PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Mining companies Oz Minerals and BHP Billiton have resumed operations at their mines in South Australia, after electricity was restored earlier this week.
Oz Minerals’ flagship Prominent Hill copper/gold mine has resumed full production, the company reported on Thursday.
The miner previously warned that it will likely miss its gold production target for the year, owing to the suspension of operations, but that its copper production was within guidance.
BHP Billiton said that it was working to ramp up operations at Olympic Dam mine. While some work continued in the underground operations during the power outage, the miner said the focus was on safely transitioning surface operations from a period of care and maintenance back into full production.
BHP is expected to release the production impacts of the power outage in its September quarterly report, but it has been speculated that the miner lost an average of 567 t of copper production, at a cost of A$2.7-million a day, during the power outage, based on the 2015 output of 203 000 t and current metals prices.
South Australia’s power grid suffered a blackout a fortnight ago, following a fierce state-wide storm, which knocked down power lines. The outage has attracted severe criticism from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who has accused some state governments of putting too much emphasis on generating electricity from wind and solar farms. South Australia uses wind farms and rooftop solar panels for 40% of its power, more than any part of the country.