China’s massive African mine threatens to upend iron ore market

From Mining.com

In April 1998, a young geologist and his team set out from the village of Moribadou and trekked for six hours through the Guinea Highlands, a densely forested plateau that spreads across four countries in West Africa. “It was extremely difficult,” said Sidiki Koné. “In front was forest. It was forest to the left and forest to the right. Behind it was the same thing. And I said ‘how is this work possible?’”

Koné was mapping and drilling for his employer Rio Tinto Group, one of the largest mining companies. It had recently confirmed the presence of vast quantities of iron ore — the raw material for manufacturing steel. The Simandou deposit, buried below one of the world’s most biologically rich ecosystems, was first explored in the 1950s when Guinea was still a French colony. It would turn out to be one of the biggest on the planet.