Sailingstone Capital Partners, the fifth-biggest investor in Turquoise Hill Resources (TSX: TQR) said on Friday it will vote against Rio Tinto’s (ASX, LON: RIO) intended $3.3 billion takeover of the Canadian miner, in a shareholder meeting on Nov. 1.
The activist investor said that Rio’s bid not only undervalues the target, but it also intends to take advantage of the “material governance failures” created by independent directors of both mining companies over the last decade.
WAWONII ISLAND, Indonesia — The coconut palm has been a source of food and identity for centuries among the people of Wawonii Island. In the local language wawo means above and ni’i is the word for coconut — Wawonii is an island crowned by coconuts. “Now it has become a mine,” said Abdul Latif, a farmer born here in Roko-Roko village. “Wawonii should just be renamed.”
Like many areas of Indonesia’s nickel-rich Sulawesi region, Wawonii is caught in the tension between international demand for green energy and the need to preserve landscapes. Indonesia accounts for both some of the world’s largest reserves of nickel and its third-largest tropical forests.
But without these metals there are limited solutions to our planetary problems
The war in Ukraine has demonstrated just how inadvisable over-dependence on a single supplier can be. Russia’s dominance in the European gas market turned into a geopolitical nightmare in the space of a few weeks.
Just imagine if a single country provided you with 90 per cent of your needs for essential commodities. Now imagine how you’d feel if that country was China. Actually, we don’t need to use our imagination because that is exactly the reality for Europe’s galloping consumption of rare earth metals.
China’s economic output will lag behind the rest of Asia for the first time since 1990, according to new World Bank forecasts that highlight the damage wrought by President Xi Jinping’s zero-Covid policies and the meltdown of the world’s biggest property market.
The World Bank has revised down its forecast for gross domestic product growth in the world’s second-largest economy to 2.8 per cent, compared with 8.1 per cent last year, and from its prediction in April of between 4 and 5 per cent for this year.
(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia says it has the potential to unlock enough copper to ease a looming shortage as the world makes an epic shift to clean energy, but the kingdom faces challenges that established mining countries already have solved.
Key among those challenges as the world’s largest oil producer seeks to unlock an estimated $1.3 trillion in mineral wealth are logistics and water supplies, according to Bandar bin Ibrahim Al-Khorayef, Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources.
(Bloomberg) — India plans to expand its coal power fleet by about a quarter through the end of the decade as it continues to lean on the fuel to meet growing demand until energy storage costs fall.
The world’s third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases will add nearly 56 gigawatts of coal power capacity unless there’s a substantial drop in the cost of storing electricity, Power Minister Raj Kumar Singh said in an interview this week in New Delhi. India is also planning major investments in renewable energy, but it has to prioritize providing reliable power to spur economic growth, he said.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/
Indonesia—the world’s largest nickel miner—is making moves to become a key player in the electric vehicle supply chain. Most of Indonesia’s nickel output is currently Class 2 nickel, a low-purity type used for stainless steel.
The country’s government and the mining sector are determined to transform its nickel industry to meet the rising demand for Class 1 nickel, a crucial component for electric vehicle (EV) batteries.[1] EVs are widely viewed as a pillar of the transition toward renewable energy sources since they typically have a smaller carbon footprint over their lifespan than gasoline-powered vehicles.
Beijing (AFP) – China has stepped up spending on coal in the face of extreme weather, a domestic energy crunch and rising global fuel prices — raising concerns Beijing’s policies may hinder the fight against climate change.
The country is the world’s biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases driving global warming, and President Xi Jinping has vowed to reduce coal use from 2026 as part of a broad set of climate promises. Beijing has committed to peaking its carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.
Rare earths have captured the imagination of the broader public: The 17 elements served as the basis of a top-selling video game, provided a plot point for a popular Netflix drama, sparked a drawn-out WTO dispute and were used to slam Barack Obama.
Even Kim Jong-Un has a finger in the pie. Boron, not so much. But boron’s not boring. Far from it. It shares many of the family traits of rare earths and it’s also close to mineral du jour lithium.
JAKARTA — The Indonesian unit of Brazilian mining giant Vale is embarking on three nickel processing projects worth a combined $8.6 billion with partners including Chinese battery materials producer Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and potentially U.S. automaker Ford Motor.
Vale Indonesia on Tuesday signed a preliminary agreement for the latest of the three projects — all on the island of Sulawesi — with Huayou. It comprises a plan to develop a nickel smelter with high pressure acid leaching (HPAL) technology near Vale Indonesia’s major operations in Sorowako, South Sulawesi province.
Four countries accounted for 80% of tropical forest loss due to industrial mining, study finds.
(Bloomberg) — More than half the tropical deforestation caused by industrial mining in the last two decades took place in Indonesia, according to a new study.
The researchers, whose paper was published Sept. 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), overlapped the geographic coordinates of industrial mines with forest loss data from 2000 to 2019, focusing on 26 countries.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Canadian gold miner Centerra Gold Inc. is replacing its chief executive officer, Scott Perry, after the company was forced to sell its biggest gold mine at a large discount to the government of Kyrgyzstan and suspend production at another mine in Turkey.
The Toronto-based gold miner announced Tuesday that Mr. Perry had stepped down and that Paul Wright, a director with Centerra, will assume the CEO position on an interim basis, while the company looks for a permanent replacement.
Rio Tinto (ASX, LON: RIO) has inked a definitive arrangement with Turquoise Hill Resources (TSX: TQR) to buy the 49% of the Canadian miner it doesn’t already own for $3.3 billion.
The global miner noted Turquoise Hill’s board had unanimously recommended the C$43 per share cash offer and said it would not increase bid despite pressure from minority shareholders.
I generally try to avoid arguments about climate change, given that most people already know what they believe. It’s like views on abortion or Donald Trump: this late in the game you’re unlikely to be swayed by anything someone else has to say.
Yet it’s also hard to ignore when certain things happen, like, for instance, a raging fire burning down your house, or a heating bill that’s suddenly 10 times higher than it used to be. As far as the climate crusade goes, if you Google “China coal power generation,” what you get is this:
(Bloomberg) — Rio Tinto Group increased its offer to buy out Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. to $3.1 billion as it moves to gain more control of a giant copper mine in Mongolia.
The world’s biggest mining companies are getting increasingly aggressive in their pursuit of so-called future facing commodities, the natural resources such as copper and nickel that are key for the green energy transition. Yet despite the strong demand outlook, long-term supply may remain constrained by the lack of new mines.
