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Taken from: http://www.smh.com.au/wa-news/heidi-halts-pilbara-iron-ore-exports-20120112-1pwqq.html


Heidi halts Pilbara iron ore exports Rania Spooner
January 12, 2012 - 2:03PM

Read later.Australia's key iron ore region's main port has been shut down for two days while tropical cyclone Heidi lashed the Pilbara, costing an average 1.5 million tonnes worth of iron ore export each day.

But miners on the Pilbara's "cyclone alley" remain optimistic about this year's wild weather season.

Despite the lashing across Port Hedland and surrounding areas when TC Heidi hit at about 4am this morning a Fortescue Metals Group spokeswoman said it was looking like a relatively good cyclone season.

Advertisement: Story continues below "This quarter is known for being the quarter for having weather events across both the export and mining sides of things," she said.

"While it's obviously not something we take likely the way the quarter goes it's not a bad start so far."

Fortescue's Cloudbreak and Christmas Creek operations had not been directly impacted by Heidi, the spokeswoman said.

But like the rest of the region Fortescue has been unable to ship any iron ore since Tuesday.

Port Hedland Port Authority spokesman Steed Farrell said in recent months the port has been exporting an average 700,000 tonnes of iron ore each day.

The full extent of any damage to the region's mining operations and the port's infrastructure is not yet known with heavy rain and winds, even after Heidi's eye had passed late this morning, preventing full assessments.

A Rio Tinto spokesman said the major's operations in the Pilbara had continued to operate through the wild weather event but work had been made more difficult by heavy rain.

"There's been a very large amount of rain and more to come," he said. "We will assess the situation again today."

More than 60 Atlas Iron miners spent Wednesday night bunkered in an intimate cyclone shelter at the junior's Pardoo operation about 75km north of Port Hedland.

Atlas managing director David Flannagan said mining was suspended at Pardoo on Tuesday and then at the junior's Wadgina operation, 90 kilometres south of Port Hedland on Wednesday.

Mr Flannagan said Atlas has a $15million shipment of ore waiting at the port for the all-clear.

"We should still be able to get out the tonnes we were planning to," he said.

But he said while miners were unable to survey the damage caused by rough winds and heavy rains, , it wasn't yet known whether Pardoo would lose another couple of days repairing damage to roads or infrastructure.

"During this time of the year it's normal for us to get intermittent rain for a few days and then get back up and running," he said. "It could be a day or two, we don't know."

Mr Flannagan was confident even if production took a hit from Heidi's weather pattern the price of ore would increase, levelling out the loss to miners.

Woodside yesterday shut-down production from the Cossack, Wanaea, Lambert and Hermes oil fields on the North West Shelf and the Vincent oil field off the North West Cape.

But a Woodside spokeswoman said the company's gas operations had not been affected.

Mr Farrell said the port was not expected to resume shipments until tomorrow morning at the earliest.


Read more: http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/heidi-halts-pilbara-iron-ore-exports-20120112-1pwqq.html#ixzz1jD975GuH