Inspired by a visit I made on Monday at Rio Tinto Mines, Huelva, a town just 60km from the house of my parents, I share a selection of images from Google Maps. I was watching them all separately, but I thought it would be a good idea to put them all on the same page as a personal note (and which I explained to my father during my first weeks in my new job I have spent much much time looking at maps .)
The mine on the banks of the Rio Tinto in 1873 began the adventure of the company I work for. At the beginning of last century was the largest copper producer in the world. Then begin to decline until 1954 English hands again. Rio Tinto Group has now nothing to do with Spain or Huelva.
View larger map
The Bingham Canyon mine near Salt Lake City began to produce copper at a commercial scale in 1906. Is the open pit the world's deepest. Since 1989 he has been one of the jewels in the crown of Rio Tinto.
View larger map
Something newest Chuquicamata mine in Chile. Today is part of Codelco, the Chilean state-owned company formed after the nationalization of Allende. One of the advantages of being a state enterprise is is open to the public and in 2007 I visited with my family and my in-laws.
View larger map
only recently surpassed Minera Escondida 'Chuqui' as the largest copper mine in the world. The history of La Escondida, goes back to 1988, and although the opera BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto owns 30%.
View larger map
Continuing the theme of the Chilean desert, I put the map of María Elena Vergara Office where he spent most of his childhood my father. These were some of many nitrate mines in Chile in the nineteenth century, when this industry was more important for the country than copper. Today I think they are the only ones that are producing commercial-scale nitrate in Chile and belong to SQM, better known as Soquimich (from mining chemical socidedad chile). I feel a special interest in Chilean nitrate as fertilizer was actually the product that sparked my interest in the world of commodities back in 2005.
View larger map
SQM is also the Chilean Society of lithium, the largest producer of lithium in the world in a rather remote south of the Salar de Atacama. On our trip in 2007 took a detour to reach San Pedro de Atacama and we passed here too.
View larger map
More (much more) important to Rio Tinto that copper today is iron (iron ore). The three largest mining companies in the world are by far behind BHP Billiton, Vale (formerly Companhia Vale do Rio Doce) and Rio Tinto. Their common denominator is the iron ore that BHP and Rio produce in Australia and Vale produced in Brazil. Nearly 180 million tons are exported from Port Hedland, northwestern Australia.
View larger map
also important that the copper recent corporate history of Rio Tinto has been aluminum. In 2007, at the height of the credit bubble, Rio bought Alcan for U.S. $ 40,000 million, borrowing up to their eyeballs. Today we went out of debt and are the largest producers of aluminum in the world. But the value of the acquisition of Alcan is yet to be demonstrated. Something that would help the Chinese would rather commit to put a price on carbon dioxide, which would lead to Alcan plants in Canada, like the one below, which rely exclusively on hydroelectric power. Do we help the Chinese?
View larger map
Rio
My job is to be energy economist. In energy, oil is king, even though Rio Tinto has no assets related to raw material. The image below is Sullom Voe, the loading point of the Brent crude was priced served as a reference to the world nearly thirty years.
View larger map
The other benchmark for oil prices is Cushing, Oklahoma. The WTI crude delivered here is the physical basis of the futures market more liquid commodities in the world.
View larger map
But the port from where exports more oil around the world is Ras Tanura, in Saudi Arabia.
View larger map
And just 100km south in Qatar have the largest export port in the world LNG. Already exporting 77 million tonnes a year.
View larger map
gas
And that increasingly competes with coal, which is what I mantiente busiest in Rio Tinto. The reference price of coal more important world has been the API2: a coal of 6,000 kcal per kg delivered in ARA (anywhere between Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp). The picture shows the port of Rotterdam, the world's largest until recently (now Singapore and Shanghai have more traffic). Approximately 30 million tons of coal each year come to Rotterdam, to be transferred to barges to transport them to various points along the river Rhine But what I say, more and more combined cycle plants and renewable energy in Europe and it takes less coal - in fact my brother is now working in one of the few green spaces that are in the Europoort mounting another combined cycle.
View larger map
The other coal reference price (API4) has historically been priced at Richard's Bay, South Africa. From this port are exported around 70 million tonnes per year. But in the last two years more and more coal has run out of here into the Indian Ocean, to the detriment of Europe.
View larger map
And it suddenly China started to import more and more coal, even though everyone thought they would remain self-sufficient in this raw material referred to (produce half of all coal produced in the world). And when China imports at the port of Newcastle in Australia is doing well. From here, there are 80 million tonnes a year, some of them from Rio Tinto. And Newcastle say they are the largest coal export port in the world ...
View larger map
... but the truth is that of Qinhuangdao, in north-east China, leaving 220 million tons of coal a year. Nearly three times more than from Newcastle. What happens is that just going in northern China to the south of the country, they do not count as exports.
View larger map
And to finish with coal, two press releases from Rio Tinto this week showing the shift of the industry in Europe and North America, with its mature markets and greater access to natural gas , Asia. In this press release Rio reported that gets rid of all of its assets in Cloud Peak (the third-largest U.S. coal and property three years ago in Rio at 100%). The mines are located in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.
View larger map
And this informed investors that has made a formal takeover offer of Riversdale, the owners of some of the largest untapped coal deposits in the world, in Tete province, Mozambique. A visit to Tete and Beira (the closest port in Mozambique) that organized when I worked in Malawi for a couple of years also played an important role in my decision to try to leave the public sector and work in a mining or agricultural trade. Despite this I have not taken any part in this decision because the only time I deal with non-thermal coal and steel, which is the main use will give the Riversdale coal.
View larger map
0 comments:
Post a Comment