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Australia/New Caledonia/Papua New Guinea Mining

A ‘once-in-a-lifetime find’ has Eric Sprott thinking this is the start of something big for a small TSX gold explorer – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – September 17, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Well-known gold bug Eric Sprott is signalling he plans to stick with his holdings in RNC Minerals after the Toronto-based company announced a “once-in-a-lifetime” gold discovery that sent its stock skyrocketing last week.

RNC shares soared 261 per cent to a near eight-month high of 32.5 cents over last Monday and Tuesday after the company announced on Sept. 9 that it uncovered 9,250 ounces of high-grade gold worth US$15-million at its Beta Hunt mine in Western Australia the week before.

The discovery captured global media attention from news outlets such as the Financial Times, the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corp. (ABC). “There’s a big potential here that this is not going to be a one-off,” Mr. Sprott said of the discovery on Friday on his weekly podcast, calling it “the biggest discovery in a small amount of tundra the world has ever witnessed.”

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Tesla Lithium Dash Could Slow as Mine Project Faces Hurdle – by Laura Millan Lombrana (Bloomberg News – September 13, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

An Australian mining lithium project that has an agreement to supply Tesla Inc. faces a legal hurdle that may delay plans to start production, potentially spurring shortages of the mineral used in batteries for electric cars.

A court in Perth recommended Western Australia’s mining ministry shouldn’t approve an exemption from past minimum exploration-expenditure obligations at the Mt. Holland hard-rock project, lithium giant SQM said in a statement on Wednesday.

Development of Mt. Holland, owned by SQM and Kidman Resources Ltd., could be slowed if the ministry doesn’t award the exemption, SQM said.

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Lucky strike in outback WA could spark ‘mini gold rush’ for prospectors and miners – by Jarrod Lucas (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – September 12, 2018)

http://www.abc.net.au/

Prospectors and exploration companies seeking to strike it rich have been re-energised by the discovery of rare gold specimens at a mine in outback Western Australia.

Some are saying it could spark a “mini gold rush” for a town down on its luck. In the days since the spectacular find at Kambalda, 630 kilometres east of Perth, a wave of excitement has washed over the nickel mining town which has been on its knees in recent times.

One exploration company holding ground adjacent to the Beta Hunt mine, where $15 million worth of gold-encrusted rocks were found 500 metres below the surface, has already been inundated with calls. It is just the tonic for Kambalda — a tight-knit community built on the discovery of Australia’s first nickel mine in 1966 — which has been hit by hundreds of job losses with the closure of four major mines in three years.

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[Royal Nickel] Toronto miner unearths boulder that contains 9,000 ounces of gold in Australia, worth about $15M – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – September 11, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

Rare is the story of a modern mining company that unexpectedly strikes a mother lode of gold.

But Toronto-based junior mining company Royal Nickel Corp. announced Sunday night that its employees in Australia at the Beta Hunt mine — which the company has been trying to sell since April — removed a golden boulder like few others in the world: Within a single cube of earth that measured roughly three meters wide, three meters long, and three meters deep, they found 9,000 ounces of gold including two large lumps — all told worth around $14 or $15 million at current prices. That’s equivalent to roughly 40 per cent of RNC’s $35 million market capitalization as of last week.

“It was a nickel mine for years and years,” said Mark Selby, chief executive of RNC. “But we bought it because there were a bunch of gold deposits sitting beneath it.” Royal Nickel stock surged 83 per cent to $0.16 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Monday.

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‘Let me buy Rio Tinto’: China’s brazen bid to buy our companies – by Peter Hartcher (Sydney Morning Post – September 11, 2018)

https://www.smh.com.au/

Within two days of being sworn in as the 38th Treasurer of Australia, Joe Hockey found himself in a traditional-style hut on the island of Bali. Chinese officials had been back and forth to the hut again and again to arrange to the last detail the meeting that Hockey was about to have with China’s finance minister.

But when Lou Jiwei entered, Hockey was utterly unprepared for his opening words. Lou shook the Australian’s hand, sat down, lit a cigarette without asking Hockey’s permission and said: “Why won’t you let me buy Rio Tinto?” the giant Anglo-Australian mining conglomerate.

It was Hockey’s first meeting with his Chinese counterpart, once ranked by Forbes magazine as the 30th most powerful person on earth. Recovering from his surprise, Hockey replied: “That’s fine – as long as you’ll let Qantas buy China Southern”, one of the Middle Kingdom’s big three airlines.

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‘I Nearly Fell Over Looking at It.’ Miners Stumble Upon $10 Million in Gold From a Single Blast – by Grace Dobush (Fortune Magazine – September 10, 2018)

http://fortune.com/

Miners in Western Australia have unearthed more than 9,000 ounces of gold from a single blast over the past few days. That’s more than 560 pounds (255 kilograms), or $10 million of gold if you want to just cash it in.

The quartz rocks encrusted with gold were found in Beta Hunt, primarily a nickel mine, in the town of Kambalda, in an area of Australia known as the Goldfields.

Miner Henry Dole is credited with hitting the mother lode. “I’ve been an airleg miner for 16 years. Never in my life have I ever seen anything like this,” he told ABC News. “I nearly fell over looking at it … we were picking it up for hours.”

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Journo’s new book shines light on nickel – by Josh Chiat (Kalgoorlie Miner – September 6, 2018)

https://thewest.com.au/

A pioneering mining journalist who bore witness to the Goldfields’ first nickel boom as a reporter at Kalgoorlie’s ABC bureau believes there is a bright future for the cyclical base metal.

Ross Louthean came to Kalgoorlie-Boulder as a young journalist from Port Pirie in the late 1960s and witnessed the onset and development of the famous Kambalda nickel district.

He also lived in the region through the Poseidon crash — the nickel exploration boom in the 1970s which prompted the regulation of Australia’s stock markets after a reported find near Laverton fuelled by speculation pumped shares in penny stock Poseidon Nickel to more than $280 a share in a matter of weeks.

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Tiny WA town of Greenbushes is ground zero for global lithium energy revolution – by Sean Smith (The West Australian – September 2, 2018)

https://thewest.com.au/

Just out of sight of the South Western Highway, in State forest between the tourism hotspots of Bridgetown and Balingup, one of WA’s oldest mining centres and its sleepy host town are at the heart of a global energy revolution.

More than a century after the area was first worked by tin miners, the Greenbushes mine and the town of the same name on its doorstep have emerged front and centre of the State’s multibillion-dollar development boom around lithium.

The metal and its chemical compounds have long been used in aluminium smelting, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, glassware and ceramics. Its light weight and energy density means it is also found in the batteries powering laptop computers, mobile phones, calculators and digital cameras.

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Diamond discovery in WA’s Kimberley brings shine back to Australian industry – by Courtney Fowler (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – August 29, 2018)

http://www.abc.net.au/

A global miner hoping to revive the Kimberley diamond industry believes it may have discovered Australia’s next big diamond field. Lucapa Diamond Company has recovered more than 1,100 diamonds from a single drill hole at their Brooking project 1,800km north of Perth.

The project sits only 50 kilometres east of the mothballed Ellendale mine that once produced 50 per cent of the world’s yellow diamonds and supplied stones to New York’s famous Tiffany and Co. It is the second significant discovery made by Lucapa since they began drilling for lamproite at Little Spring Creek last year.

Chairman Miles Kennedy has a long history of searching for diamonds, having set up the Ellendale mine almost 25 years ago. He said after almost three decades in the diamond industry, the discovery of that many diamonds in a single drill hole was “unprecedented”.

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Northern Star goes north to Alaska with $356m gold mine purchase – by Brad Thompson (Australian Financial Review – August 30, 2018)

https://www.afr.com/

Northern Star is backing its capacity to replicate the success of its Australian operations and silence any doubters, after taking a first big step offshore with the $US260 million ($356 million) acquisition of a gold mine in Alaska.

The Bill Beament-led Northern Star will become the new owner of the Pogo underground gold mine under a deal with Japanese multinational Sumitomo, and it was quick to compare the acquisition to that of its flagship Jundee mine in Western Australia in 2014.

The deal comes at a time when many Australian gold miners are looking to North America for acquisitions, in an attempt to take advantage of the higher relative valuations that Australian gold stocks have enjoyed compared with North American peers.

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New Caledonia: boycotts and blockade – by Denise Fisher (The Interpreter – August 31, 2018)

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/

The Interpreter is published by the Lowy Institute, an independent, nonpartisan think tank based in Sydney.

Preparations are under way for New Caledonia’s historic independence referendum just two months away. Ongoing constructive dialogue and peaceful campaigning have been marred by division and boycotts, and a worrying three-week long blockade over nickel mining by some young Kanaks.

The November referendum is the first of potentially three independence referendums over the next six years. Divisions are many and bitter. If the three referendums possible under the Noumea Accord do not result in a “yes” to independence, discussions must be held with the French state over the future.

So, establishing a habit of dialogue and discussion at this stage is an important confidence building step, as 30 years of predictability and peace under negotiated agreements come to an end.

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Twiggy signals nickel revival with Poseidon move – by Stuart McKinnon (The West Australian – August 23, 2018)

https://thewest.com.au/

Mining billionaire Andrew Forrest will boost his stake in Poseidon Nickel and help fund the restart of its Silver Swan and Black Swan nickel mines 50km north-east of Kalgoorlie as part of a $75 million raising by the company.

The explorer this morning responded to a $67 million takeover offer from a US private equity firm by announcing its own recapitalisation plan backed by its major shareholder. Texas-based Black Mountain Metals has withdrawn its cash offer for Poseidon in response to the news.

Poseidon said it had raised $5.8 million in a placement and would raise a further $68.8 million in a rights issue priced at 5¢, representing a premium to the company’s last traded price.

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Women were only let into underground mines 30 years ago, so why are they leaving the industry? – by Isabel Moussalli (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – August 14, 2018)

http://www.abc.net.au/

When Alex Atkins joined the WA School of Mines in 1986, she had no idea she would be part of the first wave of women legally allowed to work in underground mines.

Until 1986, West Australian mine owners faced fines of up to $500 if women were caught working underground. New South Wales and Queensland changed their laws in 1989. But 32 years later, Ms Atkins said more changes were needed to bring the industry up to speed and encourage more women to stay.

The mining industry has long presented barriers for the participation of women — the lack of flexible work arrangements, the reliance on fly-in-fly-out labour, and the dominance of men in senior positions.

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State urged to strike while lithium ion’s hot – by Daniel Mercer (The West Australian – August 13, 2018)

https://thewest.com.au/

An influential mining lobby has urged the McGowan Government to grasp the “once-in-a-generation” chance to make batteries in WA, saying it could deliver huge economic benefits to the State.

In a submission to a parliamentary inquiry, the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies said WA had natural advantages in lithium ion battery manufacturing and needed to exploit them.

Mines Minister Bill Johnston said there was “no question” WA had a finite chance to get a share of the lithium battery market but it was imperative to have a clear plan about how to build the industry.

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