What are you studying ? cuz im in college studying geology and the topics youre bringing up now are rather advanced...
The ekati diamond mine is an open pit kimberlite system one of the largest and best producing mines in the world, this largely depends on the input because of the remote location of the ekati mine its mostly reachable by air and by roads in summer so, this can make excavating in winter a very costfull job when one of the super machine breaks down, they are allmost forced to repair it on the spot because airlifting replacement parts is super expensive, so that requires a good running workshop.
Because of the different kimberlite shafts in the ekati mining field, its a constant making up of the balance on wether or not a pit is still producing enough and wether or not other pits should be opened/re-opened depending on the diamond output
Furthermore the longterm efficiency of this type of mining gets in trouble, now with our economic crisis and the collapse of the diamond sector there is a lareg output of diamonds but little input from diamond sales, because diamonds are mainly of decorative purpose, these are the things people cheapen on the first in times of crisis.
+ because your working in open pits and your kimberlite shaft is vertical, for every foot deeper you go you need to excavat a lot more land, (so in the beginning open pit kimberlite shafts are good producing, but then the pit needs to be excavated far beyond the kimberlite shaft to allow open pit workers to go deeper and deeper, thus driving up excavating cost and bringing down the mining efficiency....
i hope you understand what im writing here, its not easy for me to write these things in english since i dont posses the same terminology as in dutch ...
