INTEGRATION OF GEOLOGICAL TOOLS: THE KEY FOR SUCCESS AT MISKI MAYO MINE

Miski Mayo Fosfatos de Bayóvar is a phosphate surface mine located in Peru run by Mosaic to produce crop nutrition products. The mine recently upgraded to an integrated geological platform and away from a manual and disjointed geological workflow. Previously, the geologists were spending much of their time trying to integrate data from various sources requiring extensive validation at each step to model the deposit. The drillhole data management consisted of paper logs and Excel spreadsheets. Modeling the geological seam deposit was done using direct triangulation of drillhole intercepts. And block models were interpolated into in a 2D gridded model format. Now the mine is using a fully integrated 3D geology platform that spans: a true SQL database system for drillhole and sample management; a drillhole management tool integrated with the 3D viewer for marking holes and intervals and compositing, including seam and economic styles; statistical, geostatistical and drillhole correlation analysis tools; explicit and timeline-based implicit geological modeling tools that honor true-thickness and paleo event timelines; resource estimation using kriging and resource validation and classification; and a 3D variable height gridded seam block model. When new drillhole data become available, the integrated workflow allows the user to update their composites, repeat data analysis, rebuild variograms, update geological models and finally rebuild the block model via simple refresh operations.

The results have been significant. By the end of the implementation Miski Mayo have optimized their workflow and recovered 30% of their time. The dead times that were lost moving between different platforms is now used to make deeper analysis and geological interpretation. Data integrity and security are also improved with true permission-based database programs and fully integrated data transfers. The seam deposit models now more accurately reflect the true geological shapes present in the ground due to implicit modeling. By switching to an integrated geology suite, Miski Mayo has been able to centralize and secure the data, improve data processing, reduce validation time through 3D visualization and create an automated workflow for creating Gridded Seam Block Models (GSMs) using implicit geological modeling. Having everything integrated in a single platform is allowing the geologists to get more accurate results in less time.