2012 – Page 133 – Republic of Mining

Spiking oil prices could cripple economic recovery – by Nouriel Roubini (Toronto Star – March 20, 2012)

March 20, 2012

The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Nouriel Roubini is chairman of Roubini Global Economics, professor of economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University, and co-author of the book Crisis Economics.

Today’s fragile global economy faces many risks: the risk of another flare-up of the eurozone crisis; the risk of a worse-than-expected slowdown in China; and the risk that economic recovery in the United States will fizzle. But no risk is more serious than that posed by a further spike in oil prices.

The price of a barrel of Brent crude, which was well below $100 in 2011, recently peaked at $125 (U.S.). Gasoline prices in the U.S. are approaching $4 a gallon, a damaging threshold for consumer confidence, and will increase further during the high-demand summer season.

The reason is fear. Not only are oil supplies plentiful, but demand in the U.S. and Europe has been lower, owing to decreasing car use in the last few years and weak or negative GDP growth in the U.S. and the eurozone.

Australia finally imposes 30% mining tax – by James Grubel (Mineweb.com – March 19, 2012)

March 19, 2012

www.mineweb.com

In a major victory for Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s minority government, Australia’s parliament passed laws for a new 30% tax on iron ore and coal mine profits on Monday, ending a two-year battle with mining companies.

CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia’s parliament passed laws for a new 30 percent tax on iron ore and coal mine profits on Monday after a bruising two-year battle with mining companies, in a major victory for Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her struggling minority government.

The tax will affect about 30 companies, including global miners BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Xstrata, and aims to raise about A$10.6 billion ($11.2 billion) in its first three years. “This is indeed an historic day for economic reform, and an historic day for a fair go in Australia,” Treasurer Wayne Swan told parliament.

The tax, which is being closely watched by other resource-rich countries, is designed to spread the benefits of Australia’s resources boom to other sections of the economy by funding a cut in the company tax rate, higher payments into pension funds, and A$6 billion of infrastructure spending.

Canada’s North digs in for the good – and bad – of a mining boom – by Bradley Bouzane and Chantal Mack (Victoria Times Colonist – March 16, 2012)

March 19, 2012

http://www.timescolonist.com/index.html

You can see the effects of the mining boom in Canada’s North on the streets of its communities: There’s commotion; there’s optimism; and there’s money.

Boris Kotelewetz says he’s witnessed first-hand the changes growth in the mining sector across the three territories have brought to his community of Baker Lake, Nunavut. While he admits there’s a wave of economic prosperity sweeping through the region, he also warns of the dangers of short-sightedness, both in the industry and in the towns it leaves behind.

“I’ve seen all kinds of changes,” said Kotelewetz, who has lived in Baker Lake for 46 years.

“To me, it’s like when the whalers came and they needed fresh meat; they employed local people to take part in that. Then that industry died out. Then the Hudson’s Bay Co., came and they employed people in trapping and that industry kind of died out.

“Now we have mining coming along. Because it’s a non-renewable resource, it’s not everlasting. It’s just going to die out – certainly the gold mine will – and that will just be the end to another thing that started and stopped.”

Mining conference [PDAC] highlights First Nation issues – by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – March 16, 2012)

March 19, 2012

This article came from Wawatay News: http://www.wawataynews.ca/

For Neskantaga First Nation Chief Peter Moonias, the massive Prospectors and Developers Association mining conference was more than just a chance to promote the agreement his First Nation signed with three of its neighbours on building a transportation network to the Ring of Fire.

It was also a chance to bring a First Nation message of treaty rights in regards to land to companies and governments alike.

“The companies have to respect the communities, and understand the rights of treaties for First Nations people. They then have to sell that agreement to the government,” Moonias said. “It’s important to carry the message to companies and government that Native people have that right to the land, through treaties.”

Moonias, along with chiefs from Eabametoong, Nibinamik and Webequie made a splash at the conference on Mar. 5 when they signed an agreement to pursue the development of an East-West transportation corridor to the Ring of Fire.

Ahead of the [mining potential] curve [in northern Ontario]- by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – March 16, 2012)

March 19, 2012

This article came from Wawatay News: http://www.wawataynews.ca/

One thing was overwhelmingly clear during last week’s Prospectors and Developers mining conference in Toronto: the eyes of the mining world are focused squarely on northern Ontario.

Booths for the two big Ring of Fire players, Noront and Cliffs Resources, were packed all week. But it was not only the Ring of Fire getting attention. From gold mining around Red Lake to uranium and other heavy metals near Lake Nipigon, the mineral potential across the vast north was on display.

That incredible amount of interest in northern Ontario makes it all the more important for governments – First Nations, provincial and federal – to get ahead of the curve and plan now for the future.

There is no doubt that mining, if done well, can have many benefits for communities and the region. There is also no doubt that if poorly planned and/or poorly managed, mining can leave huge messes – both environmentally and socially – behind it.

‘I see other people trying to tell us how to run our land’ [KI First Nation] – by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – March 16, 2012)

March 19, 2012

This article came from Wawatay News: http://www.wawataynews.ca/

KI lands and resource Stephen Chapman was a main speaker during the KI rally in Toronto, outside the Prospectors and Developers Association conference. He spoke to Wawatay News about his community’s struggle to protect its traditional lands from mining and on watching First Nations involvement in the Prospectors conference.

Wawatay (wwt): First off, why was it important to bring this message to Toronto?

Stephen Chapman (SC): Toronto is a big place. We want to spread the word as much as possible, to Ontario, Canada and all over the world.

Wwt: The last time you went through this there was a lot of support down here in Toronto. Does that make it easier this time?

SC: Yes. We made connections before, and our connections are growing. They support us and they spread the word.

Cost overruns, write downs leave Kinross Gold priced for takeover – by Pav Jordan and Euan Rocha ( Mineweb.com – March 19, 2012)

March 19, 2012

www.mineweb.com

With the miner’s stock having fallen by nearly half since September, bankers see it a target for bigger players who are always on the hunt for deposits to replenish their reserves.

TORONTO (Reuters) – Cost overruns and a massive writedown have knocked Kinross Gold’s stock so low that some bankers see it as Canada’s biggest potential takeover play, though obstacles to a bid for the senior gold producer may be too big to surmount.

Kinross, the world’s seventh-largest gold miner, owns some huge, largely unexploited assets spread across four continents, making it an appealing target for bigger players who are always on the hunt for deposits to replenish their reserves.

Despite a huge reserve base its stock, which traded for nearly C$19 at the start of 2011, closed at C$9.90 on Friday as mounting concerns about the cost of developing its flagship project sapped investor confidence.

U.S. energy policy is fuelled by fantasy – by Charles Krauthammer (National Post – March 17, 2012)

March 19, 2012

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Yes, of course, presidents have no direct control over gas prices. But the American people know something about this president and his disdain for oil. The “fuel of the past,” he contemptuously calls it. To the American worker who doesn’t commute by government motorcade and is getting fleeced every week at the pump, oil seems very much a fuel of the present — and of the foreseeable future.

President Obama incessantly claims energy open-mindedness, insisting that his policy is “all of the above.” Except, of course, for drilling

— off the Mid-Atlantic coast (as Virginia, for example, wants),

— off the Florida Gulf Coast (instead, the Castro brothers will drill near there),

— in the broader Gulf of Mexico (where drilling in 2012 is expected to drop 30% below pre-moratorium forecasts),

— in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (more than half the size of England, the drilling footprint being the size of Dulles Airport),

Why Hugo Chavez (alive) is good for Canada’s oil sands – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – March 16, 2012)

March 19, 2012

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

CALGARY • It’s been almost a decade since scores of highly skilled Venezuelan oil workers like Petro Pereira, fired and blackballed by dictator Hugo Chavez for protesting his tightening grip on the national oil company, made their way north to Alberta.

Today, word that an aggressive cancer may soon put an end to his dictatorship and potentially reactivate Venezuela’s once-mighty oil industry has many reassessing the future.

Mr. Pereira, a world expert on heavy oil who is now a scholar at the University of Calgary, is so engrossed in research to improve oil sands upgrading he plans to stay put.

But the state of Mr. Chavez’s health is a hot topic in the colony of expats, and many are talking about returning if there is regime change in the South American country, he said.

Oil sands are a triumph for the human ‘environment’ – by Rex Murphy (National Post – March 17, 2012)

March 18, 2012

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National, and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.

I’m lucky to be going to Fort McMurray, Alta. this weekend with colleagues from CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup. I have a great wish to see what the green Jeremiahs deem to be the greatest blot on the visage of Mother Gaia, and to meet some of the soulless folk who work there. After all, environmentalists might ask: Who would take a job on a site that threatens the destiny of the planet, except people whose souls have been bought off with oil-company lucre?

Outside Fort McMurray, it is impossible to escape the furor over the Alberta oilsands. Its product is routinely described, lazily and slanderously, as the dirtiest on the planet. The Premier of Ontario, a province that owes much of its prosperity to its huge automobile industry shivers when he looks at Alberta, mutters about the dark forces of the “petro-dollar,” and implied (until he was scolded and half-recanted) that somehow Ontario’s fretful financial state is Alberta’s fault.

It’s almost a fantasy disconnect. Dalton Mcguinty can throw billions at General Motors and urge the feds to do the same, all to save the automobile industry. He ignores that four decades or more of Ontario’s prosperity wasn’t founded on windmills: It was based on gas-guzzling cars and trucks.

Like selling off the family [Canada corporate] jewels – by Diane Francis (National Post – March 17, 2012)

March 18, 2012

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

News that foreigners are circling around another important Canadian company, Viterra Inc., is upsetting and again raises the question as to what is in Canada’s “national interest.”

The question of national interest is what Investment Canada must evaluate if foreigners win the bid for Viterra or any Canadian company. But the question is easily answered. Losing any sizable head office to a foreigner is never in the national interest.

And legislation to that effect should be passed immediately. To use a military metaphor, Canada is at war with the world for living standards. Its head offices are its beachheads, and strategic institutes. Its CEOs are its generals and are answerable, and often helpful policywise, to governments. They are responsible for making their operations profitable but they must also uphold Canada’s laws.

But if head offices are moved to another jurisdiction, the loyalty, and respect for laws, moves with them. Foreign CEOs, or generals, can move Canadian operations, patents, research, employees and tax expenditures around the world to suit their purpose and to suit the purpose of the jurisdiction in which they operate.

Brazil’s commodity curse – by Matthew Bristow And Juan Pablo (National Post – March 17, 2012)

March 18, 2012March 18, 2012

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Bloomberg News

RIO DE JANEIRO. In 2007, Brazilian geologists made the biggest oil find in the Americas in three decades. Buried more than eight kilometres below sea level, the discovery was estimated to raise the country’s crude reserves by 62%.

Brazil was already the world’s natural-resource powerhouse: its biggest exporter of coffee, sugar, orange juice and beef. The prospect of it becoming a major energy power as well prompted then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to declare amid a rush of patriotism that “God is Brazilian.”

Brazil has struggled for half a century to break its dependence on commodities, grappling with the socalled resource curse. Depending on how profits are managed, the new oil wealth could be a godsend that drives a new era of development or a burden that holds the nation back, said Alberto Ramos, a senior Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York.

“They can be Norway, or they can be many other countries where oil did not bring growth and development,” Mr. Ramos said in a telephone interview. “You’d better be smart and forward-looking about using it, otherwise it might hurt you.”

Canada Sees Mining Resurgence: Scott Jobin-Bevans – by Sally Lowder and Brian Sylvester (The Gold Report – March 16, 2012)

March 18, 2012

http://www.theaureport.com/

Amid the bustle of the 80th Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention in Toronto, The Gold Report sat down with PDAC President Scott Jobin-Bevans for his take on the challenges the mining industry faces. In this exclusive interview, he covers a wide range of topics, from skilled labor shortages to the trials of mining in remote northern Canada.

The Gold Report: What are the key challenges the mining industry faces in 2012–2013?

Scott Jobin-Bevans: PDAC, under the leadership of newly appointed Executive Director Ross Gallinger, will be conducting a strategic review involving the board of directors, staff and gathering membership input. There are a number of issues facing the association and the industry, and I am sure that human resources challenges will surface as a key issue.

TGR: When you say human resources, what are you talking about specifically?

The Metallurgical Achilles’ Heel of the United States – by Richard (Rick) Mills (Ahead of the Herd.com – March 2012)

March 18, 2012

http://aheadoftheherd.com/

“The United States has consistently maintained that a strong domestic minerals and metals industry is an essential contributor to the nation’s economic and security interests…The United States has a fundamental interest in maintaining a competitive minerals and metals sector that will continue to contribute significantly to the nation’s economic strength and military security. The industry represents an $87 billion enterprise that employs over 500,000 U.S. workers and provides the material foundation for U.S. manufacturing.” The 1980 National Academy of Sciences executive summary of “Competitiveness of the U.S. Minerals and Metals Industry”

A concise summary of U.S. mineral vulnerabilities was presented to the Industrial Readiness Panel of the House Armed Services Committee as early as 1980 by General Alton D. Slay, Commander Air Force Systems Command. He pointed out that technological advances have increased the demand for exotic minerals at the same time that legislative and regulatory restrictions have been imposed on the U.S. mining industry.

The 1981 report “A Congressional Handbook on U.S. Minerals Dependency/Vulnerability” singled out eight materials “for which the industrial health and defense of the United States is most vulnerable to potential supply disruptions” – chromium, cobalt, manganese, the platinum group of metals, titanium, bauxite/aluminum, columbium, and tantalum – the first five have been called “the metallurgical Achilles’ heel of our civilization.”