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Understanding the Costs of Closure through Integrated Mine Closure Planning

This workshop is an associated event of Mine Closure 2022 and will run a day after the conference.

It will provide an overview of the fundamentals of integrated mine closure planning and closure cost estimation in line with recent international best practice guidance.  

The workshop will cover the following: 

What went wrong? An overview of mine closure history 

  • History of mine closure, changing legislation, financial assurance 
  • The incentive to develop a realistic closure cost estimate 
  • What was previously missing, what was insufficient, and lessons learned

What is integrated mine closure planning? 

  • Current good international industry practice 
  • Current financial assurance and cost estimation guidance  
  • Current regulatory legislation movements in Australia towards more developed planning and cost estimation at approval levels 
  • Case study example: integrating closure planned landform designs into scoping and Pre-feasibility Study (PFS) mine designs – impacts on the overall economics of a project 

Closure cost estimation – types and tools 

Closure cost estimates and mine closure planning – what do we need to know? 

  • Integration of mine design, landform design, and geochemistry considerations in closure planning 

The importance of spatial data  

Standardised Rehabilitation Cost Estimator (SRCE) – an integrated mine closure costing tool (practical session)

Challenges and opportunities – closure is forever 

Q&A session

Course Requirements:

All users will be required to bring their own laptop with Excel 2010 or later.

The course will be interactive and will include SCRE modelling exercises as well as presentation materials. (Presentation materials and modelling exercises will be provided to attendees on a USB drive at the beginning of the workshop).

The importance of integrated and proactive mine closure planning that starts in the design phase and continues throughout the mine life, is widely accepted in international literature. Industry-led guidance released by the ICMM in 2019 strongly advocates that mine closure is integrated proactively with all parts of the business, from groundwork and mining activities to short-, medium- and long-term business plans and financial models.

Inadequate mine closure planning and closure designs could be irreversible or costly to rectify. Early and ongoing mine closure planning along with regular updates to closure cost estimations allow the environmental, social, legal and financial liabilities of planned and unplanned mine closure to be better understood and managed over the mine life. This has the potential to reduce the cost of mine closure and improve environmental and social outcomes. 

Globally, we are seeing a movement within regulatory frameworks towards formalising the development of mine closure plans and closure cost estimates at initial mining lease application phases (an example of which is the Queensland regulations which require a Progressive Rehabilitation and Closure Plan (PRCP) inclusive of rehabilitation milestones at the application phase of a project) and a push to integrate site-specific costs for closure into the overall economics of a mining project, without artificially scheduling all works so far into the future the net present value NVP value reduces their impact on the project’s viability.  

This workshop will provide participants with an overview of current international guidance for mine closure planning and best-practice closure cost estimation. The workshop will include real-world anecdotes and hands-on practice in closure cost estimation and an options analysis to provide attendees with an appreciation of the different types of closure cost estimation, available tools, and the implications of mine design with a focus on closure at the early stages of mine planning, and the overall challenges of accounting for mine closure liabilities.   

The workshop will be held as a traditional physical event in Brisbane, Queensland, COVID-19 permitting, as well as online, facilitating participation from anywhere in the world.

Register for this event when registering for the conference here.

If you have already registered for the conference and wish to add this workshop to your registration, click here.

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Presenters