2012 – Page 165 – Republic of Mining

NEWS RELEASE: Co-Founders of Hunter Dickinson Inc. Inducted into Canadian Mining Hall of Fame

January 17, 2012

VANCOUVER, Jan. 16, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Hunter Dickinson Inc. (HDI) is proud to announce that Robert Hunter and Robert Dickinson were inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame on January 12, 2012, in a gala ceremony in recognition of their outstanding lifetime achievements in mineral exploration and mining. They join a select group of prominent and respected leaders from the minerals industry who represent the very best of Canadian mining and its accomplishments.

Mr. Hunter and Mr. Dickinson co-founded HDI more than 25 years ago, forming an entrepreneurial business that has led to the development of one of the most successful teams in Canadian mining history. Today, HDI is a diversified, global mining group that has advanced mineral projects in Canada and around the world. The HDI track record of success includes 19 public and private companies, and dozens of mineral properties on six continents. Notable projects within the HDI fold include Mount Milligan, Kemess and Prosperity in BC, Pebble in Alaska and Xietongmen in China.

Both Mr. Hunter and Mr. Dickinson have been recognized by industry and business for their exceptional contributions to the Canadian and international minerals industry. Awards received include the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s Developer of the Year (1990), Mining Association of BC’s Mining Industry Person of the Year (2000), Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year® (2004) and PDAC’s Thayer Lindsley International Discovery (2007).

NEWS RELEASE: QUADRA FNX & SAGAMOK ANISHNAWBEK SIGN MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING FOR THE VICTORIA PROJECT

January 17, 2012

Sudbury, Canada– January 17, 2012 – Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation (“Sagamok”) and Quadra FNX Mining Ltd. (the “Company” or “Quadra FNX”) (TSX: QUX) are pleased to announce that they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) that will serve as a foundation for a working relationship between the parties with respect to the Advanced Exploration Program at Quadra FNX’s Victoria Project until an Impacts and Benefits Agreement (“IBA”) is concluded. The agreement process is being pursued in conjunction with environmental permitting for the Victoria Project.

The MOU with Sagamok was signed by Chief Paul Eshkakogan and Michael Winship, Chief Operating Officer, Quadra FNX in Sudbury on December 23rd, 2011.

“This Memorandum of Understanding will facilitate open and timely dialogue between Quadra FNX and our First Nation as it relates to the Company’s activities to develop the Victoria Advanced Exploration Project. We look forward to negotiating an IBA that will provide benefits for our members and ensure the environment and our traditional territories are protected” said Sagamok Anishnawbek Chief, Paul Eshkakogan.

Quadra boosts ore estimate at Victoria mine – by Star Staff (Sudbury Star – January 17, 2012)

January 17, 2012

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Quadra FNX Mining announced Monday it has increased the resource estimate of its Victoria project in Sudbury by 16%.

The results from the company’s 2011 drill program at Victoria led Quadra FNX to boost resource tonnage to 14.5 million tonnes. When operating, the mine will produce nickel, copper and precious metals.

In addition, geophysical surveys show possible extensions of Victoria. Diamond drilling in 2012 will test these areas, Quadra FNX said in a release.

Even before the latest drill results became known, Quadra FNX had said the Victoria deposit was an exciting find. Its goal is to begin production in 2017, creating hundreds of new jobs.

The Vancouver, B.C.-based company also said that during 2011, it produced 220 million pounds of copper, 103,000 ounces of precious metals and 10 million pounds of nickel.

Ottawa stalls foreign takeover review – by Tara Perkins (Globe and Mail – January 17, 2012)

January 17, 2012

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

The Harper government appears to have dropped plans to clarify the rules for foreign takeovers, leaving investors in the dark as to how Ottawa would react if an acquirer were to bid for a major Canadian company.

When the government killed BHP Billiton Ltd.’s proposed takeover of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan in late 2010, the industry minister at the time, Tony Clement, promised to spell out the principles to guide the global business community on takeovers of Canadian companies. He also said he would ask the House of Commons industry committee to study the Investment Canada Act, the piece of legislation that governs such deals, and suggest improvements to it.

But more than a year later, new Industry Minister Christian Paradis is still quiet on the issue, and the industry committee is not studying the matter, according to two of its members, an indication that the issue is not high on the government’s agenda.

Canada: A global energy superpower – by Joe Oliver (National Post – January 17, 2012)

January 17, 2012

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

Joe Oliver is Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources. These remarks, from a speech titled Canada: A global energy superpower, were made Monday at the Hart House Alumni Committee Dinner Series in Toronto.

Today, the oil sands account for one-10th of 1% — that is one, one-thousandth — of total global greenhouse gas emissions. Studies have shown that life-cycle GHG emissions from the oil sands — the well-to-wheels calculation — are similar to, and in some cases lower than, several of the heavy crude oils produced elsewhere in the world, including California.

Close to 90% of the water used in the oil sands is recycled.

Scientists with my department are working with a consortium of oil sands companies to develop new technologies to deal with tailings. Rather than sitting in open ponds, we may soon see the day where tailings are reduced and compressed into dry, stackable blocks.

Yes, it takes time to reclaim land that has been used for oil sands mining, but it is being done. I walked through a forest in northern Alberta last summer. You would never know it had once been part of an oil sands project.

PwC 2012 GOLD PRICE REPORT: Keeping up with the price of gold

January 17, 2012

Click Here: 2012 Gold Price Report

PwC’s 2012 Gold Price Report assesses gold companies globally, with companies surveyed representing 26.5 million ounces of gold mined in 2011, and 37.75 million ounces to be mined in 2012.

Eighty percent of the mining executives surveyed expect the price of gold to continue to increase in 2012, with the majority of respondents expecting gold to peak at $2,000 in 2012. Sixty-two per cent of respondents reported the price of gold was positively impacting their stock price, yet the impact was less than expected. Gold has risen 23.4% so far this year, but the S&P/TSX Global Gold Index increased only 3.9% through November 30, 2011.

One main driver behind this unprecedented disparity between the price of gold and gold stocks is the recent popularity of ETFs. This disparity is having an impact on how executives plan to spend their increased cash flow:

Capital spending and the proposed mining-related investment that lies ahead – by Paul Stothart (CIM Magazine – December, 2011)

January 16, 2012

Founded in 1898, the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM) is a technical society of professionals in the Canadian minerals, metals, materials and energy industries.

Paul Stothart is vice-president, economic affairs, at the Mining Association of Canada. He is responsible for advancing the industry’s interests regarding federal tax, trade, investment, transport and energy issues.

The single most important contribution that companies can make to Canada is in the form of capital expenditure. In the mining sphere, capital spending pays for new mine construction and increases to existing mine capacity. It generates process and technology improvements and the modernization and expansion of mills, smelters and refineries.

It leads to the implementation of new product lines and improved energy efficiency and environmental performance. When companies commit to a particular capital spending program, the direct result is new jobs, contracts and production, as well as more modern and productive facilities.

Capital spending plans are driven by an array of variables, including: projected future global market demand and mineral price trends; degree of confidence in existing plant capacity; level of comfort with host government rules and regulations; and the state of a company’s existing financing capabilities.

A Mining Law Whose Time Has Passed – by Robert M. Hughes and Carol Woody (New York Times – January 11, 2012)

January 16, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/

Op-Ed Contributors Robert M. Hughes and Carol Ann Woody are fisheries scientists based in Corvallis, Ore., and Anchorage, respectively.

IN 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed a mining law to spur the development of the West by giving hard-rock mining precedence over other uses of federal land. But the law has long since outlived its purpose, and its environmental consequences have been severe.

Mining claims for copper, gold, uranium and other minerals cover millions of those acres, and the law, now 140 years old, makes it nearly impossible to block extraction, no matter how serious the potential consequences. Soaring metal prices are now driving new mine proposals across the West.

Oregon’s Chetco River is one example. The river’s gin-clear waters teem with wild trout and salmon, including giant Chinook salmon tipping scales at more than 60 pounds. In 1988, Congress designated the Chetco a national wild and scenic river “to be protected for the benefit of present and future generations.”

But the river is now threatened by proposals to mine gold along almost half of its approximately 55-mile length. Suction dredges would vacuum up the river bottom searching for gold, muddying water and disrupting clean gravel that salmon need to spawn.

In New Control Over Diamonds, Smugglers Pay in Mozambique – by John Eligon (New York Times – January 6, 2012)

January 16, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/

ESPUNGABERA, Mozambique — The last time Mike Phiri was on his hands and knees, clawing through the rough rock of the diamond fields just across the border in Zimbabwe, he dared a soldier to shoot him.

Mr. Phiri and his fellow diamond smugglers had gotten into an argument with the soldier because, for the second consecutive night, he had directed them to a patch of the rich fields where there were no diamonds to be mined. And so they refused to pay him a bribe for allowing them onto the fields, in an area known as Marange. The soldier threatened force.

“If you want to shoot, shoot,” Mr. Phiri recalled barking at the soldier. “But I’m not paying.”

Mr. Phiri and his comrades walked away unharmed, but in more than three months he has not dared return to the fields, an acknowledgment of the increasing dangers for the black-market miners who once dominated an area that may be one of the world’s most lucrative diamond troves.

[Plan Nord] Quebec plan may be blueprint for Northwest – Special to The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal (January 16, 2012)

January 16, 2012

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

Northwestern Ontario is hoping to gain some perspective and insight from Quebec when it comes to economic development in Northern regions.

Members of National Public Relations are to be in Thunder Bay on Wednesday to provide information on Plan Nord, one of the largest economic, environmental and social projects in Canada.

Plan Nord, designed for Northern Quebec, will be carried out for the next 25 years. It is estimated that it will generate more than $80 billion in investments and create more than 20,000 jobs a year.

Members of the Northwestern Ontario Joint Task Force are eager to learn more about Plan Nord, and see how it might impact Northwestern Ontario and if similar strategies can be applied in the region.

“Given the $80-billion program, is it going to be more attractive for investment than Northwestern Ontario,” task force chairman Iain Angus, said Sunday.

Why is Ontario’s Government Panicking About the Deficit? – by Livio Di Matteo (January 8, 2012)

January 16, 2012

Livio Di Matteo is Professor of Economics at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Visit his new Economics Blog “Northern Economist” at http://ldimatte.shawwebspace.ca/

The Ontario government’s final approach to deficit reduction has begun with selected leaks of economist Don Drummond’s “first draft” of his review via media interviews designed to dramatically present deficit reduction. A column by Martin Regg Cohn of the Toronto Star titled “Brace for a firestorm across Ontario” outlines cuts as high as 30 percent for some Ontario ministries with health and education being spared “somewhat”.

Yet, the same column has Don Drummond using the language of the Wall Street protestors by talking about how just one percent of the population accounts for half of hospital spending and one third of total health expenditures. Martin Regg Cohn’s most recent column on Don Drummond’s prescriptions titled “The grim reaper punctures Ontario’s fiscal fantasies” points out how unrealistic balancing the budget by 2017-18 was and shares the blame on fiscal forecasting by mentioning that the opposition parties embraced the same timetable during the election.

What is going on here? All of this advance work by the Ontario government reduces what should be a serious policy problem requiring a firm and measured approach to some kind of fiscal porn reality show.

MINERS AT WORK, A HISTORY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA’S GOLD RUSHES – by B. Griffin (Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria, B.C.)

January 14, 2012

ABSTRACT

The search for gold is the single most dramatic event of British Columbia’s early history. Although European settlement originally was founded on furs, it was the gold rushes of 1858 through the 1860s that changed the direction of development in this province for considerable time. These gold rushes not only brought a sharp increase in population and wealth but also initiated development of an early infrastructure of roads and services and directly influenced the shape of British Columbia’s politics.

It has been estimated that between 1860 and 1880 about $35 000 000 worth of gold was extracted from the 130 square kilometres (50 square miles) surrounding Barkerville. Although the later gold rushes were smaller, they also played an important role in our history.

The rush to British Columbia was only one of a series of sudden shifts in population and wealth that resulted from the search for placer gold. California and Australia both attracted hordes of miners in search of riches. This paper places the British Columbia gold rush in a world context; it drew less world attention and was smaller than either the Californian or Australian rushes.

NEWS RELEASE: AME BC Salutes Canadian Mining Hall of Fame Inductees

January 14, 2012

AME BC represents 4,000 thousand individual and 360 corporate members and is the predominant voice of mineral exploration and mine development in British Columbia.

Vancouver, B.C. — January 13, 2012 — The Association for Mineral Exploration BC (AME BC) salutes Robert Hunter (1927-2007) and Robert Dickinson, who were jointly inducted into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame on January 12 in recognition of their outstanding lifetime achievements to the Canadian minerals industry.

Hunter and Dickinson are founders of Hunter Dickinson Inc. Today, because of the vision and leadership of Mr. Hunter and Mr. Dickinson, HDI is a diversified, global mining group with more than 25 years of mineral development success. From its head office in Vancouver, B.C., HDI applies its unique strengths and capabilities to acquire, develop, operate and monetize mineral properties that provide consistently superior returns to shareholders.

HDI is characterized by the drive and commitment of its founders, senior management and multi-disciplinary team. It is known for its technical excellence, experience and reliability. And it is passionate about bringing responsible mineral development to life in creative ways for the benefit of shareholders, partners and communities.

Think tank bullish on Sudbury in 2012 – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – January 14, 2012)

January 15, 2012January 14, 2012

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

There is yet another indication Sudbury’s economy will grow in the coming year. The Conference Board of Canada is predicting the Nickel City’s gross domestic product will increase 2% in 2012 because of what it calls “moderate growth” in the mining and construction sectors.

That forecast is included in the board’s Metropolitan Outlook- Winter 2012, which was released this week. The report offers an annual analysis of 27 Canadian census metropolitan areas.

Jean-Charles Cachon, an economist and professor of strategy in Laurentian University’s Faculty of Management, said GDP growth of 2% is significant, given the ups and downs Sudbury has experienced over the years. Add 2% to the value of “everything that’s being produced, everything that’s being done” in Sudbury, said Cachon.

Towns vie to be the final resting spot for Canada’s nuclear garbage – by Anna Mehler Paperny (Globe and Mail – January 14, 2014)

January 14, 2012

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

As roadside attractions go, “Home of Canada’s Nuclear Waste Burial Ground” isn’t one you’d normally put on a souvenir keychain.

But strange as the title sounds, nine Canadian communities are in the running to claim it – along with the opportunity to host the country’s spent uranium in underground bunkers for the rest of time.

The towns, scattered across Saskatchewan and Ontario, are responding to a call for volunteers from an organization the federal government has charged with finding a permanent resting place for Canada’s radioactive detritus. They’re a combination of native reserves, old mining and lumber towns and cottage enclaves. Many have spent the past decade watching their populations shrink and economies crater, and are desperate for an economic boost – even if it comes with an eternity’s worth of radioactive waste.