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Cliff’s Empire Mine May Reopen

Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2018 9:02 am
by Saturnalia
Exciting news! Cliffs’ CEO says they want to make more pellets in the US...and are floating two sites, on in MN and the other at the Empire Mine. Empire is the more expensive but quicker of the two, and the CEO says the commmunities in MI are showing stronger support so he is leaning that way. He credits Michigan’s recent mining rules changes that helped out the Eagle Mine as well.

Decision should be made sometime this year. Awesome to see somebody bullish on iron ore again.

http://www.uppermichiganssource.com/con ... 97723.html

Re: Cliff’s Empire Mine May Reopen

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 4:30 am
by wyrickj
Thought they turned the pumps off?

Re: Cliff’s Empire Mine May Reopen

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 11:21 am
by Standard Railfan
The Iron reserves in the Empire pit are exhausted, other than what is inaccessible.

I suspect the Empire pellet mill may reopen using ore from another source.

Re: Cliff’s Empire Mine May Reopen

Posted: Tue Feb 13, 2018 12:01 pm
by Saturnalia
Standard Railfan wrote:The Iron reserves in the Empire pit are exhausted, other than what is inaccessible.

I suspect the Empire pellet mill may reopen using ore from another source.
The higher cost is because they'll have to move a crapton of overburden. My suspicion is that they want to expand the pit to the northwest, but have a couple hundred feet of crap to move.

The existing pit is only "dead" to the extent that it isn't economical to go any deeper. They can go wider, which is what they'll likely be doing here.
wyrickj wrote:Thought they turned the pumps off?
Yeah they did but that hole ain't gonan fill up overnight. Only about 2-3 "levels" are now underwater per my latest drone flight...

Re: Cliff’s Empire Mine May Reopen

Posted: Wed Feb 14, 2018 10:33 am
by Standard Railfan
I learned a number of years ago from consultants working for CCI that the remaining ore body at Empire is under the spoil pile built over the years. There is simply too much rock to move to economically recover the ore.

I do not believe the Empire pit will come back into production. CCI continued to pump the Republic mine for almost 20 years after the mine was shut down in 1981 in case there was a need to reopen. If there was hope of reopening the Empire pit, the pumping would probably have continued.

Re: Cliff’s Empire Mine May Reopen

Posted: Sat Feb 17, 2018 2:04 pm
by redcrumbox
Cleveland-Cliffs, Inc., formerly Cliffs Natural Resources, is a Cleveland, Ohio, business.