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”.
铁是地球上含量最丰富的元素之一,但是要把它从地下高效率采掘出来有可能是一项令人畏惧的任务。在巴西南部低矮的绿色山丘,一条长达530公里的管道蜿蜒伸展。它是英美资源集团(Anglo American)耗资82亿美元的Minas-Rio项目的决定性环节。该项目旨在采掘巴西内陆的铁矿石,然后通过一个新建的大西洋港口装船发运。在严重超出其最初36亿美元的预算,并拖延了两年工期之后,Minas-Rio项目终于接近了“首批矿石装船”的状态。