BHP Group says its Samarco Mineração joint venture in Brazil will restart operations more than five years after a dam at its iron ore mine collapsed, destroying two towns and killing 19 people in Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. The mine is jointly owned with Brazil’s Vale.
Last Thursday, BHP said Samarco had met the requirements to restart operations at its Germano complex in Minas Gerais and its Ubu complex in Espírito Santo and had commenced iron ore pellet production. Independent tests had been carried out on Samarco’s preparations for a safe restart of operations. It expected initially to produce approximately eight million tonnes of iron ore pellets a year.
Following the November 2015 disaster, BHP has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in financial support, including funds to the Renova Foundation to undertake remediation and compensation programs identified under the March 2016 agreement between Samarco, Vale, BHP Brasil and the Brazilian authorities. By last month, it said Renova had spent about $2.1 billion on its remediation and compensation programmes, with about $620 million paid in indemnities and emergency financial aid to approximately 325,000 people.
The extensive work undertaken by the Renova Foundation (Renova) to remediate and compensate for the damages of the failure of the Fundão dam in 2015 continues, and BHP Billiton Brasil Ltda. continues to support Renova in its work,” the company said.
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