2012 – Page 68 – Republic of Mining

New Anglo Platinum wage demand a potentially ominous development – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – August 22, 2012)

August 22, 2012

www.mineweb.com

A new pay demand from Anglo American Platinum workers, bypassing the NUM union, is yet another disturbing development in the South African platinum sector.

LONDON (Mineweb) – The latest note from Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) reporting that it has received an unspecified pay increase demand from workers on the world’s largest platinum mine is a possibly ominous development for the South African platinum sector. The demand has come from workers directly, rather than through official National Union of Mineworkers (the principal mining union at the mines) channels, and this mirrors the demands at Lonmin’s Marikana mine where again no official demands were made to the mine owners via the union.

What is particularly worrying here is that the miners are bypassing the NUM suggesting a total lack of trust in the traditional mining union setup. The NUM appears to be being seen as a vassal of the ruling African National Congress political party – i.e. part of the new South African establishment – where it is beginning to be felt that miner’s interests are taking second place to political interests (in this case the preservation of a key part of the South African economy).

By Western standards South African mine pay at the main workforce level is low with the average miner probably earning between $500 to $1000 a month to work in what many outsiders would consider dirty and dangerous conditions.

BHP Billiton puts $68-billion worth of projects on hold as profit plunges – by Elisabeth Behrmann and Jesse Riseborough (Bloomberg News/National Post – August 22, 2012)

August 22, 2012

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

BHP Billiton Ltd., the world’s biggest mining company, put approvals for about US$68 billion of projects on hold after second-half profit plunged 58% as metal prices declined and costs rose.

Net income dropped to US$5.5 billion in the six months ended June 30 from US$13.1 billion a year ago, according to Bloomberg calculations that were confirmed by the Melbourne-based company. That beat the US$3.5 billion median estimate of four analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

BHP doesn’t expect to approve any spending on major projects this fiscal year, including the Olympic Dam expansion, which would have created the world’s largest uranium mine, the company said Wednesday. It joins Rio Tinto Group and Xstrata Plc in booking declining profits amid sluggish global growth.

“Given current investor sentiment towards high-capex, long-dated projects, the move not to approve Olympic Dam and Outer Harbour will be taken positively,” Richard Knights, an analyst at Liberum Capital Ltd., told Bloomberg. “The problem for BHP management is at some point they will have to weigh up the market’s desire for short-term returns and their prerogative as a major mining company to commission long-dated projects.”

Lonmin miners return after violent strike – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – August 22, 2012)

August 22, 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.

Employees are trickling back to work under heavy security at South Africa’s Marikana platinum mine, where clashes with police left 34 dead and more than twice as many injured last week amid strife between striking workers and Lonmin PLC, the world’s third-largest platinum miner.

The London-based company said a third of Marikana’s 28,000-strong work force reported for duty on Tuesday, allowing a partial resumption of some operations but no return to production, and warned it may not meet debt covenants as a result of losses.

Tensions have built for months between platinum miners and workers in South Africa, where politics – at the union, local and national level – mix with high unemployment, sinking metals prices and booming costs to create a tinderbox for labour unrest.

“I think everyone is on tenterhooks in the platinum area,” said Bruce Dickinson, a partner with Webber Wentzel law firm in Johannesburg who specializes in the mining. “I don’t think people are viewing this as isolated; where it hasn’t hit yet, people are waiting to see if it does,” he said from Johannesburg.

Cuba convicts 12 of corruption in nickel industry – by Laura Kane (Toronto Star – August 22, 2012)

August 22, 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.

A Cuban court has convicted a dozen people of corruption in the nickel industry, including two employees of a Cuban-Canadian joint concern, state media announced Tuesday.

Accounting executive Alfredo Barallobre Rodriguez and deputy production director Orlando Carmenaty Olmo of Empresa Moa Nickel SA, a joint operation of Cuba and Toronto-based mining company Sherritt International Corp., were sentenced to six and five years, respectively. Company officials didn’t return requests for comment, and the nationality of the two men couldn’t immediately be confirmed.

High-ranking government officials and an executive at a state-run nickel company were also sentenced in the case, involving a contract for the expansion of the Pedro Soto Alba nickel and cobalt processing plant at the Moa mine. The convictions are the first in a wider crackdown on corruption that has already seen several foreigners, including two Canadians, detained.

[Northwestern Ontario] Leaders want action on mining infrastructure – by Bryan Meadows (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – August 22, 2012)

August 22, 2012

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

Northwestern Ontario municipal leaders are outlining their priorities this week during the Association of Municipalities of Ontario annual conference in Ottawa. One of those priorities, being touted by the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association, is that the province lead plans for mining infrastructure in the region.

“Northwestern Ontario is on the cusp of a mining explosion, and we need to ensure that both government and opposition members recognize the full impact of these developments for the province,” NOMA president Ron Nelson said Tuesday.

“This is not just a northern project as it has the potential to drive the economy of Ontario for decades to come,” he said, adding that “the province needs to take the lead by planning, developing and owning the roads and energy infrastructure that is needed to support mining developments in the Northwest.”

“It will be expensive, however,” Nelson said, “the return on that investment through provincial tax revenues over the next 100 years will be immense.”

ONTC sell-off sparks fighting words – by By Wayne Snider (Timmins Daily Press – August 22, 2012)

August 22, 2012

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Municipal leaders across Northeastern Ontario are taking the gloves off to fight plans to derail Ontario Northland in September.

Kapuskasing Mayor Alan Spacek, president of the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM) expressed “frustration and bitter disappointment” with the government’s handling of its divestiture plan for the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission. He is pointing the finger squarely at Northern Development and Mines Minister Rick Bartolucci (Liberal — Sudbury).

“I received correspondence from the minister updating me on the divestment process that was to have been ‘transparent and done in a consultative manner with those affected,’” Spacek said. “As it turns out, we get called to a meeting to hear that something we thought we were to be consulted on is now a done deal.

“It’s become another late-in-the-week, trying-to-fly-below-radar announcement that otherwise wouldn’t stand up to either the smell test or to public scrutiny.” Spacek, who ran as a Progressive Conservative candidate in Timmins-James Bay in the October 2011 provincial election, said the ruling Liberals broke their promise of transparency with ONTC privatization.

Stephen Harper: Resource development will relieve social woes across the north – by Bruce Campion-Smith (Toronto Star – August 22, 2012)

August 22, 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.

MINTO MINE, YUKON—The billions of dollars of benefits generated from resource projects across Canada’s north offer a solution to the serious social challenges confronting this isolated region, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says.

And Harper is promising to streamline environmental reviews to help get those development projects across the north up and running faster.

The prime minister made the comments Tuesday during a visit to a sprawling copper mine hailed as an example of the ability of resource projects to pump investments into the local community. He said the “great opportunity” of resource projects is that they are unfolding in areas where First Nations have lacked other economic opportunities.

“I’m particularly pleased to see projects like these employing not just locals but aboriginal locals,” Harper said. “We want to make sure that those things are turned into opportunities for them. Obviously, for their communities to gain revenue to provide some of the services . . . but also that they gain employment and skills and expertise in these industries,” he said.

Harper’s Northern Vision – by Peter Foster (National Post – August 21, 2012)

August 22, 2012

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

Aims to boost development while avoiding ‘industrial strategy’

Stephen Harper is on his annual visit to the North this week, quoting Robert Service and boosting the region’s vast resource potential. “The North” holds a particular place in the Canadian psyche, somewhat similar to that of “The West” in the 19th-century U.S. One thing nobody wants to see, however, is a jurisdictional “Wild North.”

One reason why attention has moved north in recent years is the possibility of regular commercial passage through the Northwest Passage due to climate change. This has brought sovereignty to the fore, an issue given a new twist by the recent transit of a Chinese vessel. China wants Arctic waters to be international, an open approach that is remarkably different from the policy China pursues closer to home.

In fact, Mr. Harper’s visit this year is built around the North’s economic promise rather than the assertion of offshore rights. There is a reason for soft-peddling sovereignty and security. The bold measures Mr. Harper announced in previous years — from new ice-patrol vessels to new research facilities — have been frustratingly slow to materialize.

In some ways, Mr. Harper’s invocation of a grand Diefenbaker-ish Northern Vision might appear out of ideological character.

First Nations must be partners, not an afterthought – by Shawn Atleo (Globe and Mail – August 22, 2012)

August 22, 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.

Shawn A-in-chut Atleo is the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

The debate over the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline has vaulted First Nations people and their rights to the forefront of the national discussion on energy, the environment and resource development.

This is fitting. Our lands are the backbone of the Canadian economy. Yet we have often been seen only as an obstacle or afterthought to development (when we were seen at all). Now we have an opportunity and impetus to reconcile our rights and interests and reap benefits for all Canadians.

The Northern Gateway project is capturing headlines, but it is only one of many major projects planned or under way, projects worth hundreds of billions in economic activity. All these projects are located in or near First Nations’ traditional territories. Any project that could affect their lands or lives requires their consent. This is what we agreed to in treaties and it is a reality in Canadian law.

Time to extract responsibility from the African mining industry – by Samantha Nutt (Globe and Mail – August 22, 2012)

August 22, 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.

Samantha Nutt is executive director of War Child and author of Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies and Aid.

Few things rankle Canadians like a debate about the mining industry. Perhaps it is because 70 per cent of the world’s mining companies are headquartered here, and throughout this lingering global recession we have enthusiastically (yet graciously, we’re Canadian after all) hitched ourselves to the resource economy wagon. It has protected us with titanium-grade, cadmium-laced, copper-plated armour from Wall Street’s profligacies. And from Greece. And from having to conjugate “austerity” as a verb.

But mining is, in the most literal sense, a dirty business. You cannot pan for gold and not get muck under the nails, as a poignant feature story by Geoffrey York examining the rampant exploitation of children in mining reminded us. It provided a moving portrait of children working as artisanal miners in one of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s many open-pit calamities, risking their lives with each toxic breath. The mine is owned by Vancouver-based KICO – not the “surface” rights to the land the kids scavenge, but the minerals beneath their shoeless feet.

Canada’s ‘Great National Dream’ will be fueled by Northern mining, oil & gas-Harper – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – August 22, 2012)

August 22, 2012

www.mineweb.com

“The North’s time has come, my friends, and you ain’t seen nothing yet,” says Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

RENO (MINEWEB) – Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper suggests that the untapped mining, oil and natural gas resources in Canada’s North could generate enough cash to turn the country into an economic powerhouse.

During his current tour of Canada’s North, Harper suggested that over the next decade there are more than 500 large new development projects being proposed for Canada, which collectively will be worth more than “a half a trillion dollars.”

He estimates that 30 new mining projects will be developed across the North over the next decade.

While touring the Minto copper-gold mine in the Yukon Tuesday, Harper witnessed the signing by Yukon Premier Darrell Pasloksi and John Duncan, Canada’s minister of aboriginal affairs and northern development, of amendments to resource revenue sharing agreements which will ensure a greater portion of the revenues generated from the mining and resource economy in the territory will be available to the territory.

Glencore says $30bn Xstrata deal “not a must-do” – by Clara Ferreira-Marques (Mineweb.com – August 21, 2012)

August 21, 2012

www.mineweb.com

CEO Ivan Glasenberg said Tuesday the $30 billion bid for Xstrata is not a must-do deal, strongly suggesting it will not yield to key shareholder Qatar’s demands for an improved offer.

LONDON (Reuters) – Glencore’s $30 billion bid for miner Xstrata is not a “must-do deal” its chief executive said on Tuesday, in making the company’s strongest suggestion yet that it will not yield to key shareholder Qatar’s demands for an improved offer.

Ivan Glasenberg, speaking after the commodities trader reported a smaller than expected drop in its first-half profit, expressed exasperation with Qatar Holding, which has been in a stand-off with Glencore since the sovereign wealth fund surprised the market by demanding an improvement to Glencore’s offer of 2.8 new shares for every Xstrata share.

Qatar has increased to 12 percent a less than 3 percent stake in Xstrata since the all-share bid was announced earlier this year, less than Glencore’s own 34 percent holding but enough to block the takeover under the current deal structure.

Harper’s northern tour continues at Yukon mine – by The Canadian Press/CBC News.com – August 21, 2012)

August 21, 2012

www.cbc.ca

‘You ain’t seen nothing yet’ for northern resource development, Harper tells partisan crowd

As the classic Canadian poem says, the Yukon is where people moil for gold. And today Stephen Harper is off to see what a more modern day version of that work looks like. On his first full day in the North, Harper was to tour Captstone’s copper gold Minto mine, about 240 kilometres north of Whitehorse.

His visit comes after a speech to party faithful last night in the territorial capital where he extolled the development of the North’s resources as the “great national dream.” The speech reiterated the priority the Conservatives say they’ve placed on the North since being elected in 2006.

“The North’s time has come,” Harper told a crowd of about 300 Conservative supporters at a rally Monday night. “I tell people starting to see the activity here, you ain’t seen nothing yet in terms of what’s coming in the next decade.”

Boosting resource development

Natural resources development has also become a renewed focus of the Harper government as countries the world express eagerness to receive a greater share.

On northern sovereignty, Harper should keep building momentum – but toward attainable goals – Globe and Mail Editorial (August 21, 2012)

August 21, 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.

It is easy to be skeptical about Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s annual jaunts to the Arctic, the latest of which he has embarked upon this week. For all the photo opportunities in front of spectacular backdrops, and northern-sovereignty rhetoric that fits neatly into the Conservatives’ political brand, little progress has been made toward many of the commitments that Mr. Harper has announced during them, including military procurements and the building of a “High Arctic research centre.”

To entirely dismiss these trips, however, would be to sell Mr. Harper short. Before he took office in 2006, the Far North was barely on the national radar, largely because the federal government had not made it a priority. That has dramatically changed – partly because climate change is opening up the Northwest Passage as a commercial shipping route, greatly enhancing its strategic importance, but also because Mr. Harper has made a sustained effort to instill pride in an enormous swath of the country where most Canadians have not actually ventured.

The question, now, is how best to channel that focus. On Mr. Harper’s past trips, the words and imagery have centred around defence, enough to give the impression that Canada boasts sole ownership of the Northwest Passage – which few other countries agree with – and that it is prepared to defend this claim by force.

Private property on reserves: 5 myths – by Christopher Alcantara – (Toronto Star – August 19, 2012)

August 21, 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.

There is a lot of buzz in the media and online about the federal government’s plan to pass legislation that would create private property rights on Canadian Indian reserves.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, much of this buzz has been negative, with commentators expressing fear and doubt about the merits of the proposal. Much of this apprehension, however, is based on misconceptions about what actually is being proposed.

The following are the top five myths about the proposed First Nations Property Ownership Act:

Myth 1: Indigenous peoples don’t need this legislation. The status quo is fine because doing business on-reserve is the same as doing business off-reserve.

In fact, doing business on-reserve is nothing like doing business off-reserve. The Indian Act imposes significant transaction costs on investors, discouraging them from investing on-reserve.