After 4 years of consultations and deliberations, the Nunavut Influence Evaluate Board (NIRB) rejected the miner’s request to greater than double output to 12 million tonnes a 12 months, to finally attain 30 million tonnes yearly.
Mary River, thought of one of many world’s richest iron deposits, opened in 2015 and ships about six million tonnes of ore a 12 months.
“We’re disillusioned by the Minister’s choice,” Baffinland CEO Brian Penney stated in Thursday’s information launch. “Our Part 2 proposal was based mostly on on years of in-depth examine and detailed scientific evaluation, we executed a brand new Inuit Certainty Settlement with the QIA, and we have now had in depth consultations with, and made extra commitments to stakeholders put up launch of the NIRB advice in Might.”
“The Minister’s choice has instant and vital implications for the present MAry River operations and our workforce of two,500 individuals,” Penney stated. “We stay up for instantly assembly with the QIA and the Minister to debate a sensible path ahead.”
If the growth is authorised, Baffinland would ship about 12 million tonnes of the 30 million tonnes through the North Railway to Milne Port. It additionally plans to construct a second railway to Steensby Port, from which it intends to ship a further 18 million tonnes of ore a 12 months.
Present transport volumes have already had a “devastating” impression on the world’s narwhal inhabitants, Inuit hunters have stated.
Final 12 months, a gaggle of hunters from Arctic Bay and Pond Inlet blocked entry to the mine in protest of the corporate’s ice breaking practices as a consequence of their unfavorable impacts on narwhals.
