BHP CEO Andrew Mackenzie
Photo by: Bloomberg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Diversified major BHP has offered its assistance to its Brazilian joint venture (JV) partner Vale, after that company suffered a dam rupture at its Córrego do Feijão mine, in the city of Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brazil.
Reports on Thursday stated that Brazilian rescue teams have recovered the bodies of 99 people who were buried during the rupture last week, with more than 250 people still missing.
Brazilian police have arrested three of Vale’s employees and two contractors from German consultancy firm TUEV SUED, who carried out safety studies on the dam, which stated that the tailings dam was stable.
Vale has meanwhile revealed plans to decommission some tailing dams similar to the one that collapsed, at the cost of around $1.3-billion, curbing its production by some 40-million tonnes a year.
“BHP will help in any way we can. I believe we can and will make mining safe,” BHP CEO Andrew Mackenzie said in Perth on Thursday.
“Last week’s catastrophe shows we as an industry still have much to do. At BHP, we are committed to learn from what happened and to redouble our efforts to make sure events like last week’s cannot happen.”
BHP and Vale’s JV vehicle in Brazil, Samarco, in 2015 faced a similar disaster when a dam failure killed 19 people. The Samarco operation is yet to resume production, and the incident has left BHP and Vale billions out of pocket, with Samarco still facing a $41.5-billion civil claim.