28 Oct, 2021
JOGMEC eyes Queensland as next cobalt source through copper waste extraction
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| Copper Resources Australia's Rocklands copper mine, Queensland, which is the subject of a collaborative study to extract cobalt from copper waste to help meet Japan's electric vehicle demand. |
Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. sees Queensland as a potential new source of cobalt extracted from copper waste, which could help bridge Australia's production gap behind the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The corporation, or JOGMEC; the University of Queensland; and the state government will examine whether critical mineral and battery ingredient cobalt can be retrieved economically from old copper mine tailings from the Rocklands project, under a three-way agreement announced Oct. 26.
Private group Copper Resources Australia Pty Ltd. was appointed as Rockford's operator in December 2020 after the previous owner, Chinese-backed group CuDeco Ltd., was liquidated after the mine, marred by major defects, was mothballed in July 2019.
Samples will be studied at the University of Queensland's Sustainable Minerals Institute and at JOGMEC's laboratories in Japan.
It is the first joint venture between the Queensland government and JOGMEC since they resigned a memorandum of understanding in 2019 to encourage Japanese companies to invest in the state's natural resources sector.
The research is due to be completed in 2024, at which point the cobalt market is expected to be in deficit, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis.
Growing interest
In Australia, where there is a great deal of primary ore to still be recovered, the necessity to consider mine waste as a potential resource has not been so urgent, according to Anita Parbhakar-Fox from the Sustainable Minerals Institute.
"However, with the Australian government seeking to grow its critical metal sector and also starting to address national issues around mine closure, and grow the circular economy, this area of research has grown in Australia, with our teams having worked in this space actively for the past seven years," she said in an interview.
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| Dr. Anita Parbhakar-Fox from the University of Queensland's Sustainable Minerals Institute studies waste rock from the Rocklands copper mine in Queensland, Australia. Source: University of Queensland |
While Australia has the world's second-largest cobalt reserves after the DRC, Australia's production is "not high," JOGMEC said in an Oct. 25 statement; and while copper ores mined Down Under may be accompanied by cobalt, they are not recovered and are currently left in the waste stone.
Australia's 2020 cobalt production was 5,700 tonnes with 1.4 million tonnes of reserves, behind the DRC's 95,000 tonnes and 3.5 Mt of reserves, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Global production last year was 140,000 tonnes.
If the research is successful, Queensland will "not only become a new source of cobalt, but the results will be applied in other countries and regions," JOGMEC said while stating its own intentions to diversify its own cobalt supply sourcing.
Estimating waste reserves is no small task due to the many thousands of mine sites registered across Australia, Parbhakar-Fox said.
She cited a recent estimation by Gavin Mudd from RMIT University in Melbourne that there is about 998 million tonnes of waste rock and 640 Mt of tailings produced from copper mining in Queensland alone.
While yet to estimate cobalt recoveries from such volumes of copper waste, Parbhakar-Fox said it would "certainly" be in the millions of tonnes, thus helping Australia become a more substantial producer of cobalt.
The university's research to date has evaluated mine waste at 16 sites across the state as part of a Queensland government-funded program, with significant cobalt endowment in the state's northwest that appears to be particularly geologically linked to iron-oxide copper gold and sediment-hosted copper deposits, she said.
"There is every possibility for economic rehabilitation of these sites, with opportunities too for additional recovery of other metals that co-locate with cobalt such as nickel, which is also in great demand," Parbhakar-Fox said.
While such research represents economic potential, Australia's relatively low production to date can be attributed to the difficulty for cobalt-focused projects in Australia to gain traction with banks.
Prices fluctuating from US$25,000/t to US$95,000/t over the past five years and high capex in Australia makes it tough to get loans from banks, according to gold explorer Great Southern Mining Ltd. CEO Sean Gregory, who led Barra Resources Ltd. in progressing its Western Australian Mt Thirsty project through a pre-feasibility study.
Banks can struggle to "take a long-term view on the cobalt price," given it is mostly produced as a byproduct of copper or nickel, he said.
The London Metal Exchange cobalt cash price was $56,243/t on Oct. 27.