Mount Keith Mine is an

open pit Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of minin ...

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

. It is operated by

BHP BHP Group Limited (formerly known as BHP Billiton) is an Australian multinational mining, metals, natural gas petroleum public company that is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was founded ...

. The site's closest landmark is the town of Wiluna, to the north.

Overview

The mine is located on the north end of the long Norseman- Wiluna

Greenstone belt Greenstone belts are zones of variably metamorphosed mafic to ultramafic volcanic sequences with associated sedimentary rocks that occur within Archaean and Proterozoic cratons between granite and gneiss bodies. The name comes from the green ...

, with nickel sulfide deposits of the dyke-like or sill deposit type. The important known nickel deposits are in the

ultramafic rock Ultramafic rocks (also referred to as ultrabasic rocks, although the terms are not wholly equivalent) are igneous and meta-igneous rocks with a very low silica content (less than 45%), generally >18% MgO, high FeO, low potassium, and are composed ...

s of the lower cycle, around 2700 Ma old. In 1971, the mine was thought to be able to provide 10% of the world's demand for nickel; in 1992 it was estimated as containing 270 million tons of

sulfide Sulfide (British English also sulphide) is an inorganic anion of sulfur with the chemical formula S2− or a compound containing one or more S2− ions. Solutions of sulfide salts are corrosive. ''Sulfide'' also refers to chemical compounds lar ...

ore, grading 0.6% nickel, enough for about twenty years. Previously owned by WMC Resources Limited, which commissioned the mine in 1995, it was acquired by BHP in June 2005. In 2009, BHP reduced the mine's activity, laying off 300 employees.

Production

Mount Keith is part of BHP's Nickel West operations, which includes, apart from Mount Keith, the Leinster Nickel Mine, the Kambalda Nickel Concentrator, the Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter and the Kwinana Nickel Refinery.Nickel West
BHP Billiton website, accessed: 11 December 2009 After crushing and processing the ore on site, nickel concentrate is transported by road from the mine to Leinster for drying and subsequent on-shipping. Production figures published by the company for the whole Nickel West Operations and not broken down to individual mines. In 2020–21, Nickel West produced 89,000 tonnes of nickel, an eleven percent increase of production in comparison to the previous year. The average sale price for the produced nickel was US$16,250 per tonne.

Notes

* Production figure is for the combined Nickel West Operations, which consists of the Mount Keith Mine, Leinster Mine and Cliffs Mine.

References

External links

MINEDEX website: Mt Keith / BHP Billiton
Database of the

Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety The Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety is a department of the Government of Western Australia. The department was formed on 1 July 2017, out of the former Department of Mines and Petroleum and Department of Commerce. A restr ...

{{BHP Nickel mines in Western Australia Surface mines in Australia Shire of Wiluna BHP 1995 establishments in Australia

Overview

Production

See also

Notes

References

External links