A drought in parts of Australia that’s delivered record low rainfall is posing potential risks to output at key gold mines in the world’s second-largest producer.
Rainfall in New South Wales state has been at one-in-100 year lows for the past two years, Newcrest Mining said on Thursday, flagging that production at its flagship Cadia operation could be impacted by the end of this year if the conditions persist. Evolution Mining, which operates the Cowal mine in New South Wales on the edge of a lake about 350 km west of Sydney, also said this week that it had spent the past 12 months seeking to curb the operation’s reliance on surface water and comply with State-wide restrictions. Australia experienced the lowest December rainfall total on record last month, the Bureau of Meteorology said in a January 7 statement. Arid conditions in parts of the Murray-Darling Basin region, which covers several states and key mining districts, have persisted since early 2017 and are severely limiting water resources. Low rainfall totals over the past 36 months in parts of the Murray–Darling Basin region have broken records set during Australia’s Federation Drought between 1900 and 1902.