190 Delhi International Oil Corp Since November 1981, it has been virtually a wholly-owned subsidiary of the large Australian diversified natural resources company CSR (1). Early in 1982, the Australian government gave permission for Delhi (with 53.5%) to develop a uranium mine at the Lake Way property near Wiluna, Western Australia, together with VAM (46.5%). An estimated 3700t of uranium oxide is present, modestly grading at 1.5 lb uranium per tonne (2).
The project is now indefinitely suspended.
Lake Way comprises about 4,000 tonnes of U3O8, grading at 0.9kgs/tonne; the deposit is of the Yeelirrie type and extraction would be by using the carbonate leach-ion exchange method (3). It has been given federal government approval, despite its suspension on market grounds. The mine would be close to Wiluna townsite, where a large proportion of residents (out of 1500 people) are Aboriginal. The mine is also only 5 kms from a community village called Ngangganawili. The Environmental Impact Statement for the project has admitted that vegetables grown in the area may become radioactively contaminated, that citrus farms may be drained of water, and kangaroo and sheep meat become unfit for consumption (4). As the nineties opened, Delhi still held, with VAM, its licence over the Lake Way project, but there was virtually no prospect (even with the relaxation of the Australian Labor Party's "three mines" uranium policy) that it would be opened (5).
SOURCE: "The Gulliver File - Mines, people and land: a global battleground" by Roger Moody.
Published in 1992 by Minewatch, 218 Liverpool Road, London Nl ILE, UK, and WISE-Glen Aplin, Po Box 87, Glen Aplin Q 4381, Australia.
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Page last updated December 26, 1997.
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