Iron is one of the most abundant elements on earth but pulling it out of the ground efficiently can be a daunting undertaking. Snaking through the low, green hills of southern Brazil is a 530km pipeline, the decisive link in Anglo American’s $8.2bn Minas-Rio project to extract iron ore in the Brazilian interior and ship it from a new Atlantic port. Way over its original $3.6bn budget and two years late, Minas-Rio is finally close to the point of “first ore on ship”.
鐵是地球上含量最豐富的元素之一,但是要把它從地下高效率采掘出來有可能是一項令人畏懼的任務。在巴西南部低矮的綠色山丘,一條長達530公里的管道蜿蜒伸展。它是英美資源集團(Anglo American)耗資82億美元的Minas-Rio項目的決定性環節。該項目旨在采掘巴西內陸的鐵礦石,然后通過一個新建的大西洋港口裝船發運。在嚴重超出其最初36億美元的預算,并拖延了兩年工期之后,Minas-Rio項目終于接近了“首批礦石裝船”的狀態。