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British Columbia Mining

NEWS RELEASE: Super Pit Push: B.C.’s Copper Mountain Mine Lifts Neighbouring Property

Oct 11, 2013 (ACCESSWIRE via COMTEX) — SOURCE: VantageWire.com — The copper scene in British Columbia took on a major change when the Copper Mountain Mine started production in June of 2011. Five billion pounds of copper reserves and over 20 years of mine life left will do that.

Today, the project owned by Copper Mountain Mining [TSX: CUM] and Mitsubishi Materials Corporation is producing at 36,000 tpd at a cut-off grade of 0.12% copper. To get to this point, Copper Mountain has drilled more than 1000 holes. As part of the deal, partner Mitsubishi (that owns 25%) now buys all of the concentrate that comes from the operation.

The Copper Mountain Mine and the work that went into it have proven that BC’s grades are capable of international levels of production. The province can handle more output, and the Princeton region that is host to the operation has plenty left to offer. Given the prospects in development in the areas near the mine, a bird’s eye view of the projects on the horizon highlight the potential the province truly has.

Directly adjacent to Copper Mountain’s “super pit” is junior Anglo-Canadian Mining Corp. [TSX.V: URA]. With it’s fully owned and highly prospective Princeton copper-gold property, Anglo-Canadian is in the land of the giants in striking distance from a future takeover bid. The 2200-hectare property is in good standing for Anglo-Canadian until 2023.

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Aglukkaq will have final say on controversial Fish Lake mine in B.C. Interior – by Gloria Galloway (Globe and Mail – October 11, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

OTTAWA — In one of her first tests as Environment Minister, Leona Aglukkaq will give thumbs up or down to a proposed mine in British Columbia that is a new version of a plan tossed out as ecologically disastrous by a former Conservative minister.

Chiefs from Tsilhqot’in First Nations say they have no doubt that a federal environmental assessment panel, which is weeks away from delivering a verdict on the New Prosperity mine at Fish Lake in the B.C. Interior, will reject it out of hand.

They say the plan for the billion-dollar gold-and-copper pit that Taseko Mines Ltd. wants to dig near the lake the Tsilhqot’in call Teztan Biny – a small body of water they consider culturally and spiritually sacred – is just as bad as the earlier version thrown out in 2010 by former environment minister Jim Prentice.

Representatives from environmental groups who sat in on the panel’s hearings this summer say they are cautiously optimistic it is preparing to say no to the mine. Scientists from Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Fisheries and Oceans, as well officials from B.C.’s provincial ministries, expressed significant concerns about the project.

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Pretium shares plunge 30.5% as independent consultant resigns – by Peter Koven (National Post – October 10, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

TORONTO – The shareholders of Pretium Resources Inc. were rattled on Wednesday after one of Canada’s most respected teams of geologists severed ties with the emerging mining company and its heavily-hyped gold project in British Columbia. Pretium announced that Strathcona Mineral Services Ltd. resigned from its role as “Qualified Person” on a sampling program for the Brucejack project. The move cast a cloud over the project, and Pretium shares plunged 30.5%.

Strathcona was brought in as an independent consultant to oversee and report on Pretium’s bulk sample project. The independent verification is required under Canadian mining disclosure rules, and Toronto-based Strathcona is known for its conservative and disciplined approach.

Strathcona did not respond to requests for comment. But Pretium chief executive Robert Quartermain downplayed the resignation and maintained the Brucejack project is on track. “We’re in a situation where we have a disagreement between two Qualified Persons with regards to reconciling the bulk sample with the resource estimate we have,” he said in an interview.

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Teck waiting for next coal wave to revive Quintette – by Brent Jang (Globe and Mail – October 8, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

VANCOUVER — Teck Resources Ltd. is sitting on a mountain of untapped coal at its Quintette property in northeastern British Columbia, hoping for market conditions to improve and give the project a new beginning.

Quintette supplied metallurgical (or coking) coal to Japanese steel mills from 1982 until it closed in 2000. Today the coal market is all about China, but prices have plummeted in the wake of the country’s slowing growth and ample industry supply.

In June of this year, the B.C. government issued a mining permit to clear the way for Teck to operate an open-pit mine at Quintette, which is forecast to produce three million tonnes a year of metallurgical coal, a key ingredient in the production of steel. But with coal prices down more than 50 per cent over the past couple of years, Teck announced in July that it decided to delay capital spending of $300-million in 2013 and $350-million in the first half of 2014 that had been earmarked for Quintette.

Having watched the corporation nearly collapse during the 2008-09 recession, Teck executives are being cautious in their approach to Quintette.

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Opinion: Why mining matters, now – by Philip Hochstein (Vancouver Sun – October 3, 2013)

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

Philip Hochstein is President of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association.

Saying no to the New Prosperity mine means saying no to $11 billion worth of GDP over 20 years

When you live and work in Metro Vancouver or Greater Victoria, it’s easy to ignore the impact of mining, but the British Columbia mining story is exceptional. There is no industry in B.C. right now that has the potential to contribute more to our economy and improve the way of life here than mining, because few industries can create wealth out of raw resources as mining does. And yes, I mean improve life and create wealth in the big cities too.

At environmental assessment hearings this past summer, I spoke in favour of the proposed New Prosperity mine, which is 125 kilometres southwest of Williams Lake. Why would a Burnaby-based construction association care and why should you care about just another mine? The reason is because a new mine is not just another mine.

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Can a ghost town be resurrected? – by Andy Radia (Yahoo Canada News – October 4, 2013)

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/

A U.S. businessman wants to turn Kitsault, B.C., into a natural gas hub

Across the county, there are a very few success stories of revitalizing ghost towns or depressed mining communities.
There are some: Elliot Lake. Ont., for example, transformed itself from a uranium mining community into a retirement village. Kimberly, B.C., once home to a major copper mine, is now a tourist destination with golf courses and ski hills. And, Kitimat, B.C., has once again become a boomtown by selling hydro instead of processing aluminum.

Now Virginia-based businessman Krishnan Suthanthiran wants to emulate those successes in his coastal town of Kitsault, B.C..
Kitsault – located 800 km northwest of Vancouver – is not unlike many other ghost towns in Canada.

Its story began in 1980: Amax Canada claimed the 350 acres of land to extract molybdenum, a metal used to harden steel. The mining company spent $50 million to build homes, roads, a school, a hospital, a shopping mall and even a rec centre for its 1,200 miners and their families. Unfortunately, by 1982, the price of molybdenum plummeted, the mine closed down and everybody packed up and left.

Unlike most other ghost towns, however, Kitsault’s story might just have another chapter.

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NEWS RELEASE: Unresolved Aboriginal land claims and government land-use policies deterring mining investment in BC

 OCTOBER 3, 2013

Click here for full report: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/uploadedFiles/fraser-ca/Content/research-news/research/publications/BC-mining-policy-performance.pdf

VANCOUVER, BC—Uncertainty about disputed land claims and government land-use policies make British Columbia too risky for many mining investors, concludes a new study published today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

The study, British Columbia’s Mining Policy Performance, found that uncertainty in land and resource ownership was a prime deterrent of mining investment and that in some instances mining companies are dealing with several aboriginal groups with overlapping and differing claims in a single area.

“Miners must have confidence in the stability, predictability, and transparency of the policy environment in which they operate,” said Kenneth P. Green, senior director of the Fraser Institute’s Centre for Natural Resources.

“If BC’s government wants to attract mining investment to the province, it should push ahead to settle land and resource ownership disputes in a timely manner.”

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B.C. Mining Protest: Company Pulling Out From Mt. Klappen – by The Canadian Press (Huffington Post – September 24, 2013)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/british-columbia/

VANCOUVER – A Canadian mining company is moving to diffuse a growing dispute with First Nations over a proposed open pit coal mine in northern B.C., by pulling out of the mine site for several months.

However, Fortune Minerals (TSX:FT) said it is not leaving Mount Klappan for good, and that the company remains committed to the mine in an area considered sacred by First Nations.

“While all of Fortune’s activities at the project site are focused on gathering necessary information that will be used in a B.C. environmental assessment process, … the company has faced disruptive and damaging protests,” the firm said in a statement.

On Sunday, about 40 members of the Tahltan First Nation, including elders, moved into the Fortune’s camp site at Mount Klappan and asked the workers to leave.

Tahltan members had earlier issued what they called an “eviction notice, requiring the company to halt its exploration activities and leave the area,” said a news release issued by the Tahltan Central Council on Tuesday.

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Coal mining protest in B.C. set to erupt – by Margo Harper (Globe and Mail – September 21, 2013)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

An increasingly tense standoff between a B.C. First Nation and a London, Ont.-based coal company in a remote mountain valley known as Sacred Headwaters is set to erupt as protesters flaunt their month-long presence on a drilling site and taunt the RCMP to arrest them.

For the Tahltan First Nation, which has worked both with and against industry, the stakes are high: It is determined to halt the development of an open-pit coal mine in a spot it views as the land of origin, the birthplace of all waters.

“We dare Fortune to get us arrested. We have cameras here. We will make sure the world knows what’s going on,” said Rhoda Quock, spokeswoman for the protest group Kablona Keepers, in a statement.

Fortune Minerals Ltd., which has invested $100-million to develop what it says may be the world’s biggest undeveloped deposit of high-quality, clean-burning coal, has no intention of giving up on the Arctos Anthracite project.

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NEWS RELEASE: Anglo American delivers the largest financial commitment ever made by a mining company to protect northern caribou in British Columbia

(L to R) Brent Waldron, Chief Financial Officer of Anglo American’s Metallurgical Coal business; the Honourable Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations with the Government of British Columbia, and Mike Bernier, M.L.A. Peace River South for the Province of British Columbia.

VANCOUVER, Sept. 18, 2013 /CNW/ – Today the Chief Financial Officer of Anglo American’s Metallurgical Coal business, Mr Brent Waldron, presented the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations for the Government of British Columbia, the Honourable Steve Thomson with a $2.566 million cheque for the Government of British Columbia’s Peace Northern Caribou Plan in Vancouver, B.C.

This is the largest funding contribution made by a mining company for caribou mitigation measures under the Peace Northern Caribou Plan and Mr Waldron said he was proud to personally present the donation on behalf of Anglo American.

“This contribution comes as part of Anglo American’s Trend-Roman project, an open cut expansion for the Peace River operation near Tumbler Ridge in north-east British Columbia and represents the company’s commitment to maintaining the highest standards of environmental protection,” Mr Waldron said.

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Coal industry predicts bright future – by Derrick Penner (Vancouver Sun – September 13, 2013)

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

Exports from Western Canada likely to double over next decade, conference hears

Coal, unloved by environmentalists and battered by a global market glut that has ravaged corporate profits, is still likely to see its production and exports double from Western Canada over the next decade.

“Western Canada produces mainly metallurgical coal for the steel industry and it’s got a lot of things going for it,” said Gerard McCloskey, moderator for the Coal Association of Canada’s annual conference that is in Vancouver this week.

McCloskey, a U.K.-based industry consultant, said Western Canada remains attractive because of its good quality and untapped reserves, and he said while markets are oversupplied now, there is still considerable room for growth, particularly in the Pacific.

“I would think there will be, in my own forecast, a doubling of exports from Western Canada over the next 10 years,” McCloskey said. The coal association conference gathered more than 300 industry participants from all levels of the mining sector and its supply chain, from equipment dealers to consultants and transportation specialists.

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The so-called “Great Strike” really was a lockout, part 2 – by T.W. Paterson (The Citizen – September 11, 2013)

http://www.canada.com/news/index.html [Cowichan Valley Citizen]

Premier Richard McBride, who doubled as Minister of Mines, thought it “intolerable” that the strikers should make demands upon the mine owners. Coal mining is a dangerous business at best. But Vancouver Island mines were said to be among the most dangerous in the world for cave-ins, explosions, floods and fires.

The human cost, over 90 years of operation, was appalling: 640 miners killed in Nanaimo-area mines, almost 300 more in the Cumberland colliery. Those who died of their injuries later, sometimes much later, went unrecorded.

The B.C. government had recognized these hazards, particularly that of gas explosion, when it passed the Coal Mines Act of 1911 which stated that, upon the presence of gas or other life threatening hazards being reported to management, the mine, or the section of the mine in question, was to be closed until the problem was rectified.

When Oscar Mottishaw and Isaac Portrey, members of a gas committee, reported five gas emissions in Extension No. 2 Mine on June 15, 1912, it cost Mottishaw, who was known to be an organizer for the newly arrived United Mine Workers of America, his job and he sought employment with a contractor in another Canadian Collieries (Dunsmuir) Ltd. mine in Cumberland.

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The so-called ‘Great Strike’ really was a lockout, part 1 – by T.W. Paterson (The Citizen – September 6, 2013)

http://www.canada.com/news/index.html [Cowichan Valley Citizen]

It devastated families, divided communities, set trade unionism on the Island back by more than a decade and left memories – for many, bitter, bitter memories – that survived for several generations.

August 2013. As you stand in brilliant late summer sunshine at Ladysmith’s First and French Streets, you’re surrounded by busy traffic, neat and well-maintained businesses, the historic Eagles’ Hall and some roadside artifacts dating from this 49th parallel city’s heyday as a shipping port for coal from the Extension mines.

It taxes your imagination to picture this intersection as it would have appeared in August 1913.

That’s when Ladysmith was a city besieged, having been placed under the equivalent of martial law by order of the provincial government. That’s when the Eagles Hall was headquarters to hundreds of armed soldiers, uniformed policemen and civvies-clad special constables who patrolled these very streets amid sand-bagged machine gun emplacements while on the lookout for, and often provoking, confrontations with hundreds of angry, striking coal miners.

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BC First Nation blocks road to proposed coal mine – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – September 5, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Members of the Tahltan First Nation, in British Columbia (BC), on Tuesday began blockading a road leading to project developer Fortune Minerals’ proposed openpit coal mine and which is also used to travel to traditional hunting camps, as Tahltan Central Council (TCC) leaders prepared for talks with government on Wednesday.

Tahltan community members said they were concerned that Fortune started using the access road after the Iskut First Nation, in preparation for the hunting season earlier in the summer, repaired it.

The First Nation said in a statement that its leaders would meet with provincial Ministers to discuss the impact of the proposed mine and to develop a long-term plan to protect the area surrounding Mount Klappan in the north-west of the province.

“Building an openpit coal mine on the Sacred Headwaters, which supports three salmon-bearing rivers and has been vital for hunting for thousands of years, is a step too far. It is time to be proactive about protecting our own interests and those of everyone in the region,” TCC president Annita McPhee said.

Chief Marie Quock of the Iskut First Nation explained that some of the community’s people asked Fortune to leave so that they could camp on Mount Klappan as usual, without being interrupted by traffic and helicopters.

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Opinion: Taseko seeks path forward for New Prosperity – by Russ Hallbauer (Vancouver Sun – September 2, 2013)

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

Misinformation tainted hearings, sowed mistrust

Russ Hallbauer is president and CEO of Taseko Mines Ltd.

The final weeks of the First Nations community hearing sessions of the federal environmental assessment for New Prosperity Gold-Copper Mine witnessed emotional testimony from many Tsilhqot’in and Shuswap First Nations peoples.

The New Prosperity project is located in British Columbia’s Cariboo-Chilcotin region. It proposes to save the culturally sensitive Fish Lake, and it will have a significant positive socio-economic impact on the region, British Columbia and Canada.

The Tsilhqot’in people have a long history and traditional connection to the land throughout their traditional territory, including in the proposed mining area around Fish Lake.

These communities, many with strong family ties, are working to heal some pressing social issues by strengthening awareness of their heritage and traditional practices among their youth as well as more broadly in the general population.

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