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May 2, 2009
BHP Billiton is going to press ahead with plans to turn its Olympic Dam mine in South Australia into the largest open cut mine on earth. Thus five stage expansion will help kick the SA's regional economy back into prosperity, even though the company is sticking to its plan to send uranium-infused copper concentrate to China for processing, if it moves ahead with the multi-billion-dollar expansion of the Olympic Dam copper, gold and uranium mine.
It's all a long way off though. Only the 400 page draft environmental impact statement has been released, and that says the project can go ahead on environmental grounds. That claims need to be assessed by the SA and Rudd Government's. An investment decision is sometime next year, whilst the project requires that BHP build a new desalinisation plant, a railway, additional port facilities, a gas-fired power station and remove the over-burden to convert the underground mine into an open pit.
It's spun as the gravy train for SA. But it is still Quarry Australia--just digging up rocks and shipping them overseas without any value adding. BHP will not go a step further and build a smelter that produces mineral in its almost-pure form, as it will sell its product as concentrate with the processing done offshore.
SA needs a rabbit pulled out of the hat because car manufacturing (GMH) is going into decline (two shifts have been reduced to one at the Elizabeth plant) and as bankruptcy hovers over General Motors in the US.
The other gravy train in SA is defence --building 12 new generation submarines--as part of the Defence White Paper's policy of defence self-reliance and increase in military hardware( frigates and destroyers). The White Paper makes clear that it is the ability to deter or defeat armed attack on Australia will continue to be the primary force structure determinant of the Australian Defence Force and that this means focusing predominantly on forces that can exert air superiority and sea control over our approaches.
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Henrik Gout at the Independent Weekly says that:
Hence the need for a desalinisation plant, which is to built at Port Bonython near Whyalla and not on the ocean. Grout adds:
The super-saline water the plant will release will enter The Gulf, which is shallow, low-flushing. It’s the breeding ground of the giant cuttlefish which is extremely sensitive to changes in salinity.