Gold prices have dipped today as markets rebound, but this year the precious metal has seen a meteoric rise.
“In US dollar terms the gold price is up around 15 per cent, currently trading around [the] $US1,250 an ounce mark,” said Jordan Eliseo, the chief economist at ABC Bullion.
“In Australian dollars the performance is even better. We’re now back above $1,700 an ounce, up the better part of 20 per cent for the year in just six weeks.”
VANCOUVER — Depressed base metal prices have created a strong deal-making environment for precious-metal streaming companies, and industry leader Franco-Nevada (TSX: FNV; NYSE: FNV) is ready to take advantage. On Feb. 10 the company unveiled its latest transaction, wherein it will pay US$500 million for a silver-gold stream from Glencore’s (LON: GLEN) large-scale Antapaccay copper mine in Peru’s Cusco Region.
Under terms of the deal Franco’s initial silver and gold deliveries will be determined by reference to copper shipments. The company will receive 300,000 oz. gold for every 1,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate, and 30% of gold in concentrate after 630,000 oz. have been delivered.
In terms of silver, Franco will receive 4,700 oz. for every 1,000 tonnes of copper in concentrate, and 30% of silver in concentrate after 10 million oz. have been delivered.
CARACAS // The UAE has been handed a 24-carat challenge: how to get the disparate voices and conflicting interests of the international diamond business acting in unison for the good of an industry that is facing serious issues.
Last week, Ahmed bin Sulayem, best known as the force behind the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre – the DMCC, where the emirate’s diamond industry has flourished over the past decade – took the first steps towards meeting that challenge in crisis-torn Venezuela.
The 38-year-old DMCC chairman was the person chosen by the UAE Ministry of Economy to take up the chairmanship of the Kimberley Process (KP), which was set up in 2003 to stem the flow of “blood diamonds” on to the world’s markets. It has proved to be a controversial organisation.
For a half century and more, an all-weather Inuvik-to-Tuktoyaktuk Highway has been imagined, proposed, talked about in the Northwest Territories. Call it Jack Kerouac on the tundra, the chance to get on the road year-round and drive across a part of Canada glorious in its harsh beauty and still the last frontier.
The project, which began in 2014 and has put hundreds of surveyors, equipment operators and labourers to work, is expected to be completed in 2017-18. A series of photographs from the New York Times shows the land and people of a place apart, soon to be linked to the rest of the country.
Inuvik, with a population of about 3,500, is in the Mackenzie Delta above the Arctic Circle and is the current northern terminus of the Dempster Highway, connecting the Inuvik region to the Yukon highway system.
February 12, 2016, Vancouver, BC – Taseko Mines Limited (TSX: TKO; NYSE MKT: TGB) (“Taseko” or the “Company”) announced today that it has filed a civil claim in the BC Supreme Court against the Canadian federal government.
The claim seeks damages in relation to the February 25, 2014 decision concerning the New Prosperity Project, a multi-billion dollar gold-copper deposit in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, Canada.
The lawsuit claims the Government of Canada and its agents failed to meet the legal duties that were owed to Taseko and that in doing so they caused and continue to cause damages, expenses and loss to Taseko.
Feb 15 Sumitomo Metal Mining, Japan’s second-biggest copper producer, said on Monday it would raise its stake in southeast Arizona’s Morenci open-pit copper mine by buying 13 percent from majority owner Freeport-McMoRan for $1 billion.
The move comes at a time when copper prices are near six-and-a-half-year lows. Last November, the company’s President Yoshiaki Nakazato said it was looking to acquire stakes in copper and gold mines, taking advantage of its sound finances and a slump in commodity prices to sustain future growth.
The acquisition will take Sumitomo Metal’s share in Morenci to 25 percent from 12 percent, while Sumitomo Corp holds 3 percent, leaving Freeport with the rest.
http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Proponents of Canada’s long-standing flow-through share tax incentive programme, which is available to mineral exploration companies to raise funds to look for new deposits, say that increased benefits could help resuscitate the domestic industry, even though signs are pointing towards a possible trough being reached in what has been one of the worst commodity price downturns in decades.
“Our number one priority, as we have been doing for the last decade now, is to get in front of the new Liberal government, to understand what their priorities are and to explain the value of the flow-through share programme to ensure that the framework is maintained – that’s the critical starting point.
We’ve done the cost-benefit analysis, and we need to make sure that everybody understands the importance of the flow-through regime,” PearTree Securities president Trent Mell told Mining Weekly Online in an interview.
Freeport-McMoRan Inc. on Monday said it reached a deal to sell part of its stake in an Arizona copper mine to one of the mine’s other owners, in an effort to pay down debt.
Phoenix-based Freeport, one of the world’s biggest copper miners, said it would sell a 13% ownership interest in its Morenci mine, located in the desert on the Arizona-New Mexico border, to Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. for $1 billion. The company said it would record a gain of $550 million on the deal, the difference between the sale price and the stake’s book value of $450 million.
Freeport Chief Executive Richard Adkerson said the transaction was part of the company’s plan to reduce what it owes to creditors “while retaining a portfolio of high-quality assets and resources.” Mr. Adkerson pledged last month to cut the company’s $20 billion debt by as much as $10 billion.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
As he unveiled a staggering loss of $5.6-billion (U.S.) in his company’s latest results, Anglo American chief executive Mark Cutifani couldn’t resist a few bitter potshots at the grandiose expansion dreams of the global mining industry.
“This industry has destroyed value again and again,” he told his audience of investment analysts in a blunt and scathing commentary on Tuesday. “We spent money on stupid things.”
Minutes earlier, Mr. Cutifani and his executives had been forced to defend Anglo American from questions about its latest credit downgrade. Embarrassingly, the company’s credit rating has just been pushing into “junk” status in a new assessment by Moody’s Investor Service this week, and the analysts wanted to know why.
http://www.financialpost.com/index.html
Debris from the exploding Ontario Liberal green energy rocket continues to land on the hapless citizens of the province. Gas plant scandals, soaring power rates, declining electricity output, massive subsidies to money-losing wind and solar, non-stop bafflegab from government ministers: when will it stop? Not now, and maybe never.
Details of the latest meteorite-sized chunk of the Dalton McGuinty/Kathleen Wynne green power blow-up are on display at the blog of energy consultant Tom Adams, who formerly served on the Ontario Independent Electricity Market Operator board of directors and the Ontario Centre for Excellence for Energy board of management
Adams picks up a story that made brief headlines in late 2012 when Windstream Energy, a U.S. company, filed a NAFTA complaint claiming $475 million in damages.
LONDON, Feb 14 Iran’s rich deposits of zinc, copper, gold and other minerals are tempting international investors after the lifting of Western sanctions, but development of the sector will take time and problems will have to be overcome.
A slump in metals prices and uncertainty about working with the Tehran government, which controls virtually all the country’s mines, means that many foreign mining firms are not scrambling to sign deals.
Nevertheless, some agreements have already been struck and other foreign firms have been looking at Iran’s mining and metals sector in the weeks following the scrapping of sanctions as part of a nuclear deal, which went into force last month.
http://www.thesudburystar.com/
Intake clinics to be held in Timmins in May could produce data showing a link between a deadly powder used in mines for more than 35 years and the incidence of neurological disease in miners.
United Steelworkers Local 6500 is working with Janice Martell of Elliot Lake on what she calls the McIntyre Powder Project, a campaign she began in 2014. Martell is convinced her father, Jim Hobbs of Massey, contracted Parkinson’s disease from the aluminum dust he breathed while working in Elliot Lake’s uranium mines.
Canisters of aluminum dust, produced by McIntyre Mine in Timmins, were sold to mining companies and used to fog dries or change rooms for miners as well as some areas underground.
http://www.nnsl.com/nwtnewsnorth/nwt.html
Gary Vivian, President of the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines.
One billion is an alarming number particularly when we learn it’s what our debt will soon be.
But how many people know we let $1 billion slip through our fingers, and have taken little action to fix it? “What,” you say? “How did we do that? Who is responsible?”
We lost it by turning our back on our mineral exploration industry, by ignoring investors’ needs, and worst of all, damaging our exploration reputation.
Finding mines is hard. It’s risky and expensive, requiring lots of investors’ money.
Company announces plans to exit Kumba in move away from iron ore. Anglo American announced on Tuesday long-awaited plans to restructure its portfolio and address its debt.
The mining group is looking to exit its controlling stake in Kumba Iron Ore, Africa’s largest producer of the steelmaking ingredient, after it said it will build its future around copper, platinum and diamonds.
“We’re looking at either a selldown in our position in Kumba as well as a potential demerger,” Rene Medori, the chief financial officer of London-based Anglo, which owns a 69.7% stake in Kumba, said on a conference call Tuesday. Anglo “will not expect to complete the transaction until sometime in 2017,” Medori said.
Iceland’s aluminum smelters are doing just fine even as the deepest market plunge in about seven years pressures production across the world.
That’s because most of them tap cheap power from the north Atlantic island’s vast stores of geothermal and hydro-power in contracts that are linked to the price of the metal. The island’s three smelters, run by Rio Tinto, Century Aluminum and Alcoa, last year contributed 38 percent of the $15.6 billion economy’s total exports.
“There are about 300 aluminum smelters in the world and there are probably fewer than five smelters anywhere that are paying less for power than Alcoa and Century pay in Iceland,” Ketill Sigurjonsson, chief executive officer of consultant Askja Energy Partners, said in an interview.
