Zijin Mining, China’s largest gold miner and one of the country’s top copper producers, has begun operations at its Cukaru Peki copper and gold mine in Serbia.
The asset, part of the Timok project, is expected to make the Balkan country Europe’s second-largest copper producer. Zijin has poured $474 million to date into the new underground mine, which is slated to have annual capacity of 3.3 million tonnes of ore.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/
A researcher at Laurentian University’s Living with Lakes Centre is planting the seeds for a more sustainable and environmentally friendly land reclamation process.
Jonathan Lavigne has partnered with Collège Boréal to explore the potential for pulp and paper mill waste and municipal biosolids as an alternative to the lime and fertilizer method of treating soils damaged by years of acid rain deposition.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/
When Alberta country singer Corb Lund wrote a song 12 years ago about a rancher determined to defend the landscape he loves against encroaching development, it was just a campfire yarn. “It was just kind of a story, a fictional story,” Lund said.
Events have since caught up to the tune “This Is My Prairie.” The summits and foothills of Alberta’s Rocky Mountains have been leased along a vast stretch of their range for coal exploration and a series of companies have announced plans for open-pit mines.
According to the latest report (August 2021) from Roskill, the leading consultancy in critical metals supply chain intelligence, the outlook for the lithium market is dominated by rapid and sustained demand growth, driven by the use of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries in automotive and energy storage applications (ESS).
Furthermore, Roskill expect that fundamental changes in operation size and the range of lithium production sources will be needed to meet forecast demand growth and avoid a growing supply deficit and for this to succeed, producers will require adequate lithium compound prices to attract investment and incentivise the develop of lithium resources, a factor which is expected to see lithium prices well supported over the period to 2031.
https://www.miningmagazine.com/
Brazil-based Vale reported increased production of iron ore and nickel in the third quarter, while nickel and copper production declined due to labour disruptions.
Iron ore production was up by 18.1% to 89.4 million tonnes, due to better weather in the Northern System, increased production at the Vargem Grande dry processing plant, and Itabira’s improved performance, Vale said.
Embedded in the 657-page report of the public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns by commissioner Steve Allan is excellent advice for green activists. If they want to be seen as credible, if they want the public to believe they’re fully on the up-and-up, it’s best they be completely transparent about who is giving them money and pulling their strings.
As the Allan report makes evident , that standard wasn’t always met in the last 15 years during the campaign to prevent new pipelines from being built to ship Alberta oil and gas.
The metals and mining sector is a massive resource producer and a massive resource consumer. It exhumes raw materials and transforms them, through energy-intensive processes, into the modern features of our built environment.
In so doing, it also creates about a quarter of the reported emissions of the world’s 12,000 largest companies. As with other hard-to-abate sectors like cement production, or marine shipping, significantly lowering the emissions profiles of metals and mining will be crucial to meaningfully decarbonizing the global economy.
Renewables going up is not translating into oil and gas going down
Climate crisis plus energy crisis does not equal a good path to net-zero emissions. Policy wonks at the upcoming COP26 conference in Glasgow later this month will have a tough time with this calculus.
It’s been a while since the phrase energy crisis has been thrown around. When I hear it, I have déjà vu to the 1970s, the late-2000s and other lesser episodes in between. I reflect on societal hardship, ugly politics and uncertain outcomes.
The Metals Company has big ambitions to mine the depths of the Pacific Ocean for rare earth metals used to power everything from iPhones to electric vehicles. The problem is that it is short on cash.
The Canadian start-up went public last month through a special purpose acquisition company but has been left high and dry by one investor who was meant to hand over 60 per cent of $330m it had been counting on to start digging but has now all but disappeared.
https://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/
In the dog days of summer in 1916, directors of the International Nickel Co. — or Inco — met to discuss the acquisition of land in Port Colborne, with its abundance of access to hydroelectricity and transportation, as the site for the company’s first Canadian nickel refinery.
With that the die was cast and Port Colborne, then a sleepy little village at the entrance to the Welland Canal, would never be the same. “It changed the whole of Port Colborne; it refined and defined Port Colborne,” said Port Colborne Historical and Marine Museum assistant co-ordinator Michelle Mason.
Oct 21 (Reuters) – Low global supplies of copper – a key metal used in wiring, electric vehicles and other electronics – will crimp global climate ambitions unless regulators green light more mines, the chief executive of Freeport-McMoRan Inc (FCX.N) said on Thursday.
The warning comes as global leaders plan to discuss climate mitigation efforts later this month at the COP26 conference even as some host communities and environmentalists increasingly oppose new mines for so-called strategic metals.
Rio Tinto (ASX, LON, NYSE: RIO) joined the rising chorus of companies and analysts warning of an imminent and “significant” supply gap for lithium, as demand for the metal used in electric vehicles (EV) and green technologies continues to soar.
The world’s second-largest miner, which greenlighted in July the $2.4 billion Jadar lithium project in Serbia, believes the supply gap needs to be addressed “within the next ten years.”
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Evolution Mining exhibiting patience in restoring Red Lake operations to a premier mining camp
Australia’s Evolution Mining is very keen to open up mining on “multiple” fronts within the next few years at its Red Lake complex.
Executive chair Jake Klein delivered those remarks Oct. 20 in releasing quarterly results which included 23,768 ounces of gold production from its combined operations in the northwestern Ontario camp during a three-month period, ending Sept. 30.
The forklift, that vehicle with a pronged device in front for lifting heavy loads that’s found mostly in dingy warehouses and out-of-the-way loading docks, rarely enters the conversation about how Canada can grab a coveted piece of the rapidly growing battery-powered electric vehicle market.
Yet earlier this month, Mississauga-based Stromcore Energy Inc., which assembles lithium-ion batteries for forklifts at a modest plant in Ontario, announced preliminary plans to build what could be, if successful, Canada’s first large scale lithium-ion battery cell factory.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/
Both companies looking to buy out Noront Resources
Two Australian mining giants are doing their best to convince investors they have the superior deal, to takeover Noront Resources and its properties in the Ring of Fire.
The mining area, about 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, Ont. has chromite, nickel and copper deposits. The two Australian companies, BHP and Wyloo Metals have been engaged in a battle to have the mineral rights in the remote mining area, to which one analyst compares to the long producing Sudbury basin.
