It now has more time to acquire land or to reach legal agreements with landowners to build a processing plant and associated infrastructure at the mine site.
It's always going to be a fine balance between a company assessing how much of the value of the project it can afford to surrender to the host country.
The drop to 64.057 million tonnes came as several major operations remained fully or partially shut down in the second quarter following a deadly dam burst at the Corrego do Feijão mine.