Is Water a Material Financial Risk for the Mining Industry?

Transcription

1 Is Water a Material Financial Risk for the Mining Industry? Tuslequah Chief Copper- Lead Mine, BC Cumulative Effects - Acid Mine Drainage Tia Maria, Peru Water Pollution Social Conflict Minera Escondida Copper, Chile Water Scarcity - Desalination Gold King, CO Abandoned Mine Tailings Dam PNG drought halts mining at Porgera Samarco, Brasil Tailings Dam Failure Atacama Floods, Chile Operator/Investor CAPEX, OPEX, Production Losses, Profit Margins Asset Stranding, Operating License, Reputation, Regulatory Pressure Society Environmental Degradation, Loss of Access to Water, Poverty Trap, Property and Life Casualty Losses Upmanu Lall, Jose Blanchet, Luc Bonnafous, Madison Condon, Chris Dolan, Garud Iyengar, Nicolas Maennling, Karthyek Murthy, Jason Siegel & Sophie Thomashausen, Columbia University With support from NBIM

2 How can one quantify the potential short and long term financial risks related to water for mining investments? Risks or cost structure? Water Scarcity is the risk? Future mining locations largely arid. Declining ore grades = increase in water management costs (Capex, Opex, Social Conflict/Regulatory) Increasing competition over water resources will lead to conflict and associated costs. But if these affect the industry broadly, will they just be passed on to the market price? 2

3 3 Copper Price (NASDAQ)

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5 5 According to the study by the Chilean Copper Commission, mine level cash costs at Chile's 19 largest mines fell to an average of $1.285 per pound during the first three months of the year, down 13.3% or nearly 20c a pound from the same quarter of last year. improved mine management, lower costs for electricity, services and shipping and lower treatment and refining charged by smelters. The trend of falling grades, coupled with increasing water costs in Chile makes the cost cutting even more remarkable.

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7 Risk Derives from uncertain outcomes in the future A valuation of risks is priced into the market value of an asset or a company The company may provide disclosures as to potential risk factors and costs Analysts may independently assess these elements Assessed risk factors may change with time Changes in exposure conditions Changes in company s risk management strategies Departures from the valuation of these risks constitute the residual financial risk Is the market effectively accounting for and valuing the risks? Low probability high impact factors, vs. chronic factors? Portfolio vs Asset Risk Aggregation? 7

8 Risk Derives from uncertain outcomes in the future A valuation of risks is priced into the market value of an asset or a company The company may provide disclosures as to potential risk factors and costs Analysts may independently assess these elements Assessed risk factors may change with time Changes in exposure conditions Changes in company s risk management strategies Departures from the valuation of these risks constitute the residual financial risk Is the market effectively accounting for and valuing the risks? Low probability high impact factors, vs. chronic factors? Portfolio vs Asset Risk Aggregation? 8

9 9 Mine Valuation as a function of mining stage

10 Risk Factors typically considered Financing Permitting Geological Technology Market Economics Country Factors Political The chance is <10% that Permit will not be granted The country risk premium is 10% Economic (Currency, Labor markets, energy markets) Climate Social (corruption, labor laws,.) Over the multiple decades of mine design and operation: how do water risks each mining stage? what are their potential financial impacts? what aspects may be insurable and covered? what are the residual financial risks? 10

11 Financial exposure pathways for a mine water related risks? Climate Replacement water Severe Sustained Drought Wastewater Treatment Requirements Short term Profit Revenue Social conflict 11 Stranded asset

12 Financial exposure pathways for a mine water related risks? Climate Tailings Dam Failure Short term Profit Extreme Rain & Flood Toxic Discharge Revenue Social conflict 12 Stranded asset

13 Financial exposure pathways for a mine water related risks? Cumulative effects Toxic Discharge Toxic Discharge Toxic Discharge.. Toxic Discharge Degraded Water Bodies 13 Social conflict Stranded asset

14 Social/Legal EIS, Permits, Conflicts Systems Design Financing Regional Drought Water Available Discharge Allowed Waste Treatment Social Conflict Production Net Revenue WWT failure Spill Social Conflict Regulatory fines Regulation Production Net Revenue Acquire Permitted Operational Flood Event Power & Transportation Infrastructure Waste Spill Production CAPEX Net Revenue Tailings Dam Failure Power & Transportation Infrastructure Waste Spill Regulation Legal Actions & Fines Production CAPEX Net Revenue Climate extremes = triggers for water related risk Mining companies design/insure some of the risks Outcomes = function of planning + event effects Discounted present value reflects the risk? Simulate all possible occurrences, and best decision forward? Site Remediation New standards? Adequate Bond? Mine Closure Wet Period Groundwater Contamination Regulation Acid Mine Drainage Liabilities

15 Risk Derives from uncertain outcomes in the future A valuation of risks is priced into the market value of an asset or a company The company may provide disclosures as to potential risk factors and costs Analysts may independently assess these elements Assessed risk factors may change with time Changes in exposure conditions Changes in company s risk management strategies Departures from the valuation of these risks constitute the residual financial risk Is the market effectively accounting for and valuing the risks? Low probability high impact factors, vs. chronic factors? Portfolio vs Asset Risk Aggregation? 15

16 Climate Induced Water Risk 16 Daily Flow of the Mapocho River near Santiago, Chile 10 year 1 day event? April 17, 2016: Codelco, the world's top copper producer, said the rains forced the Chilean state-owned miner to suspend production at its century-old underground El Teniente mine, likely leading to the loss of 5,000 tonnes of copper. Mine infrastructure is designed for a certain level of flood or drought risk. Insurance may cover the residual risk with a payout limit. Assumption: data used to compute the probabilities is representative of the future. Unfortunately, climate risk exhibits regime like behavior Design risk estimate may be out of phase with operation period risk Climate risk exposure is also spatially correlated over a business cycle = Elevated Portfolio Risk

17 Is the portfolio risk accounted for? Mine production tends to be in highly geographically concentrated regions (60% of global copper comes from the top 5 copper producing countries, 90% comes from the top 15) Individual companies tend to own mines that are even more geographically concentrated as management and company expertise tends to be regional / investors want focus Nonetheless, investors tend to look at each mine as individual profit centers with an independent subset of risks

18 Extreme Rainfall events residual portfolio risk Consider each mine is designed to deal with an extreme precipitation event, e.g., 100-year annual maximum for 1 day rainfall What is the chance that multiple such events will occur across the portfolio in a given year, leading to loss of production and/or infrastructure failure and liabilities? Is this risk changing over time? Trends? Clustering in time or across mines? Potential impacts loss of production and reconstruction vary by mine Portfolio Risk index: Sum the annual event frequency at each mine weighted with production value or with NAV of each mine

19 Portfolio Exposure : Rio Tinto (40 Assets) BHP Billiton (38 assets Annual exceedances of 10 year drought BHP Billiton BHP Billiton Annual exceedances of 10 year 30 day rainfall Rio Tinto Rio Tinto Drought: 38 mine BHP Billiton portfolio. High clustering : 24 exceedances in one year out of 60 Asset Locations Extreme Rainfall: 40 mine Rio Tinto portfolio. High clustering: 36 exceedances in one year out of 142 There is a pronounced trend and decadal variability

20 7 6 Fat tail risk due to spatial clustering: Ratio of actual number of events in excess of 100 year 1 day extreme rainfall for Portfolio relative to what is expected by chance, for 3 thresholds of the portfolio cdf Based on ECMWF reanalysis Based on NOAA-CIRES reanalysis Barrick Gold BHP Billiton Newmont Rio Tinto Barrick Gold 90th 95th 99th BHP Billiton Newmont Rio Tinto

21 Example: Barrick Gold Portfolio Exposure 100 year 1 day rainfall event 30% NAV Exposed with a 1%/yr probability 7% with a 5%/yr probability 10 year 30 day rainfall event 80% Production Exposed with a 1%/yr probability 45% with a 5%/yr probability

22 Portfolio Drought Exposure 10 year 12 month drought 45% Production Exposed with a 1%/yr probability 32% with a 10%/yr probability

23 Drought Risk Rankings by VAR and CVAR normalized to portfolio size

24 Tailings dam failures Context: Failure rate estimated 10 to 100 higher than regular dams (Davies, 2002, ICOLD, 2001) Samarco: - ~60 million m 3 of toxic waste discharged - 19 deaths, >1,000 people displaced - forest and fishing destroyed - ~$5.7 billion settlement (prosecutors filed for $44 billion in May) Due to high demand, declining ore grades, and EIA, dams are getting bigger, with higher failure probability, and failure impact. eg: KSM would be 6 times as high as Mount Polley and would carry 28 times the amount of tailings (144 million m 3 ) Engineering Aspects: Failure modes: overtopping, piping, slides, earthquakes. Regulatory issue : Design for 10 year 1 day event Emerman: Runout greatly underestimated Strategy: Use Satellite Imagery & Machine Learning Algorithms to map Tailing Dam attributes globally, for all mines with known locations. Monitor construction, waste filling rates, storage space left for extreme rain = overtopping potential, potential leaks Using data on past tailing dam failures, build a survival analysis model for failure risk Using GIS layers on population, ecosystems, and river networks, assess downstream potential impacts of tailing dam failure Rate tailing dams for hazard impact.

25 REMEDIATION COSTS VS BONDS Summitville Mine in Colorado, cyanide spill required $192 million Superfund cleanup while financial assurances posted by operating company were $4.5 million GAO Report: Financial assurances not adequate to cover cleanup costs of majority of investigated abandoned mines on Bureau of Land Management property.

26 Empirical Findings: Water Scarcity indicators Credit Rating or Net Asset Value impacts Climate induced risk is undervalued at the asset and at the portfolio level Event & cumulative impacts of spills, tailing dam failures, pollution Data on these factors is harder to access Strong indication that residual clean up costs are typically >> remediation bonds Regulatory enforcement is hard to assess high residual risk Regulatory and Social processes may respond to poor history of managing above risks Increased competition for water, accidents, chronic pollution increase long term risk Stranded Assets, or industry wide regulatory changes may result with change in cost profile Voluntary disclosure (TSM) seems to correlate with reduced discharge water quality violations A real options model can integrate analysis of multiple, uncertain risk factors. A robust simulation-optimization framework for such a model from asset to portfolio level has been developed to integrate different sources of risk and their uncertainty 26