Mining giant gains permit

BY NAOMI ARNOLD

An Australian mining giant with its eye on a wide area of land bordering national parks near Nelson is expecting to find mineral wealth in the region.

This month, Crown Minerals granted FMG Pacific a two-year prospecting permit to search for bulk commodities in an area covering 3568 square kilometres within Tasman Bay. Incorporated last year, FMG Pacific is a subsidiary of Western Australian iron-ore miner Fortescue, which is the third-biggest iron ore miner in the world.

Although it mainly operates mines in the Pilbara in Western Australia, Fortescue spokesman Cameron Morse said it was only in the "very early stages" in New Zealand.

He said Fortescue had "a strong track record of getting in, doing things on a large scale and doing them properly".

The permit area is mostly on private land, but contains areas of conservation land managed by the Department of Conservation.

It borders Kahurangi National Park, extends south to the Nelson Lakes region and includes the Mokihinui catchment on the West Coast.

Mr Morse said although the prospecting permit did not mean it would start full-blown mining, it was "confident" that minerals would be found.

He said it would be searching for "any minerals that add value" to the Nelson-Tasman economy and to Fortescue.

The terms of the prospecting permit allowed it to search for iron ore, coal, lead, zinc, magnesium and about 20 other minerals.

"At the moment, we're just conducting and interpreting preliminary geological surveys to determine what our future prospecting programme will be," he said.

The company will gather geological data before conducting land and air surveys of the region.

He said it was premature to start talking about jobs, but was a significant employer in Australia and "a significant contributor to the state's economy through royalties".

A Ministry of Economic Development Crown Minerals spokesperson said a prospecting permit found out only if the land was "worthwhile". She said the next step was an application for exploration, and then an application for mining, all of which could take years of consent and research.

New Zealand Minerals Industry Association chief executive Doug Gordon said only about one in 1000 prospecting permits ever ended up as a mine.

The permit is the latest of 14 granted to the company around New Zealand since April, including a permit to explore for coal in Flat Creek, south of Nelson, and other coal and mineral prospecting and exploration permits on the West Coast, Northland and offshore of Taranaki, where it has come under fire from local group Kiwis Against Seabed Mining.

In its quarterly report released on Monday, Fortescue announced a 20 per cent increase in iron-ore shipments since the previous quarter, and Mr Morse said the expansion of its Christmas Creek mine would increase total output to 55 million metric tonnes a year.

Forest and Bird advocacy manager Kevin Hackwell said FMG Pacific was a "big company into digging huge holes in the ground".

"All the things they're looking for are the sorts of minerals where their experience is open cast," he said. "All the good [iron-ore mines] went a long time ago and these days the economics of iron ore mining usually means massive, open-cast holes."

Mr Morse said the company was experienced at managing environmental issues as it mined close to the Fortescue Marshes in Western Australia, an important habitat for birds.

It was also "reasonably close" to the Karijini National Park, and had an environmental team that monitored problems associated with mining such as dust pollution, rock waste and acidic runoff.

New Zealand's mineral deposits have come under the spotlight lately as the Minister for Energy and Resources, Gerry Brownlee, announced a "stocktake" review of minerals on Crown conservation land. The report is due at the end of the month.

- © Fairfax NZ News