GUEST COMMENT: The petroleum and mining sectors should put their heads together for a good cause: their future – by Bill Whitelaw (Canadian Mining Journal – January 17, 2017)

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

It’s interesting to watch two sectors that should be joined at the hip in defense of their joint futures and wonder why they’re not; at least not in any publicly or politically discernible way.

The beauty of my day job is this: I am privileged to be involved with two teams that provide essential information insights to Canada’s two most important resource sectors: energy and mining. The men and women associated with venerable business brands such as Oilweek, The Daily Oil Bulletin, The Northern Miner and Canadian Mining Journal provide context, analysis and intelligence insights to the diverse stakeholders that comprise the “energy” and “mining” sectors.

Collectively, the brands represent more than three centuries of sectoral service and have been binding tools through the diverse and complex (and often brutal) cycles through which these industries pass. The teams also provide research and analysis services, including insights into external forces that impact the sectors; thus the brands also afford a perspective on the things which have put energy and mining under fire.

Both sectors are under tremendous social and political assault, the roots of which have common origins in the increasingly binary ways many Canadians are thinking about the economy and the environment. Indeed, much of it has to do with a Canadian society more than ever disconnected from the realities of how Canada’s resource riches contribute to our standard of living.

Forget distinctions between hard rocks and soft rocks: let’s contemplate how two sectors working more collaboratively can tell Canadians more compelling and cogent stories. In the process, we help folks understand how far advanced these sectors are in terms of their environmental and social records; the things for which, paradoxically, they are most pilloried.

For the rest of this column, click here: http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/news/guest-comment-petroleum-mining-sectors-put-heads-together-good-cause-future/