{"id":655950,"date":"2026-05-08T12:27:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T12:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/655950\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T12:27:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T12:27:11","slug":"energy-minister-hopeful-ioc-will-resume-full-production-asap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/655950\/","title":{"rendered":"Energy Minister Hopeful IOC Will Resume Full Production ASAP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The energy minister says government is having ongoing conversations with Rio Tinto about IOC\u2019s operations in Labrador West, in hopes that the company will be back up to full production as soon as possible.<\/p>\n<p>IOC has had to cut back operations, in part <a href=\"https:\/\/vocm.com\/2025\/12\/01\/ioc-looking-at-way-to-get-rid-of-100-million-tonnes-of-mining-waste-says-mha-after-meeting-with-company-officials\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">because of an accumulation of waste material <\/a>they need to get rid of.<\/p>\n<p>Company officials will be in the province May 19th to discuss the issue with government.<\/p>\n<p>AllNewfoundlandLabrador is reporting that the company has decommissioned its autonomous electric drill pilot program and is cancelling the purchase of some equipment, while parking other pieces of machinery.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/dempster-and-parrott.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-298524 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/dempster-and-parrott.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"400\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Liberal MHA for Cartwright-L\u2019Anse aux Clair, Lisa Dempster says it\u2019s a big concern.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re talking about the economic engine,\u201d says Dempster, \u201cabout 2,000 employees, if we\u2019re going to talk about the contractors and the indirect work, we\u2019re talking about 3,000 and beyond, so when you hear of a company that\u2019s cancelling the order of new equipment, parking existing equipment, decommissioning, it is huge cause for concern.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Minister Lloyd Parrott addressed the issue with reporters yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re just really trying to get to a point where they\u2019re functioning at the level they should be. So, for quite a few years, they have not been operating at that level and they\u2019re looking to get back there. I believe their estimated tonnage this year is somewhere around 16 million tonnes. I think their nameplate is somewhere around 23 or 24 million, so they\u2019re looking to get back up around those numbers. Part of that process is cleaning up some of the waste material that was left around some of the pits. As they get to that point, things will be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The energy minister says government is having ongoing conversations with Rio Tinto about IOC\u2019s operations in Labrador West,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-655950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}