OZ Minerals may recoup through insurance some of the losses from the up to 1200 tonnes of copper concentrate that disappeared into the Northern Territory's Edith River last week after a train derailed.

In an announcement to the stock exchange on Thursday, OZ said the value of the lost concentrates was between $US7 million ($6.85m) and $US8m, or about 4 per cent of its 2010-11 underlying net profit of $189m.

Yesterday, a spokeswoman confirmed that the company was in talks with insurers about the lost concentrate. She said she could not comment further because the derailment on the Adelaide-to-Darwin line that spilled the concentrate cars into the river was still under investigation by authorities.

On Thursday, after OZ announced the derailment to the stock exchange, its shares slipped 2.9 per cent, which was followed by a 1 per cent fall on Friday that left the share price at $10.01.

A mining insurance broker, who asked not to be named, said there was too little information to make an informed guess on the outcome, but any ruling that OZ had polluted the river could complicate the claim.

He said it was unclear whether the incident would raise premiums for miners, particularly because many miners self-insure their rail journeys.

The miner most affected by the derailment, which is expected to close the railway between Alice Springs and Darwin for more than two weeks, is OM Holdings.

OM's Bootu Creek mine, 100km north of Tennant Creek, ships about 1 million tonnes of manganese ore a year through the port of Darwin on up to four trains a week.

It is understood that OM plans to release a statement to the market on the outage tomorrow.

The company has been in talks with rail operator Genesee & Wyoming to determine the implications of the incident and its impact on Bootu's export shipment schedule for the first quarter of 2012. OM has some stockpiles at Darwin that it can load on ships.

It also has stockpiles at its company-owned processing plants in China.

Production at the mine will not be affected because ore that cannot be railed will be stockpiled.

The biggest mining user of the track is Hong Kong trader Noble Group's Frances Creek iron ore mine near Pine Creek.

Because Frances Creek, which was previously owned by Territory Resources, is north of the break in the line, its trains are still running.

By far the biggest user of the railway will be BHP Billiton, which, if it approves its expected expansion of the Olympic Dam copper and uranium mine in South Australia, will run a train a day from the mine to Darwin.

A BHP spokeswoman said the company was confident about its transport options. In its Olympic Dam environmental impact statement, BHP said it planned to use waterproof and airtight containers for concentrate on the rail journey.

source:mining.com