 Peru cracks down on illegal gold miners in Amazon Puerto Maldonado, Peru (AFP) Feb 20, 2011 - Peruvian security forces launched a massive operation this weekend to destroy illegal gold mining equipment that is damaging fragile Amazonian habitats. Nearly 1,000 military troops and police officers, assisted by helicopters and motor boats, took part in the first day of the operation that began on Saturday and is due to last a month. They seized 13 river dredgers pumping silt up from the riverbed and sunk, burnt or otherwise destroyed seven, the defense ministry said Sunday. "These are no small cottage industries," Defense Minister Jaime Thorne said, pointing to destroyed Chinese-made dredgers that cost about $250,000 each. The operation aims to track down and destroy some 300 large pieces of mining equipment, including 200 dredgers, along 300 kilometers (190 miles) of the Inambari River in the southeastern Puerto Maldonado region. Illegal mining accounts for nearly a quarter of gold production in Peru, the world's fifth-largest producer of the yellow metal. Peru's environment ministry has warned that illegal gold mining could spark an ecological disaster in the Amazon due to deforestation, the carving up of the riverbed and mercury contamination. "We cannot afford to let rivers get destroyed, with fish subjected to three times the amount of mercury tolerated internationally," Environment Minister Antonio Brack said. There is local opposition but no clashes were reported on the first day of the massive military operation. |
BHP posted a 72 percent surge in half-year profit to $10.52 billion last week as demand mounted for raw materials in Asia and supply shortages hit major commodities such as iron ore and coal.
Kloppers said it would be up to two years before extra iron ore came onto the market and prices for the steelmaking commodity looked "very, very good over, say, the next three, six and nine months".
The mining chief played down concerns about the Chinese economy overheating and said he believed Beijing had the situation under control.
"On China, a lot of people are talking to me about inflation, overcorrection and so on, but I don't think we've got the situation that we had in the '90s where the Chinese government let inflation run away completely and then had to pour a lot of water on the economy," Kloppers told ABC TV.
"We simply have a managed slowdown here, so I think that Australia's going to be in a very good position going forward."
BHP's largest customer, China accounted for 25 percent of the mining giant's total revenues in the year to June 2010, with sales worth $13.2 billion.
WikiLeaks cables published by Fairfax newspapers this week claimed Kloppers had offered to "trade confidences" with US officials for information about "Chinese intentions", complaining of "abundant" spying by the Asian giant.
Kloppers also told US consul-general Michael Thurston he had "taken steps to derail" Chinalco's ultimately failed $19.5 billion offer for Rio Tinto, Fairfax said the cables revealed.
In his first remarks on the WikiLeaks material, Kloppers said on Sunday he did not remember offering anything to Thurston and had no secrets "that I know of".
"I more likely asked whether there was any knowledge about what was going on in the commercial space," Kloppers said of the June 2009 meeting.
"You must understand that this was during the time that we were trying to reform the iron ore marketing system and we were a little bit skittish about what was going on."
On Chinalco, Kloppers said BHP's objection to the deal was well documented and denied that his opinion had been the deciding factor.
"No, absolutely not. I mean, we're one opinion-maker in a very large pool," he said.
Earlier WikiLeaks cables released to Fairfax in December suggested that BHP had strongly lobbied Canberra on the deal, buying time for commodities prices to recover to the extent that Rio no longer needed China's help.
Kloppers defended BHP's track record on acquisitions following the failure of its $39 billion bid for Canada's Potash Corp last November and collapse of a lucrative iron ore tie-up with Rio the previous month.
"The criterion is: do you create value, not do you complete something," he said, adding that mergers and acquisitions were still part of BHP's strategy, especially in the emerging oil and gas industry.
"Obviously the oil and gas market is a very large one where there may be opportunities going forward," he said.
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