2012 – Page 6 – Republic of Mining

Mine CEO [Darryl Stretch] accuses chiefs of slander – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Star – December 17, 2012)

December 17, 2012

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

The president of a gold prospecting company has accused two First Nations chiefs of making “slanderous and defamatory remarks” against him in the media.

Darryl Stretch, the president of Solid Gold Resources Corporation, has given Dave Babin, chief of the Wahgoshig First Nation, and Harvey Yesno, grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, until today to issue a public apology for comments they made at a Sudbury press conference on Nov. 7.

“In the event that you do not respond to this notice I will take whatever action is available to me,” Stretch said in his letter to Babin and Yesno. Babin has said he has no plans to respond to Stretch’s request for a public apology. The three parties have feuded over Stretch’s requests to do mining exploration on First Nation territory.

In March, Stretch told the Globe and Mail the Wahgoshig First Nation wanted his company to pay $100,000 to study whether its drilling would be on a burial ground.

“It’s not my obligation to go find arrowheads for those people, period,” Stretch told the Globe. “If they don’t like you, you don’t work. What kind of deal is that? Because I didn’t do it right, the way the Indians wanted me to? Because I didn’t give them money? Because I didn’t beg them for permission to go? It’s just ridiculous, the whole concept.”

U.S. ruling over Teck’s Trail, B.C. smelter may have ripple effect – by Dene Moore (Globe and Mail – December 17, 2012)

December 17, 2012

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.

TRAIL, B.C. — On a beach in northeast Washington state near the Canadian border, Patti Bailey grabs a handful of what looks like sand and rolls the dark grains through her hands.

It’s slag, the grainy waste from the Teck Resources Ltd. lead and zinc smelter in Trail, B.C., about 10 kilometres north of the border.

“They’re little time bombs and they’re releasing zinc, copper, arsenic and other metals into the environment,” said Ms. Bailey, an environmental planner for the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

A Washington state judge has ruled that Teck is liable for the costs of cleaning up contamination in the Columbia River south of the border from decades of dumping slag and effluent from the company’s Trail operations.

In a decision announced late last week, Judge Lonny Suko ruled that, “for decades Teck’s leadership knew its slag and effluent flowed from Trail downstream and are now found in Lake Roosevelt, but nonetheless Teck continued discharging wastes into the Columbia River.”

Why training workers in Canada beats importing them from abroad – by Barrie McKenna (Globe and Mail – December 17, 2012)

December 17, 2012

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.

OTTAWA — Fast-tracking the entry of foreign workers to toil in Canada’s mines, oil fields and construction sites is certainly expedient. The work is there. So bring them in and get it done, for the sake of the economy. But a rented foreign work force is hardly an enduring solution to a skills shortage that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has called “the biggest challenge our country faces.” At best, it’s a stop-gap.

Labour shortages are now a permanent feature of Canada’s labour landscape. The country is staring at a decade or more of critical labour scarcities as the massive baby boom generation retires and the economy grows. Hundreds of thousands of jobs will go begging for electricians, welders, pipe fitters, heavy equipment mechanics and many other trades.

The federal government’s recent announcement that it intends to bring in an extra 3,000 skilled tradespeople next year may be welcome news for employers.

It’s one thing to bring in foreigners to do jobs Canadians can’t or won’t do. Farmers have been doing it for years to harvest crops. But the program betrays the national interest if it is being used as a cover to import workers whose only asset is a willingness to work for a lot less than Canadians.

Battle for Inmet Mining turns hostile – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – December 17, 2012)

December 17, 2012

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.

First Quantum Minerals Ltd. has made a hostile, $5.1-billion takeover offer for Inmet Mining Corp., taking the bid directly to shareholders after two earlier offers were snubbed by the owner of one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper assets.

First Quantum, Canada’s largest pure-play copper producer, is offering $72 a share to Inmet, compared with an earlier approach of $70 a share, or $4.9-billion, which Inmet rejected on the grounds that it was “highly conditional” and not in shareholders’ interests. First Quantum’s initial offer, made in late November, was $62.50 a share.

The cash-and-stock offer comes a few days after Inmet raised its copper reserves estimate on its flagship copper project in Central America, Cobre Panama, by 27 per cent and extended the expected mine life by nine years.

Cobre Panama will be one of the few large-scale copper projects to be developed in coming years. It will produce some 300,000 tonnes of copper a year, worth about $1.1-billion (U.S) at current prices and putting it on a similar scale to giant mines in Chile and Peru. The project has had its challenges, among them sharply rising costs and concerns about how its owners will foot a development bill of $6.2-billion.

NEWS RELEASE: Wabauskang First Nation Heads to Court Over Rubicon Mineral’s Phoenix Gold Mine Project in Red Lake

December 17, 2012

Wabauskang First Nation

Treaty 3
December 17, 2012

Wabauskang First Nation has instructed its lawyers to file a lawsuit at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice opposing Rubicon Mineral’s proposed Phoenix Gold Mine project in Red Lake, Ontario.

“This has been an extremely frustrating process for our First Nation from day one,” said Wabauskang Chief Leslie Cameron. “Despite our concerns that the entire process review was deeply flawed, Rubicon refused to withdraw its mine application last fall and Ontario approved it over our objections. We didn’t want to go to court, so even though we don’t think Ontario had the authority to approve the mine, we tried to work with the company over the last year to resolve our concerns. We’ve been unsuccessful, so we’re forced to go to court to ensure that our interests are protected.”

Relying on last year’s court win by the Grassy Narrows First Nation in Keewatin, Wabauskang has consistently taken the position that only Canada, not Ontario, can justify an infringement of its Treaty rights. Wabauskang has also repeatedly complained to both Ontario and the federal government that constitutional obligations to consult and accommodate have been wrongly delegated to mining companies. Both Ontario and Canada have ignored Wabauskang’s concerns.

Considering the next Nexen – by Conrad Black (National Post – December 15, 2012)

December 17, 2012

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

The federal government’s new guidelines on foreign acquisitions of Canadian companies are commendable, as far as they go. They require investment reciprocity on the part of the nation of the company seeking to acquire Canadian assets, and mandate special scrutiny in cases involving our natural resources — especially the oil sands.

Stephen Harper was accurate in saying that it was not sensible to have privatized PetroCanada, while indulging unlimited acquisitions of other petroleum assets in this country by interests controlled by foreign governments.

On the other hand, the strategic value of our oil sands might not prove to be as significant as some expect. New oil and gas technologies already have served to reduced U.S. oil imports from 60% to 45% of that country’s requirements. And that trend now seems likely to continue until the U.S. retrieves its status of energy self-sufficiency that started to slip away in the Eisenhower era.

This cannot fail to reduce international oil prices, which may slip back down to $50 a barrel. Given this, sales of oil sands assets and companies at prices tied to current oil prices look advantageous to the seller. This appears to have been the case with the Nexen acquisition, just approved by the federal government.

Ottawa’s new foreign takeover rules won’t work in the real world – by Diane Francis (National Post – December 15, 2012)

December 17, 2012

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

Ottawa has made a mistake by allowing the buyout of Nexen Inc. by China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) and the buyout of Progress Energy Resources Corp. by Petronas of Malaysia.

Apparently, the lobbying and debate behind closed doors was fierce and, in the end, a “Canadian” compromise was offered up as policy. And this equivocation — “conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription” — won’t work in the real world.

After the approvals were announced, Prime Minister Stephen Harper framed this as the “end of a trend,” not the “beginning” of a buyout frenzy by more sovereign-owned enterprises (SOEs). He ring-fenced the oil sands from further SOE buyouts unless in “exceptional circumstances” and set lower threshholds for Investment Canada reviews of foreign bids. But this is not the end. This is the beginning of the beginning. Phone calls are already being made to launch new buyouts by foreigners here.

The Chinese, Russians and others have gamed and will continue to game our system. I would argue that CNOOC’s bid itself was outrageous: an aggressive, uninvited entry into the Canadian economic space before the issues had been properly debated in the aftermath of the Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. and TMX Group Inc. takeovers were rebuffed and rejected.

To Stop Climate Change, Students Aim at College Portfolios [coal, oil and gas stocks] – by Justin Gillis (New York Times – December 04, 2012)

December 17, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/

SWARTHMORE, Pa. — A group of Swarthmore College students is asking the school administration to take a seemingly simple step to combat pollution and climate change: sell off the endowment’s holdings in large fossil fuel companies. For months, they have been getting a simple answer: no.

As they consider how to ratchet up their campaign, the students suddenly find themselves at the vanguard of a national movement.

In recent weeks, college students on dozens of campuses have demanded that university endowment funds rid themselves of coal, oil and gas stocks. The students see it as a tactic that could force climate change, barely discussed in the presidential campaign, back onto the national political agenda.

“We’ve reached this point of intense urgency that we need to act on climate change now, but the situation is bleaker than it’s ever been from a political perspective,” said William Lawrence, a Swarthmore senior from East Lansing, Mich.

Students who have signed on see it as a conscious imitation of the successful effort in the 1980s to pressure colleges and other institutions to divest themselves of the stocks of companies doing business in South Africa under apartheid.

The politics of a painkiller – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (December 14, 2012)

December 17, 2012

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

Leona Aglukkaq has got politics down pat. The federal Health Minister recently approved generic versions of the highly-addictive opioid painkiller OxyContin for sale in Canada. The patent for OxyContin — which is the market name for time-released oxycodone tablets — expired and, in the interest of private-sector initiative, the government opened the door for other companies to step in with their own, no-name versions.

That’s great for the companies; oxycodone painkillers are huge sellers. It’s also good for people in need of those drugs, as well as health care budgets. The generics are much cheaper than the name brand versions and their painkilling abilities are effective.

The issue, though, is one that affects everyone else. Oxycodone is a fiercely addictive painkiller and the introduction of generic versions will cost society far too much to go ahead.

The problem is, those struggling with an oxy addiction — and there are many — pass their struggle on to others. Drug stores are being held up to the point where many pharmacy owners are refusing to stock generic oxy. Convenience stores, homes and vehicles are robbed and whatever taken is quickly flipped to pay for the next pill.

More than just costs are a concern at Barrick Gold’s $8.5B Pascua-Lama megamine – by Catherine Solyom (National Post – December 16, 2012)

December 16, 2012

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

Pascua-Lama, on the border of Chile and Argentina — Standing on a precipice 5,200 metres above sea level, the air is thin and the vistas are long.

Just breathing is difficult at this altitude, with a howling wind disturbing the utter, majestic silence of the snow-capped Andes mountains, threatening to blow you over the edge. You’d think you were alone at the top of the world.

But what happens up here in Pascua-Lama, where Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold is developing the first open-pit gold mine to straddle two countries, will have a huge impact on the people living in the valleys below on both sides of the border — for better or for worse.

After more than a decade of intense debate — often played out in front of the Canadian embassies in Santiago and Buenos Aires — the mine is set to open in 2014, and to produce 850,000 ounces of gold a year, as well as vast amounts of copper and silver.

Up to 10,000 people, many of them from the villages closest to the mine, will be employed during the construction phase and another 1,650 will operate the mine for at least the next 25 years.

[Ontario] Grits extend energy rebate – by Sebastien Perth (Sudbury Star – December 15, 2012)

December 16, 2012

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

A provincial program that saves millions in energy costs for large industries in Northern Ontario has been extended for three years.

Northern Development and Mines Minister and Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci made the announcement Friday at Xstrata Nickel’s operations in Falconbridge.

The Northern Industrial Electricity Rate program can provide a company with a rebate of two-cents per kilowatt hour up to a maximum of $20 million a year. The program was set to expire in March, but will now be in effect until 2016.

To access Northern Industrial Electricity Rate funding, companies must provide a plan showing how they will reduce their energy consumption.

“They have to develop a plan that has to be in discussion with the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines and the ministry of Environment then they have to make sure that the plan is implemented and we follow to make sure that energy conservation is taking place,” Bartolucci said. “You see the success of the program and the importance of the program and if I am still where I am now (in the future), I’d be advocating for the program because it’s so good.”

2012 is Northern Ontario’s 100th birthday – by Gordon Dowsley (Toronto Star – December 16, 2012)

December 16, 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.

Gordon Dowsley, a consultant in international development with specialization in the financial sector, teaches courses at the seniors center in Oshawa on history, geography and art.

Before the year slips away, we should celebrate the centennial of Northern Ontario. Not of its existence of course, for its Canadian Shield rock has been here for a billion years. However, its political boundaries were only established in 1912.

After Confederation, Ontario did not extend much beyond the Great Lakes. But in 1870 the new Canada bought all the land draining into Hudson Bay for £300,000. That launched a battle over which provincial government ruled what.

In 1884, the eastern border of Northern Ontario and Quebec was set, a straight line bisecting Lake Timiskaming. This set off a series of events led by one Charles Farr. He had surveyed land around Hailebury, named after his school in England, and New Liskeard.

This is not shield country but the Great Clay Belt. Cloaked in all the biases of his era, he lobbied Queen’s Park to settle the clay belt and set up a wall of English Protestants in the face of the French Catholics across the lake.

The oil deal that paved China’s path to Nexen – and beyond – by Jacquie McNish and Carrie Tait (Globe and Mail – December 16, 2012)

December 16, 2012

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.

TORONTO and CALGARY – The foreign investment rush that prompted Ottawa to cordon off Alberta’s oil sands can be traced to a furious pre-dawn game of Pictionary in the Chinese city of Panjin nearly three years ago.

Four Calgary oil executives had travelled to the city, three hours north of Beijing, to promote a vast Alberta oil sands deposit local geologists had never seen and a planned thermal drilling technology they didn’t understand. Growing frustrated, the Canadians grabbed markers and decorated a nearby easel, sketching fat rocks, granules of sand, buried oil reservoirs and complex math formulas. At first, even an attending Chinese translator was bewildered.

Although the game took time, there was magic in those markers. In the middle of the night, shortly before 3 a.m., officials of China’s Great Wall Drilling Co. began nodding their heads. Soon the nondescript office in a squat, stone building shook with laughter as relieved English and Chinese officials bowed and congratulated each other.

“It was a breakthrough,” says Hilary Foulkes, a former executive vice-president of Penn West Petroleum Ltd., who led the presentation for what she believed was a long-shot bid to attract scarce capital to the company’s Peace River oil sands property in Northern Alberta. “We made a connection and there was a camaraderie and trust that was developed.”

Calls for New Caledonia’s nickel profits to be shared – Radio Australia (October 18, 2012)

December 16, 2012

http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio

But the benefits aren’t reaching many New Caledonians; in particular, young indigenous Kanaks, among whom unemployment is 38 per cent.

Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Professor Catherine Ris, University of New Caledonia

RIS: New Caledonia is a quite rich country, especially compared to other countries in the Pacific Islands, but it’s a very unequal country. Income distribution, experience, [there are] big, huge disparities. Even people, even different ethnic groups and also between areas even, if you are living in the south of New Caledonia you are not living in the same conditions than if you are living in the north, or in the islands province.

And one of the reasons for that is the school achievement already defers according to ethnicity. School achievement, if we split the population between Kanaks – that’s the indigenous people of New Caledonia – and non-Kanak people, we see for example that only three per cent of Kanak people graduate from higher education, compared to 23 per cent from non-Kanak people. And this disparity in school achievement also implies of course disparities in access to employment, labour market outcomes and to income distribution.

CHROME’S COLOURFUL HISTORY – From The International Chromium Development Association (ICDA)

December 14, 2012

The International Chromium Development Association (ICDA) http://www.icdacr.com/

The Discovery of Chrome

In 1762, J. G. Legmann described an orange-yellow mineral discovered in Siberia’s Ural Mountains, which he called crocoite because it resembled the colour of egg yoke (krokos in Greek). Thirty-five years later, French chemist Nicolas-Louis Vauquelin identified a new metallic element in this mineral. He called it “chromium”, after the Greek khrōma, meaning colour, because of its colourful compounds. Indeed, the yellow deposit obtained by crushing the mineral was already being used as a paint pigment. After further research, Vauquelin found that trace elements of chrome give rubies their characteristic red colour and emeralds, serpentine and chrome mica their distinctive green.