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Barrick Gold Corporation

China goes for gold with overseas mining projects – by Rurika Imahashi (Nikkei Asian Review – July 30, 2018)

https://asia.nikkei.com/

A secure supply is seen as critical to the country’s economic and strategic goals

TOKYO — Chinese gold miners are on the hunt for mines overseas, spurred by robust prices of the precious metal. Already the world’s largest gold producer, China’s sees overseas mines as part of the country’s long-term strategic goals of expanding its economic influence and building up its manufacturing might.

Part of this agenda involves working with foreign partners. In early July, Canada’s Barrick Gold, the world’s largest bullion producer, said it would expand cooperation with China’s Shandong Gold Group in developing gold mines.

“This agreement will allow us to take our partnership to the next level,” said Barrick Executive Chairman John Thornton about the “enhanced strategic cooperation agreement” with Shandong Gold.

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The world’s most insatiable consumer digs deep into Canadian miners – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – July 28, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

How Chinese investment and pull increasingly drive our mining sector

After spending billions of dollars and two decades trying — and failing — to build a mine on the border of Chile and Argentina, Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. is reverting to a predictable strategy: it wants to partner with a Chinese company.

Earlier this month, the largest gold miner in the world announced that it asked Shandong Gold Group Co. Ltd, a smaller, younger, less well-known state-owned Chinese company, to study whether its long-delayed Pascua-Lama mine could be economically built if the Chilean part of the deposit were left in the ground — something Barrick’s own geologists and engineers thus far have not justified to management’s satisfaction.

It is far from Barrick’s first partnership with a Chinese company, but in the past it partnered by selling stakes in its mines and forming joint ventures.

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Barrick Gold shares extend slide after results disappoint – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – July 27, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The world’s biggest gold producer can’t catch a break. Shares in Barrick Gold Corp. fell 6.3 per cent on Thursday, amid a broad market selloff in the gold sector, after it released weaker-than-expected financial results Wednesday evening, and it failed to provide any new details on a geopolitical stalemate in Tanzania.

Thursday’s session was the second significant selloff in Barrick shares this week and its worst single-day performance in nine months. The pain in the gold sector wasn’t confined to Barrick.

Goldcorp Inc. lost 5.9 per cent of its value on Thursday, its worst showing in almost a year, after it posted a $131-million net loss in the second quarter. Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. also had a bad day in the stock market, losing 4.9 per cent of its value, after its quarterly results also fell short of estimates.

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Barrick’s ‘Mr. Fixer’ Kelvin Dushnisky lured to rival AngloGold with bigger role – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – July 24, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

The jump to Johannesburg allows Dushnisky to finally ascend to the helm of a major gold company

Barrick Gold Corp. announced Monday that its president Kelvin Dushnisky will depart in August, and relocate from Toronto to Johannesburg, where he will join AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. as chief executive officer.

The jump from Barrick, as of last year the world’s largest gold company, to AngloGold, the third-largest, allows Dushnisky to finally ascend to the helm of a major gold company.

While at Barrick, for 16 years, he rose through the ranks, joining the board of directors and becoming a president in 2015. But because the company has no chief executive, Dushnisky always laboured under the shadow of the executive chairman John L. Thornton, who joined the company from Goldman Sachs in 2012.

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Barrick Exit Raises Power Questions at Biggest Gold Miner – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – July 23, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Kelvin Dushnisky’s departure as president of Barrick Gold Corp. raises the question of whether his replacement will get more, or less, power at the world’s largest gold producer under Executive Chairman John Thornton.

Dushnisky, 54, is set to take over as chief executive officer of Johannesburg-based AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. as of Sept. 1, the miners said Monday. Dushnisky, a 16-year veteran at Barrick, worked up the corporate ladder to co-president, then president, where he became responsible for much of the work reducing debt and rationalizing operations. But high-level decisions were understood to be made by Thornton.

Jim Gowans served as co-president of Barrick with Dushnisky in 2014, when the company was struggling beneath a crippling debt burden. “We were selling operations, optimizing them, cutting the head office,” said Gowans, now CEO of Arizona Mining Inc.

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Kelvin Dushnisky leaves Barrick Gold for top job at AngloGold Ashanti – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – July 24, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Barrick Gold Corp. is losing its long-serving, number two executive, with the world’s biggest gold company seemingly blindsided by his departure.

After a 16-year run at Barrick, Kelvin Dushnisky is leaving his role as president, to become chief executive of South African gold major, AngloGold Ashanti Ltd.

His departure comes at a time when Barrick is struggling with a dwindling reserve base, locked in a geopolitical standoff in Tanzania and grappling with a flat gold price. Barrick did not announce a successor for Mr. Dushnisky on Monday, saying it will name one in “due course.”

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End of the rainbow: The future of gold mining in Nevada – by Suzanne Featherston (Elko Free Press – July 21, 2018)

https://elkodaily.com/

ELKO — Boom. Bust. Rush. Crash. These words are associated with the cyclical nature of the world’s minerals extraction industry known for making and breaking companies, economies, towns and fortunes.

Nevada – where mining has existed before statehood — has witnessed these ups and downs over time but now is experiencing a rather rare phenomenon in the mining industry.

“There has been a gold rush in Nevada for close to 50 years,” said John Muntean, an economic geologist and associate professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, who works for the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology.

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AngloGold poaches new CEO from rival Barrick Gold – by Neil Hume (Financial Times – July 23, 2018)

https://www.ft.com/

AngloGold Ashanti has moved to fill the hole left by the departure of its chief executive by poaching a senior director from rival Barrick Gold.

AngloGold, which is listed in Johannesburg, said Barrick president Kelvin Dushnisky would be joining the company in September, ending the search to replace Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan.

Mr Venkatakrishnan announced in April he was leaving AngloGold to to join Vedanta Resources the holding company of Indian metal tycoon Anil Agarwal.

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Barrick Gold has a problem: it is running out of gold – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – July 21, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

It’s not just a Barrick problem, either: many major producers have seen their reserves fall dramatically, raising concerns of a supply shock

Gold financier Pierre Lassonde thought it was time to cash in his chips. Thanks to a smart investment in a Nevada gold mine, shares in his royalty company, Franco Nevada, which he ran alongside his buddy Seymour Schulich, had run up from 65 cents a share to $17. By early 1988, Mr. Lassonde was ready to sell the company.

But after talking to the geologist who discovered the mine, he had second thoughts. Brian Meikle told him there was a humongous ore body yet to be exploited. “The discovery of three lifetimes” is how he described it. Similar logic had persuaded Barrick Gold Corp.’s Peter Munk and Bob Smith to buy the property about a year earlier.

That conversation with Mr. Meikle was a defining moment for Mr. Lassonde. He decided to hold on to the company. “[Franco] bought it for $2-million,” he said of the royalty on the mine. “If I had known, I would have bought it personally.” Given the wonderfully apt name Goldstrike, the mine would become one of the biggest in history. Since 1987, it has produced more than 45 million ounces of gold. Franco’s investment has yielded more than a billion dollars.

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Barrick Gold Is the Undisclosed Bidder for Detour Gold – by Scott Deveau (Bloomberg News – July 20, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Barrick Gold Corp. is the undisclosed gold miner who was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement alongside activist investor John Paulson to discuss potentially buying Detour Gold Corp., according to people familiar with the matter.

While Barrick’s level of interest in Detour is unclear, neither Paulson nor Barrick signed the confidentiality agreements, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. Paulson has held previous discussions about Detour with Barrick, they added.

A representative for Detour declined to comment. Representatives for Barrick, Detour and Paulson declined to comment.

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Barrick trims copper guidance, gold forecast intact – by Mariaan Webb(MiningWeekly.com – July 12, 2018)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

Toronto, Canada-headquartered Barrick Gold has maintained its gold production guidance for 2018 at between 4.5-million and 5-million ounces, but has slashed 40-million pounds off its copper production guidance, owing to operational challenges at its biggest copper mine – Lumwana, in Zambia.

The miner trimmed its copper production guidance from between 385-million and 450-million pounds, to a range of 345-million to 410-million pounds, at higher-than-initially-thought costs. The all-in sustaining cost (AISC) will increase to between $2.55/lb to 2.85/lb, from an initial guidance of $2.30/lb to $2.60/lb.

The revisions to the copper production and cost guidance primarily reflect operational challenges at Lumwana in the first half of the year, Barrick explained in its preliminary second quarter results announcement, released after the Canadian markets closed on Wednesday.

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Barrick forges closer ties with Chinese partner in bid to revive South American mine – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – July 9, 2018)

https://business.financialpost.com/

Barrick’s deal with Shandong shows how Chinese companies have in recent years stepped up their involvement with Canadian mining companies

Barrick Gold Corp. may be the largest gold miner in the world, but that hasn’t stopped it from asking a state-owned Chinese conglomerate to help in its decades-long quest to dig up a vast gold deposit near the border between Argentina and Chile.

On Monday, the Toronto-based company announced China’s Shandong Gold Group Co. Ltd. will study whether it makes sense to build an open pit, heap leach mine squarely inside Argentina — after Chilean authorities last year ordered the closure of mining activities on its side of the border.

The announcement, which came while Barrick’s senior management team visited China, shows the company’s growing reliance on Shandong as a partner. In April 2017, Shandong paid $960 million and formed a 50/50 joint venture in Barrick’s Veladero gold mine in Argentina, and the two agreed to explore future opportunities together.

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Acacia net cash restored after posting solid first half production – by David McKay (MiningMX – July 6, 2018)

https://www.miningmx.com/

ACACIA Resources all but restored its net cash balance to safer levels following second quarter gold production which totalled 133,778 ounces which means the group is on-track to meet its full year half production guidance of between 435,000 oz to 475,000 oz.

The group’s cash balance increased to $120m from $13m in the first quarter taking its net cash to $63m at quarter-end. It was about $50m at the close of the first quarter. “We are pleased to report another strong operating performance in the second quarter,” said Peter Geleta, interim CEO of Acacia Resources, in a statement.

Production for the six months ended June 30 was 254,759 oz and has been achieved in difficult circumstances for the group considering it scaled back Bulyanhulu after the mine was prohibited by Tanzanian authorities last year from exporting gold-in-concentrate.

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Acacia Mining’s Tanzania tax dispute drags on (Reuters Africa – June 25, 2018)

https://af.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Acacia Mining said on Monday its majority shareholder Barrick Gold would not provide a new deadline for the completion of talks to end a crippling dispute over taxes in Tanzania after failing to meet a mid-year target to do so.

Barrick, which is negotiating on Acacia’s behalf with the Tanzanian government, had previously said it would provide an agreement for approval by Acacia’s board by the end of June.

But in its own statement on Sunday, Barrick said talks continued and backed away from providing a new deadline “in order to allow the process to continue in an orderly manner.”

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Tanzania cancels license of Barrick, Glencore nickel project – by Fumbuka Ng’wanakilala (Reuters U.S. – May 12, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

DAR ES SALAAM (Reuters) – Tanzania has revoked a retention license for an undeveloped nickel project jointly owned by Barrick Gold Corp and London-listed miner Glencore Plc as part of enforcement of a new mining regime.

The license for the Kabanga nickel project in northwestern Tanzania was among 11 retention licences canceled by the government under the Mining (Mineral Rights) Regulations of 2018, which were approved in January.

A retention license is granted to holders of a prospecting license after they identify a mineral deposit within the prospecting area which is potentially of commercial significance but cannot be immediately developed due to technical constraints, adverse market conditions or other economic factors.

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