Shares in ERA, the operator of the Ranger Uranium mine, were sold off yesterday after news at the weekend of a major leak of toxic liquid at its Ranger uranium mine and processing plant in the Northern Territory.
ERA, which is a partly owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto, said in the second of two statements released yesterday that there had been no damage to the environment from the leak.
The company’s shares dropped 16% at one stage before rebounding slightly to end down 12.7% at $1.135. It hit a low of $1.125 during trading.
The stock had been trading around $1.30 for the past five to six weeks, but plunged at the opening yesterday on the news of the leaking of a million litres or more of toxic substances from a storage tank.
In it’s first statement yesterday, ERA assured the market that production guidance for the 2013 calendar year will not be affected by the indefinite halt to processing, which was put in place at Ranger over the weekend.
But the company said it was too early to say if guidance for the 2014 calendar year would be affected, given the length of the production outage was still unknown.
Federal and Northern Territory agencies are investigating, and federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt has already labelled the incident “unacceptable”.
Even if Kakadu is not damaged, the incident may hurt ERA’s reputation, given it has shaken the confidence of an indigenous group whose approval must be obtained before mining can be restarted at Ranger as an underground operation.
In the second statement, ERA said.
"Ranger Mine’s containment management systems fully captured the slurry material which escaped from a failed leach tank at approximately 1:00am on Saturday morning. These systems are in place to separate processing areas from Kakadu National Park.
"ERA is confident that Kakadu National Park will not be impacted as a result of this incident.
"Ranger mine has multiple levels of protection in place to contain and manage spills, including bunding, protective barriers and channelling. These containment systems have operated as designed during this incident.
"ERA and regulatory agencies have in place an extensive statutory water monitoring program at Ranger mine and in the surrounding area, with results provided to all stakeholders.
"All water monitoring points have reported normal readings.
The safety of employees and the public at large, and the protection of the environment remain ERA’s top priorities as clean-up operations take place.
"No employees were injured as a result of this incident.
"Processing operations have ceased and clean-up operations are well-advanced and further announcements will be made once the full impact on operations has been understood."
ERA said it will commission a full investigation into the incident and is co-operating with Commonwealth and Territory regulators.
