2023-04-17 21:57:39
Algeria expects to produce 50 million tons of iron annually from a huge mine
The Algerian government announced a plan to start exploiting the huge Gara Djebeilat mine, which includes large reserves of iron, located in the Tindouf region, in the far south of Algeria, with a production capacity of between 40 and 50 million tons annually.
The President and Director General of the State Iron and Steel Company in Algeria, Ahmed Ben Abbas, said, in a press conference organized by the Algerian Radio, that “the Gara Jbeilat project is one of the major projects that Algeria is betting on in the mining sector, and it will provide added value to the national economy, and the completion of the railway link between Gara Djebeilat and Bechar, in southern Algeria, and the development of the railway linking Bechar and the port of Arzew, in western Algeria, will allow the exploitation of the Gara Djebeilat mine, with a production capacity of between 40 and 50 million tons annually.
President Abdelmadjid Tebboune had rejected a plan submitted by the government earlier to complete the railway line to the Jbeilat gas iron mine, at a distance of 700 km, in a period of seven years until 2030, and called on the government to reduce the period and seek the help of international completion companies to shorten the period to less than that. Especially because of the special importance of the Gara Djebeilat mine, which is located in the depths of Algeria, near the Algerian borders with Morocco and Mauritania and the disputed Sahara region.
Ahmed Ben Abbas explained that “with the completion of works at the railway level during the year 2026, the value of production will increase at the level of the Gara Djebeilat mine,” noting that the partnership agreement concluded last Thursday between the Algerian Iron and Steel Corporation and the Turkish Iron and Steel Company, which operates an iron factory in western Algeria. , aims to establish a unit for the production of iron ore concentrates in the state of Bechar, in southern Algeria, starting next September.
He revealed a second agreement with a Chinese compound at the end of this year, allowing the export of 500,000 tons of iron ore to China, and a third agreement with the Algerian Qatari Iron and Steel Company, to value raw iron.
The reserves of this huge mine, which is among the largest iron reserves in the world, are estimated at three billion tons. The exploitation of this huge mine had been disrupted for four decades as a result of the situation related to the conflict in the Sahara region between Morocco and the Polisario Front, where Algeria and Morocco had signed in 1972. On a partnership agreement in the mine and the establishment of a mixed company, but political tensions and the outbreak of the Sahara conflict following that dropped the Algerian-Moroccan agreement, before Algeria decided to re-exploit it.
Algeria began the first blasting operations to conduct the necessary tests for the exploitation of the mine since last June, and the studies completed by the Algerian government estimated the cost of the project at regarding $15 billion, and the exploitation stages are being implemented in 3 stages, the first ending within 2024, during which the infrastructure for a project and a model unit will be completed. For production, the second phase will start until 2027, during which between 2 and 4 million tons of iron ore will be produced, provided that production will increase in the third phase following that to between 40 and 50 million tons.
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