As the dust settles on Vale's Brumadinho dam collapse, the company has had time to lay out its predictions for the nextfew years. Despite its inability to reopen the Brucutu mine, and an ongoing safety issue at Gongo Soco—where thenorthern slope of the mine pit appears to be slowly, gradually collapsing—the miner predicts that it will resume productionat full capacity, across all of its Brazilian sites, within two to three years. This may be optimistic, however, as Vale'sexpectations of an early Brucutu restart continue to be foiled by Brazilian courts. Around 30Mtpa of capacity, scatteredthroughout smaller operations, may come back online first—particularly if the company can get permission to use dryprocessing and storage methods, which avoid many of the challenges and dangers of wet storage. This is, however, thesecond major safety incident the company has suffered in recent memory—with Gongo Soco looking unstable, it couldsee a third—and the company may face limited operations for years to come.
展开▼
