Mincor Resources has confirmed a 132 per cent increase to its nickel sulphide reserves in the Kambalda district, Western Australia.
Its reserves are now sitting at 65,400 nickel tonnes, which announcement was concurrent to the completion of Mincor’s definitive feasibility study (DFS) for its nickel restart plan.
The DFS confirmed the potential of Mincor nickel operations to become a five-year operation, producing 63,000 tonnes of recovered nickel-in-concentrate. Continue Reading →
A West Australian gold mining company claims it has struck the potentially largest discovery ever in the state’s iron ore-rich Pilbara region. But analysts are divided on whether it will spark a new gold rush, as other miners try their luck in the region.
De Grey Mining technical director and operations manager Andy Beckwith said the scale of the discovery had never been seen before in the Pilbara.
While gold stocks have been somewhat dampened by fears over the coronavirus pandemic, investors have celebrated De Grey Mining’s discovery, sending its stocks 411 per cent higher over a month since the drilling results were released in February. Continue Reading →
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Western Australian mining interests have been steadily scooping up gold exploration properties in northwestern Ontario. One company is mobilizing to run an underground gold mine in the region. Perth-headquartered Barminco has signed a letter of intent with Barrick to provide underground contract mining at its Hemlo Mine, near Marathon.
Barminco bills itself as one of the world’s largest hard rock underground mining services companies in the world with operations in Australia, Asia and Africa. This would be the company’s first foray into Canada, starting in April.
Under the three-year, $200-million mining services contract, Barminco’s scope of work would involve mine development, production and haulage, and using mine equipment provided by Barrick. Continue Reading →
LAUNCESTON, Australia, March 5 (Reuters) – The latest list of the top places to invest in mining is dominated by developed countries with long histories of success in the industry, but this probably isn’t a good thing.
The Fraser Institute’s annual survey of mining companies ranked Western Australia state as the most attractive jurisdiction for investment, as it moves up from the number two spot previously, replacing the U.S. state of Nevada, which slipped to third spot.
The 2019 survey, released on Feb. 25, placed Finland in second spot, Alaska in fourth and Portugal in fifth. Continue Reading →
MELBOURNE, Feb 25 (Reuters) – South Australia is putting A$250,000 ($166,000) up for grabs in a crowdsourcing competition to uncover more mineral reserves, as the industry taps expertise from a wide array of disciplines to find new large mineral lodes.
The five-month challenge will make available the state’s historic data sets for a region home to BHP Group’s huge Olympic Dam copper mine, the government of the Australian state said in a statement. The competition will kick off on March 2 and run until July 31, it added.
“The competition offers the chance to combine geological expertise with new mathematical, machine learning and artificial intelligence to accelerate mineral discovery in the mineral-rich Gawler Craton,” said Justin Strharsky of program facilitators Unearthed. Continue Reading →
A Thai geologist working at a new gold mine in Bougainville has been shot dead in the second killing at a mining project in the autonomous region of Papua New Guinea in recent months.
Channon Lumpoo, 27, was shot by a high-powered weapon on Monday in the Kokoda constituency of south Bougainville.
Channon was a geologist with Austhai Geophysical Consultants, which is attached to a Philippines-owned company SRMO, and was involved in exploration activities at the time of his death. Continue Reading →
Tony Makuch, president and CEO of Kirkland Lake Gold, is The Northern Miner’s Mining Person of the Year for 2019. Under his leadership, Kirkland Lake Gold has outperformed its peers in the last 24 months. The company’s shares rose by 60% last year, it raised its dividend twice and more than doubled its cash position, ending 2019 with US$707 million in cash and equivalents.
Kirkland Lake Gold operates two of the highest grade gold mines in the world and produced a record 974,615 ounces of gold in 2019, a 35% year-on-year increase, anchored by its Macassa mine in Ontario, Canada and its Fosterville mine in the state of Victoria, Australia. It also produces gold at its Holt complex – a trio of mines (Holt, Taylor and Holloway) in Ontario.
Consolidated operating cash costs fell 22% year-on-year to US$284 per oz. sold, while all-in sustaining costs declined 18% to US$564 per oz. sold. Net earnings jumped 104% year-on-year to US$560 million or $2.67 per share, and free cash flow totalled US$463 million, an 81% increase over 2018. Continue Reading →
Traditional land owners have rejected suggestions the Jabiluka uranium deposit should be developed and say they do not believe Rio Tinto has a ”secret agenda” to eventually mine the deposit.
The rare comments from the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation (GAC) counter Zentree Investments founder Richard Magides’ belief that Jabiluka’s uranium will be valuable in future amid rising demand for carbon-free electricity from nuclear power stations.
Zentree is the second biggest shareholder in ASX listed Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) and has accused the biggest shareholder, Rio, of deliberately structuring a $476 million equity raising to enable it to take 100 per cent ownership of ERA. Continue Reading →
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – Barrick Gold is not looking to merge with copper miner Freeport-McMoran, CEO Mark Bristow said on Thursday, although he is interested in the company’s Grasberg mine in Indonesia, and indicated he wants to expand in the Pacific Rim.
Rumors the world’s second-largest gold miner planned to combine with Freeport are “completely wrong”, Bristow told Reuters on the sidelines of the Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town.
But he said he was interested in Freeport’s Grasberg mine in Indonesia – the world’s largest gold mine, and second-largest copper mine. “People say, are you interested in Grasberg? I say I have to be, it’s a tier one asset,” he said. Tier one assets refer to high-grade, long-life mines. Continue Reading →
MELBOURNE, Jan 30 (Reuters) – Australia’s Orocobre Ltd and Pilbara Minerals Ltd on Thursday gave bearish outlooks for lithium demand, as weak orders from electric vehicle makers in China look set to extend a prolonged downturn.
Orocobre Ltd flagged a tepid market for the first half of 2020 and said it had cut costs at its flagship Olaroz lithium project in Argentina. Its shares sank 3.7%.
Pilbara Minerals said it was continuing to moderate production to “match customer demand” after scaling back mining at its Pilgangoora operations in Western Australia in September. Its shares slid 12%. Lithium miners faced severe pressure last year as prices plummeted after a cut in EV subsidies by China, the world’s biggest electric vehicle market. Continue Reading →
https://business.financialpost.com/
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John Kuhns has been many things: an investment banker, a silicon smelter operator in China and a novelist. His sights are now set on an abandoned mine with an estimated $60 billion of gold and copper.
Kuhns is among a handful of people exploring for minerals and courting landowners on the Pacific island of Bougainville. His rivals include an Arabian-horse breeder, a hedge fund investment manager who keeps wallabies on his estate and a former Australian defense minister. Continue Reading →
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Mining giant BHP Group (BHP.AX) said on Tuesday that poor air quality caused by smoke from Australia’s bushfires is hurting coal production, as authorities said a reprieve from hazardous fire conditions would end within days.
The warning from the world’s biggest miner showed how an unusually long bushfire season that has scorched an area one-third the size of Germany is damaging the world’s No. 14 economy.
Australia’s tourism and insurance industries have already foreshadowed they face a A$1 billion ($687 million) hit each from the fires. Scores of fires were still burning on the east coast on Tuesday despite thunderstorms and rain in recent days. Continue Reading →
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The Australian economy shares a few sorry traits with Canada’s. Both countries dig enormous amounts of dirty hydrocarbons out of the ground for export. Both made fortunes doing so, for decades. And both might now be questioning whether those wonder products were too much of a good thing as rising temperatures damage, and potentially devastate, natural systems.
Canada’s hydrocarbons come primarily from the oil in the oil sands, more accurately called the “tar sands” by Europeans. The oil sands enjoy sacred status in Alberta and in Ottawa.
The Janus-faced federal government imposes a carbon tax and promises to meet the carbon-reduction targets set out in the 2015 Paris climate agreement yet creates the conditions, such as nationalizing a pipeline, to allow – make that encourage – the oil sands to expand. Continue Reading →
SYDNEY—A crippling drought in eastern Australia is threatening production of commodities from coal to gold, sparking a scramble by companies for water to keep their operations going.
The affected mines and processing operations are in arid regions a hundred or more miles inland of most of the areas hit by unprecedented bush fires. The severe drought conditions are expected to persist despite rain falling or forecast in the region in coming days.
Eastern Australia is a major supplier of metals and minerals to global markets, with more coal leaving its ports for customers in Asia than anywhere else in the world. Continue Reading →
According to the MCC, there are 256 coal-fired power plants with a
capacity of 246 gigawatts being built worldwide, as well as another
359 power plants with a capacity of 311 gigawatts in the planning phase.
Siemens’ support for Adani’s coal mine in Australia has outraged environmentalists, but it’s not a unique case. Hundreds of companies and countries around the world are planning to expand their coal activities. But why?
An estimated 500 tankers a year will travel back and forth between Australia and India in the future. Fully loaded with coal, they’ll sail right through the Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef in the world, which is already under threat.
And that’s just one reason why environmental activists are outraged by Indian Adani Group’s plans for mining coal. Once completed, its Carmichael mine in the northeastern Australian state of Queensland will be one of the largest in the world, emitting 705 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere each year, according to climate protection alliance Fridays for Future. Continue Reading →
