Presentation: Environmental Compliance Monitoring at the Goldstrike Mine

PI Coresight was renamed PI Vision in 2017

Located in Northern Nevada, the Barrick Goldstrike Mine has two processing facilities: the Roaster and the Autoclave. Multiple OSIsoft products are used by operators and engineers at both of the processing facilities. This presentation covers a capital project at the Autoclave facility that began commissioning in November 2014 and has expanded the complexity of the leach and gold recovery circuits. This new capital project, known as TCM Leach, included installments of environmental control devices which were permitted through the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection. Operational parameters were required to be monitored and recorded to ensure compliance with the permit, and notification was required within a timely manner if parameters deviated from the stipulated requirements. Traditionally, the operators running the circuit and the shift supervisor were responsible for recognizing that a deviation had occurred and for reporting the deviation to the environmental department, who would then review the incident and inform the appropriate agency. PI ProcessBook environmental dashboards were created and implemented to inform control room operators of deviations that were impending and that had already occurred. The dashboards had varying degrees of success resulting in unreported deviations. PI System Notifications were then created and implemented with remarkable success. Notifications were sent to shift supervisors and management and included descriptions of the specific deviation, links to PI Coresight Displays, and a hyperlink to the internal environmental reporting form. Reporting on deviations to the environmental department became nearly perfect and the total incurred deviations reduced dramatically. The costs associated with deviations decreased and the mine’s social license to operate was maintained. Due to this remarkable success, the same system will be implemented at the Roaster, the other processing facility on the mine site, and sister mine sites in Northern Nevada are planning on adopting it."