said study is responsible for pushing back the whole project for at least another 12 months, most likely more. So that would explain the whole delay issue.
Just a little update from the Florence SC Morning News: http://www.scnow.com/news/local/article_c99faaea-5b94-11e2-9647-001a4bcf6878.html DONNA TRACY, Morning News LAKE CITY, S.C. – "Two large drum-shaped structures have sat on the Highway 52 median just outside Lake City since Wednesday evening after failure to coordinate with utility companies left the transportation company stuck for clearance through Florence County. The structures, a sag mill and ball mill used for grinding rock and dirt into smaller particles, are on a 142.5-mile road trip that takes them from the Port of Georgetown, through Lake City, Florence and Hartsville on their to the Haile Gold Mines in Kershaw County. Slated to take about six days, the journey has been delayed in Lake City while engineers with Progress Energy, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, evaluate the travel plans and coordinate the safest and most efficient progress. Ryan Mosier, a company spokesperson for Duke Energy, said it will be "a number of days" before the mills can proceed on their journey. "We want to make sure we get it safe and get it right," said Mosier. "We're working with the company that has the transport and hopefully (by Friday) we will have a solution, but it is going to take a number of days." The delay is because of the overall size of the mills. The larger mill measures 195 foot long by 22 foot high and 24 foot wide; the smaller measures 140 feet by 19x18. According to Larry Biegert, project manager with Turner Transfer Moving Engineers, the hiccup in travel plans was due to their failure to coordinate with power official who need to raise or temporarily relocate power lines safely at some points along the route. Some power lines have had to be disconnected and reconnected to allow the oversized loads to pass on its journey thus far. According to Adrel Langley, manager of community relations with Santee Electric Cooperative, this has caused some minimal, temporary and highly localized outages for a few customers for a few minutes as the mills passed. Engineers with Duke Energy should complete plans for the safe passage of the mills journey through Florence sometime Friday." For those of you who don't know, Santee Electric Cooperative is a little local utility that covers all of 2 counties and parts of 2 more, and Progress Energy and Duke Power are two arms of the largest utility in the U.S. Santee Electric with their 132 employees had no problem taking this thing 55 miles through several towns and cities, and Progress Energy (11,000 employees) and Duke Energy (29,500 employees) had to stop and have their engineers reconsider their prior approval.
Those poor buggers aren't having much luck, are they?
The type and size of equipment indicate to me that this will be a cyanide leaching operation which would certainly require all the greenies and government job justifiers to come out of the wood work claiming their little piece of authority. I didn't see anything in the links that describe what the company's process will be. Given what has happened in the past out here in the west I'm surprised that the Corp didn't require the EIS before any mine planning was ever done.
John - You're partly correct. However, Romarco's Haile Gold Mine operations is not a cyanide "leaching" operation, per se. When cyanide leaching is carried out, ore or tailings is stockpiled in PVC plastic-sheet lined vats - or just simple rectangular heaps - and the cyanide solution is then percolated through the vat or heap. This process is prone to cyanide solution escaping from the vat or heap leach pad when a severe rainfall event occurs, or a failure of a containment wall or bund occurs. Romarcos Haile Gold Mine utilises the common and widespread gold recovery technique of coarse grinding followed by fine grinding in slurries, followed by the addition of cyanide solution to the finely-ground ore slurry to recover the gold. Lime is added to the slurry to keep the pH near neutral, to prevent the cyanide reacting with undesirable metals in the slurry, rather than the gold. The slurry is agitated with oxygen as well to assist gold recovery rates. The extremely fine gold particles are bonded to the sodium cyanide chemically, and the gold is recovered by pumping the gold-cyanide solution through tanks containing activated carbon. The cyanide solution utilised in gold recovery is quite low, and despite cyanide being a deadly poison, the concentrations used in mining are not excessively dangerous, although care must be taken, precisely as with all dangerous chemicals. Sodium or Potassium cyanide, the commonly-used compounds utilised in gold extraction, are basically quite unstable compounds, and break down rapidly in solution, and upon exposure to UV light (strong sunlight). However, cyanide transportation spills - cyanide solution spills from the mining circuit, or from tailings dams - and residual cyanide solutions left after treatment is finished are all inherent problems with the use of cyanide in mining. The problem is exacerbated when wetlands and creeks are in the area to be mined, and the area is a populated region, as in the case of the Haile Gold Mine. The Romarco company appears to have addressed all the potential problems with regards to cyanide problems and wetlands disturbance - but a mining operation in a sensitive area such as this, requires continuous monitoring to ensure all correct and safe procedures are being adhered to, and all steps have been taken to negate any foreseeable adverse condition, such as a severe rainfall event. The final factor in mining safety is the potential "acid sulphate" problem. This is a problem that arises when deep rocks containing high levels of sulphate compounds are brought to the surface and exposed to the air. The sulphate compounds released can form acid sulphates when they react chemically with air, water, and other mineral compounds. This "acid mine drainage" poses a very real potential problem if not carefully managed. In Australia, waste rock and tailings containing acid sulphates is covered with deep topsoil which was stripped from the mine site initially. This topsoil is then revegetated to produce an environment similar to the original. The Romarco companys websites address the mining process safety concerns in the "FAQ" area of the website. The company is going to treat residual cyanide solution with potassium permanganate or hydrogen peroxide, to convert the potassium or sodium cyanide into the more stable and less harmful cyanate compounds, via oxidation. This is a process that is rarely done, and which adds additional costs to the overall extraction cost. There are dangers in any human operation where earth is disturbed, chemicals are used, and transportation takes place. All these dangers can be managed so that danger to human life is completely minimised. The damage commences when procedures are ignored, carelessness in operation becomes common, and safety in operation takes a back seat to profits. That's why we need "greenies", they're human canaries in cages, and their chirping needs to be examined as to whether it is purely alarmist, or has a good basis in reason. Haile Gold Mine FAQ's - http://www.hailegoldmineeis.com/faq.php Gold recovery processes - http://www.eng.nus.edu.sg/m3tc/M3TC_Technical_Reports/Gold Extraction and Recovery Processes.pdf "Green" article on the dangers inherent with cyanide use in mining - http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/MetalsMining/GoldCyanidation.html