Quebec's mining sector got a sprinkle of hope heading into the weekend after long days of facing down fierce fires and heavy smoke.

The Quebec fires appeared to ease enough in some areas by June 9 that certain exploration-halting restrictions could soon be lifted. And Rio Tinto Group began the recovery process at suspended iron ore operations in the province's east, though mines in southwestern Quebec still faced disruptions amid heavy smoke.

Tinder dry conditions, unusual for a Canadian spring, along with atypical weather patterns and a warming climate are playing a role in fueling the fires raging in Quebec and other provinces, which might increasingly become the norm in coming decades, government officials say.

The fires forced the Quebec government to restrict access to forested public lands across most of the province's southwest a week ago, shutting down exploration activity in the region and cutting off access to at least one gold mine.

Thick, persistent smoke from the fires, which has choked cities along the Eastern Seaboard, led some miners to temporarily suspend operations at gold mines near Val d'Or, Quebec. And fire in the province's east damaged infrastructure associated with a 418-km-long railway that connects Rio Tinto's majority-owned iron ore operations near remote Labrador City, in Newfoundland and Labrador, and port facilities in Sept-Îles, Quebec.

The situation has improved for Rio Tinto and explorers, according to company spokespeople and government officials, but not as much for gold miners in Quebec's southwest, where dry weather conditions persist and smoke remains a problem for underground mine operators.

"Over the next two to three weeks, we're really seeing a central part of the country being ... the epicenter of the dry conditions, probably from Manitoba and Ontario, maybe into western Quebec and up north, too, in the Northwest Territories," Richard Carr, a fire research analyst with the Canadian government's Northern Forestry Centre, told S&P Global Commodity Insights in an interview. "And it looks like the coastal areas should be a little bit better off."

Clearing up

Rio Tinto is benefitting from wet weather in the east and has started to assess and repair damage to iron ore infrastructure. On June 7, crews cleared tracks on the Quebec North Shore and Labrador Railway and started to fix power lines, fiber optic cables and other telecommunications infrastructure, Simon Letendre, Rio Tinto's senior director of media relations for Canada and the US, told Commodity Insights in an email.

"A first train carrying fuel, mine equipment and other essential goods left Sept-Îles [on June 8], heading north, and is scheduled to arrive in Labrador City [on June 9]," Letendre said, noting in a follow-up email that the train had reached its destination. "It will then head for Schefferville to supply nearby communities," Letendre said.

When Rio Tinto will resume ore transport by rail is still under discussion, according to Letendre.

Likewise, grounded explorers might soon get some reprieve. Quebec barred access to much of the southwest on June 3, expanding on restrictions announced a day earlier, forcing scores of explorers to evacuate and suspend fieldwork. But the access bans are set to ease, a Quebec official told Commodity Insights.

"The ban on forest access should be modified today or tomorrow," Stéphane Caron, a spokesperson for SOPFEU, a Quebec government fire management and information organization, said in an email. Caron said restrictions would likely be reduced; another official said the decision had yet to be finalized.

Explorers would likely rebound quickly from the disruption, Kevin Murphy, a mining analyst with Commodity Insights, said in an email.

"Think of 2020 when the [COVID-19] lockdowns ended up only pushing budgets down [about] 10%, and those were for many months and pretty much global," Murphy said.

Smoke disrupts gold miners

Still, fires remained widespread in Quebec, and pervasive smoke disrupted more mines in the province's southwestern region, a center of gold mining.

Midday on June 8, Wesdome Gold Mines Ltd. said it suspended operations at the Kiena underground gold mine in Val d'Or after winds shifted and drove smoke into the area. Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. and Eldorado Gold Corp. temporarily stopped underground mining at operations in southwestern Quebec in the past week because of the smoke.

Underground mines depend on surface air for ventilation, which provides fresh air to workers and helps remove dirty air created by equipment exhaust and rock dust. The Quebec fires are not the first to disrupt mining operations because of smoke, but the extent of suspensions is unusual.

"This is completely abnormal," said Brian Prosser, SRK Consulting's principal consultant and practice leader for mine ventilation services. "Sometimes you'll have polluted air on the surface, but it takes a lot — a massive event like what you're seeing up there right now — to have this kind of an effect."

Miners made the right and necessary choice in suspending underground mining, industry experts said.

"Operations people in the industry know that if there is smoke in the air from a fire, the underground mine needs to be temporarily closed," said George Ogilvie, president and CEO at copper-developer Arizona Sonoran Copper Co. Inc., and a professional engineer who previously led mining companies with Canadian operations.

Ogilvie noted that workers can continue to work at surface operations, such as open-pit mines, by just wearing masks if smoke is not too bad.

More fires, more smoke

Longer term, miners in fire-prone regions could increasingly face smoke-heavy conditions and disruptions.

"Unfortunately, global warming has made the need to suspend operations for this reason depressingly more common," David Garofalo, chairman and CEO at Gold Royalty Corp., said in an email. Garofalo is also the former president and CEO of Goldcorp, which merged with Newmont Corp. in 2019.

Underground mines depend on clean air, and climate change looks set to increase the size and intensity of fires, which could mean industry will have to contend with more smoky days.

"We've probably seen a doubling in area burned since the 1970s," the Northern Forestry Centre's Carr said, referring to annual impact of fire seasons in Canada. "That amount of area burned is expected to double again over the rest of this century."

And that means more smoke.

"Bigger, more intense fires will consume more fuel and generate more smoke," Carr said. "If you have a really intense, deep-burning fire, it will tend to scour out the organic material in the ground and burn down to mineral soil or bedrock."

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