Rio Tinto wins State environmental approval for West Angelas
New iron ore pits at West Angelas will allow the mining giant to keep pumping out its most lucrative commodity from the site north-west of Newman for another 25 years, an application with the Environmental Protection Authority shows.
EPA chair Darren Walsh said the agency had attached conditions to the approval designed to protect the adjacent Karijini National Park. Rio has already reduced how much land it planned to clear by about 25 per cent.
Mr Walsh also said the revised development application — which was originally approved six years ago — also included exclusion zones to avoid impacts to culturally significant areas and ghost bat roosts.
Rio owns 53 per cent of West Angelas as part of a joint venture, with Mitsui Iron Ore holddng 33 per cent and NipponSteel Corporation 14 per cent. Timing for mining to start is subject to environmental approvals, Rio has said previously.
An expansion of West Angelas was green-lit by the EPA in 2019, but plans were taken back to the drawing board following the Juukan Gorge disaster in 2020.
Rio will need State Federal approval to begin mining West Angelas.
Rio is yet to make a call on an updated cost or expected tonnages from the project once up and running in the next five years, but in 2019 estimated it to be worth about $US579 million. The operation delivered 29.5 million tonnes in 2024.
Rio last month opened the $3b Western Range mine and expected it to turn out up to 25mt a year, helping the Anglo-Australian company maintain its yearly production of iron ore above 300MT.
The West Angelas workforce was believed to have been hit hardest by a recent jobs cull of about 90 people across three of Rio's Pilbara mines.
At the miner's annual general meeting last month, chairman Dominic Barton
flagged a $20b spend
on new mines, plant and equipment in the Pilbara over the next three years.
Rio and other iron ore producers in the region are mining ageing deposits that are turning out lower grade iron ore.
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