Mining

Tommy Suharto, the eldest son of a former Indonesian President, was released from jail today having served only part of a very lenient jail term after being found guilty of organising the successful murder of a Supreme Court Judge.

The Suharto trial and early prison release casts some doubt over the integrity of the Indonesian justice system.

A reader of this blog, Richard Ness, is currently on trial in Indonesia for a crime that never happened.

I hope he gets a fair trial.

But it doesn’t bode well when an Indonesian newspaper publishes an article with the heading ‘Put Ness in Jail’ explaining that the Attorney General’s office is already convinced Ness is guilty and that the public prosecutors can expect promotions.

Blogger Declan Butler has followed and reported on the trial of Bulgarian aid workers in prison in Libya and how the local justice system has refused to accept evidence showing the foreigners to be innocent. In a recent blog post Butler suggests their best hope is for the international community to maintain an interest in the trial.

Richard’s son Eric has a blog dedicated to his father’s trial at www.richardness.org.

Louis Hissink is drilling at Thundelarra Exploration’s Lamboo project located about 40 KM WSW of Halls Creek in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. His focus is exploration for platinum and nickel.

Louis sent the following note:

“The wet season is on us and the usual climatic signs have appeared – with rain already falling in some of the more remote areas. Another two months of the ‘build-up’ and if Halls Creek gets a good solid drenching from a cyclonic depression over the wet season, then it might replenish the underground water acquifer we the town relies on for its water supply.

Seems the greenies and other do-gooders have put paid to any notion of building a small dam nearby for water catchment solutions. [Indeed, existing dams are being busted in parts of rural and regional Western Australia, click here for previous blog post on the issue.].

Oh there is a drought alright, but it’s in the state parliaments where a serious drought of commonsense is evident. I can’t write what the Western Australian Water Authority thinks of the Environment Protection Agency and its fellow travellers.

Lots of feral horses in the area, and dying from a lack of feed and water – sad to see, but that is reality up here.

Louis is the one on the right.

The drilling rig is a small Reverse Circulation (RC) machine which can bore holes to about 150 metres depth.

Principal drilling method uses a down-hole hammer that pulverises the rock into smaller bits, including dust, using high power air compressors. The sample from the hammer is pushed up the inside of the rod string (hence the term
reverse-circulation) through the inner pipes then via a sample hose into a sampling cyclone where equal volume samples (nominally 1 metre length times the hole area) are collected. These 1 metre samples are then split into 2 fractions,via a Jones splitter in which an aliquot of the 1 metre sample is collected for initial chemical analysis in a laboratory. The remainder of the sample is left in a green plastic mining bag next to the drilled hole for further work. Field assistants later take rock chip samples from each metre sample by seiving through a standard household kitchen sieve and stored in purpose built chip trays – durable plastic things with 20 small compartments.

These chips are studied by the geologist to record the rocks identified down the drilled hole and displayed as a geological log.

Constant volume samples are collected to eliminate the “sample-volume-variance” phenomena when dealing with geological samples, since the variation of any measurement of sample chemical composition depends on the volume of material collected. Unlike social science statistics in which the sample support is an individual human, or in the general physical sciences where objects such as billiard balls, coins, or other discrete objects, is the sample support and from which we note that N, the number of samples, is always an integer value, such objects do not exist in geology or the earth sciences and hence special emphasis is directed to ensuring that the sample-support is maintained, here by ensuring constant volume samples.

Mineral exploration generally involves developing hypotheses about where mineral deposits might be located in the accessible parts of the earth’s crust, and initially tested by collected many inexpensive geochemical soil samples, and again special emphasis is directed to ensuring that sample-support is maintained, again by collecting equal volume samples of soil.

Chemical analysis of these samples are done and the data analysed geomathematically. Usually the samples are reported as metal assays as parts per million or billion, depending on the element, and are “intensive” variables. Because the sample support of data set is uniform, sample-volume-variance issues, as well as the pitfalls of applying statistical analyses to intensive variables are avoided, and that is another issue which won’t be described here.”

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Thanks for sending in the photograph and note.

There has been some suggestion that in my recent blog post on a dead possum I was too hard on the ABC. Gavin and others have suggested there are bigger issues and that it doesn’t matter that sometimes some journalists get it wrong.

I disagree.

It’s my experience that it is common practice for many environmental reporters to just repeat the content of media releases and briefings from activists, particularly when the perceived villain is a miner, logger or irrigator. The story is set up for them … and they run with it.

Indeed I see significant problems with how the mainstream media reports on environmental issues and I believe there is a need for much more accountability.

I’m not sure we can properly address the many pressing environmental issues out there if journalists keep responding to activist campaigning rather than making their own minds up about what does and doesn’t need to be reported.

Then there is the human dimension of the misreporting.

There is a guy, Richard Ness, who sometimes reads this blog, and who is currently on trial in Indonesia probably because some local environmental activists thought they could create the perception of an environmental disaster. They probably assumed, given the way the media tends to work when it comes to environmental issue, that their fabrication would quickly become a news story. All they had to do was grab a few props (in this case babies with skin problems) and make a few accusations.

Indeed while the evidence doesn’t stack up, BBC Online continues to report the story including more comment from the activists who should by now be dismissed as scoundrels. Meanwhile, Richard Ness faces the prospect of 10 years in jail for something that never happened.

A new movie ‘Mine Your Own Business’ details how environmental campaigner have stopped development in parts of the world that crave development. How they have denied poor people opportunity.

The same activists have also run campaigns against foreigners who have dared develop projects in remote and environmentally sensitive parts of the world. In the case of Richard Ness they are destroying his life.

As his son Eric explains at RichardNess.org, a website dedicated to his father:

“My father, Richard Ness is currently on trial in Indonesia for a crime that never happened and is currently facing ten years in prison and a US$ 60,000 fine. He is accused of polluting the environment and causing illnesses when over 30 independent studies* have repeatedly confirmed that there is no environmental damage and most importantly medical analysis have established that there is no incidence of arsenic or mercury poisoning among the local community.”

I wrote about the case a year ago in a blog piece entitled ‘Did Newmont Do It?’.

Just the other day I received an email from Richard Ness:

“Jennifer,

I found your article of November 16, of last year very interesting (sorry it took me a year to find it on the web). While missing a few details which are hard to figure out in this part of the world, your write up is very close to reality. Your blog is one of the best short analysis I have seen on the subject.

With regard to your comment : “In many ways it is a pity the case is not going to trial, so all the evidence could be laid out. But then again, who gets a fair trial in Indonesia?”

For your information, the case did go to trial and the trial is still continuing after over one year in court. What you picked up on as the bases for your story was a civil charge for which Newmont basically agreed to form a foundation to fund a scientific panel to conduct independent monitoring for 10 years to prove to the world Buyat Bay was not, nor is polluted.

What has came out so far in court has been a sad story of manipulation of people and communities funded by a political party through select NGO’s. Even the baby the group was using as a “poster child” was blocked from proper medical treatment so they could parade her around as a banner of pollution.

That poor baby died as a result of lack of care and treatment from a dermatitis and upper respiratory infection. After the babies death, it was found that the prescribed medications for a common illness were never administered.

What has come out from court ordered resampling of the bay was that the Waters of Buyat are cleaner then on average, the Atlantic, Pacific and English Channel.

My oldest son, Eric who lives in the USA has created a blog to keep friends and the public up to speed on the latest case developments. The site he created is at www.richardness.org. You may find it interesting reading if you have the time as it bridges the time period of your last Novembers blog until now of ongoing developments in the case.

All the best,
Richard Ness
President Director
Newmont Minahasa Raya”

I am reminded of some words from Phelim McAleer:

“Remove the collar from the man with the evangelical zeal and make him a member of an environmental organisation and suddenly we start paying serious attention to these modern day prophets of doom.

Once, according to our religious leaders, it was our sins that were leading us to damnation. Now, according to our environmental leaders, it is polluting actions of man that will lead to our damnation.

How little we have all progressed and how we still love to listen to harbingers of doom would be mildly amusing if it were not for the pernicious effects of such beliefs on the poorest people in some of the poorest countries in the world.”

…and Richard Ness.

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* Including reports from the United Nations World Health Organization, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation of Australia and National Institute for Minamata Disease. The CSIRO report can be downloaded from RichardNess.org, but beware it is 16MB.

Yesterday an Indonesian Court threw out charges against the world’s largest gold producer, Newmont Mining Corporation, not because the company might be innocent, but because the company had a deal with the Indonesian government whereby disputes are to be settled by arbitration.

At issue is whether the company polluted Buyat bay in northern Sulawesi with mercury and arsenic.

According to ABC Online and other reports, a government-commissioned probe and a police study concluded that the bay was polluted, but several other studies, including by the World Health Organisation and the Indonesian Health Ministry, did not support that charge.

I can’t find the WHO report or study undertaken by the Minimata Institute on the internet. I would appreciated links from anyone who does happen to stumble across one or other of the reports.

According to the The Jakarta Post on October 4 last year this is what the reports concluded:

A laboratory test by Japan’s Minamata institute and the World Health Organization (WHO) shows the mercury levels in hair samples taken from residents living at Buyat Bay in North Sulawesi were normal, the Ministry of Health said on Sunday.

Ministry director general of communicable disease Umar Fahmi said the level of mercury in the residents’ hair was 2.65 micro grams per gram or around one-twentieth of the dangerous level of 50 set by WHO.

“It indicates a normal level of mercury content in human body. The level is equivalent with the mercury content found in healthy Japanese citizens,” Umar told The Jakarta Post.

The WHO study apparently also looked at mercury levels in fish and I think sediment?

According to my colleagues Mike Nahan and Don D’Cruz:

Like virtually all the foreign owned mining ventures in Indonesia, NMR [Newmont Mining Corporation] was from its inception subjected to a campaign by ‘local’ NGOs backed and funded by western activists.

In the case of the campaign against NMR, this included: the Indonesian Center for Environmental Law (ICEL), the Indonesian Mining Advocacy Network (Jatam), the Institute for Policy Research and Advocacy (Elsham), KELOLA and the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), aka Friends of the Earth Indonesia, just to name a few.

… When the appropriate Indonesian government ministers dismissed, on expert advice, the claims of the NGOs, the NGOs filed lawsuits against them.

With the assistance of friendly ‘experts’, these claims were successfully promoted in the West, such as in a recent New York Times feature story.

What the New York Times and its NGO sources ignored was the considerable body of evidence that directly contradicted the NGO line.

Shortly after the New York Times ran the story in September, the Indonesians National Police arrested six of NMR’s most senior executives (one was released due to health risks) on charges based on the NGO claims that the NMR and its executives knowingly polluted the Bay and damaged the livelihood and health of the local community.

The fact that the action took place only as mining was coming to an end fed rumours that charges had been created to force a pay-out from Newmont before the mine closed.

There is information at the Newmont website responding to articles in the New York Times including:

The Times points out that the Minahasa roaster facility emitted approximately 17 tons of mercury into the atmosphere over a four and one-half year period. While the Times makes this seem like a significant quantity, this level of emissions complied with all applicable US and Indonesian air quality regulations. It is not a level of emissions that would cause any human health impacts to nearby residents.

In many ways it is a pity the case is not going to trial, so all the evidence could be laid out. But then again, who gets a fair trial in Indonesia?

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The Newmont website also has a detailed history of gold, click here. This year saw the price of gold reach a 17 year record at US$480 an ounce in October. Is the price going to keep going up?