just how good are morrocan phosphate reserves

Just how good are Morrocan Phosphate Reserves?

No where near as good as OCP and BBY would like us to believe going by bby's report on OCP morocco phosphate.

They tell us they have 80 billion tonnes at about 30% and plan massive expansions.

Here are a few more facts I have discovered about OCP Moroccan Phosphate.

They do not have 80 bt at 30%, they have 85 bt at 22-28%(I have found a heap of articles confirming this). Big difference as they do not direct ship the RP, all their exported RP is beneficated. BBY use the word "about" 30% in their report it is clearly misleading imo.

http://www.mining-technology.com/projects/benguearir/

A huge amount of morocco's near surface uncontaminated rp has been mine, they are having to mine deeper, and are keen to mine rp contaminated with uranium. Yes morocco will most likely increase rp production, the majority of this imo will be new mines opened to mine uranium contaminated ore.

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page38?oid=38739&sn=Detail

We may even see a reduction in the amount of rp they are mining that is suitable to be exported as a simple uncontaminated rp product. The bby report mentioned mines were closing, and new mines were planned. (didn't mention the new mines(some?) would be mining uranium contaminated rp).

The Moroccan phosphates reserves contain 6.9mt of uranium. that is 6.9/80000*1000000=86.2ppm averaged over the full 80bt deposits.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mragheb/www/NPRE%20402%20ME%20405%20Nuclear%20Power%20Engineering/Uranium%20Resources%20in%20Phosphate%20Rocks.pdf

I can't find any actual clear information but I suspect a huge amount of their deposits are under a lot of cover as some of Morocco's rock phosphate is mine underground.

Yes, Morocco has a lot of phosphate, but how much rp have they that is easily minable and suitable to be exported as a simple uncontaminated rp product ? I bet it is only a fraction of the 80bt.

A massive amount of the worlds phosphate deposits have significant contamination, these also include Saudi Arabias (Maaden) projects deposits.

http://digital.library.ksu.edu.sa/V4M197R1016.pdf




Hope this bit of research give people something to think about.

It seems to me pretty much all? other deposits that are of a quality on par with Wonarah have already been developed. The only reason Wonarah wasn't developed in the past, that I can see, was lack of infrastructure. This has changed with the building of the Adelaide-Darwin rail.

I am becoming increasingly confident that rp price will remain at around these levels for many years. This is mainly due to the massive capital expenditure required and the complexities of bringing other projects online around the world. At the same time levels of easily mineable uncontaminated reserves are continually being depleted.

I can find no other phosphate project anywhere in the world comparable with Wonarah. All other project of a similar size require massive capital investment to build infrastructure or deal with contaminated and low grade phosphate ore.

A few of the links in this post I have already posted today but I thought I would put it together in one post.