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British Columbia Mining

Lower mineral, energy prices bound to hurt B.C., economist says – by By Gordon Hamilton (Vancouver Sun – April 25, 2013)

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

Analysts differ on timing and effect of the end of commodities ‘super-cycle’

Commodities, the lifeblood of the British Columbia economy, are at the beginning of a long, downward trend that is bound to affect both government and households, says a Simon Fraser University economist.

“We have seen the best days in terms of dramatic increases in commodity prices,” David Jacks, an economic historian at the university, said in an interview.

He said commodities, particularly minerals and energy, are characterized by long-term trends related to global industrialization and urbanization. That growth runs up against capacity constraints, particularly in minerals and energy, leading to rising prices. New capacity to meet the new demand then leads to prices easing.

The current cycle, which has been going on since 1998, is being driven by Asian, specifically Chinese, economic growth and urbanization. Jacks has written a paper, From Boom to Bust, on the super-cycle, which he prepared for a recent conference in Australia on commodity price volatility. Jacks said his is not the only voice warning that commodities are beginning to trend downward in price — investment bankers Goldman Sachs and Citybank have done the same.

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Sliding commodities hit Teck – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – April 24, 2013)

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.

Canada’s largest diversified miner is feeling the weight of reeling global commodities markets. Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd., a major supplier of steel-making coal to China, said on Tuesday that first-quarter profit – adjusted for a one-time charge last year – tumbled 40 per cent, dragged down by falling prices for the metals it produces.

“With continuing uncertain global economic conditions, prices for all of our major products were down compared to the first quarter of last year, resulting in lower profits and cash flows,” Teck president and chief executive officer Don Lindsay said in the company’s statement of results on Tuesday.

Vancouver-based Teck, which produces coal, copper, zinc, molybdenum and some specialty metals, reported adjusted profit of $328-million or 56 cents a share, compared with $544-million or 93 cents in the same period a year ago.

From the first quarter last year to the same period this year, prices for coal, which accounts for 45 per cent of Teck revenue, plunged 28 per cent to $161 (U.S.) a tonne. At the same time, copper prices fell 5 per cent, molybdenum sank 21 per cent and silver dipped 9 per cent.

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Large supporting cast key to making mines work – by Michael Riis-Christianson (Vancouver Sun – April 18, 2013)

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

Resource industry depends on thousands of service companies for everything from metal fabrication to design to trucking needs

PRINCE GEORGE — B.C.-based metal supplier and plate processor A.J. Forsyth has two of Western Canada’s largest press brakes at its Prince George facility, machines capable of forming half-inch steel plate using nothing but brute force.

While these two massive pieces of equipment helped make the company a key link in the northern supply chain, they still weren’t enough to meet the rigorous demands of B.C.’s burgeoning mining industry. To do that, A.J. Forsyth had to purchase a giant, computerized plasma cutting station that could also produce custom-cut, drilled, and machined steel plate. Approximate cost: $1 million.

Making an investment of that magnitude wasn’t an easy decision, even for a company with nine locations in B.C. Yet according to Kevin McCormick, A.J. Forsyth’s Prince George branch manager, it proved to be the right one. Eighteen months later, the million-dollar plasma table is bring run three shifts per day, five days a week.

“It was a big decision for everybody,” notes McCormick, who at the time was trying to develop A.J. Forsyth’s business relationship with the mining industry.

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Modern mining is much more than ‘dirty’ work – by Paul Farrow (Vancouver Sun – April 23, 2013)

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

Outdated image is driving young skilled workers away from an exciting industry that calls for a wide variety of skill sets

Paul Farrow is the senior vice-president for people and safety at Goldcorp, based in Vancouver. For more information, visit goldcorp.com/careers.

Canada’s resource sector is facing a skilled labour shortage due to an aging workforce and a scarcity of new skilled workers. In the next five to 10 years, it’s estimated the global mining industry will need well over 55,000 new workers to meet demand.

In B.C. alone, according to the Mining Association of B.C., the industry will need to fill nearly 6,000 positions by 2016. As The Vancouver Sun’s BC2035 series attests, competition to attract the best talent is intense. For instance, Goldcorp typically has more than 100 job openings at any given time across operations in Canada, the U.S., Mexico and South America.

What’s preventing the mining industry from attracting skilled workers? In part, our sector has struggled to overcome misconceptions about mining practices and the type of work experience we can offer our employees. Outdated ideas about mining as an old-fashioned or “dirty” industry persist, even though our sector has made significant progress in advancing technologies, improving environmental performance and ensuring positive, lasting social benefits in the communities where we operate.

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New technologies can help make mining greener – by Shawn Conner (Vancouver Sun – April 20, 2013)

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

But building a cleaner mine is no magic bullet for the industry’s public perception problems, especially when operating abroad

With its mobile ready-to-assemble drilling kits, Energold Drilling Corp. is used to going into untrammelled corners of the Earth – sometimes with unexpected results.

In particular, Energold CEO and president Fred Davidson recalls the Shuar tribe of Ecuador. “We had guys who, literally one generation earlier, had been headhunters,” Davidson said. “And they’d be standing there in a helmet, gloves, hearing-protection, goggles, boots and nothing else but a loincloth.”

Of the Vancouver company’s 245 drilling rigs, nearly 100 of them are what Energold calls low-impact. These are module-based rigs whose individual pieces can be carried on foot or by pack-mule down already-established trails (the heaviest piece, Davidson said, is just under 200 kilograms). This means that no access roads need to be cut to transport the rig to a remote site.

Once the pieces are at the site, workers – often including locals, like the Shuar – assemble the pieces into a drilling apparatus that takes up a significantly smaller amount of space than a conventional rig (four by four metres rather than 20 by 20).

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Mine proposal becomes key election issue – by Gordon Hoekstra (Vancouver Sun – April 19, 2013)

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

Two city ridings have been consistent bellwethers in every provincial vote for the past century

The proposed $795-million Ajax Mine looms in Kamloops as a symbol of the hard choices that must be made between the economy and the environment. Supporters want the benefits of the 580 construction and 380 permanent mine jobs the project could bring.

Critics are concerned the copper-gold mine – which encroaches less than two kilometres from an elementary school – will bring pollution into the city limits.

And a mine that close to the city will undermine Kamloops’ efforts to position itself as a recreation and tourism mecca, Canada’s so-called Tournament Capital, say opponents of the mine who have formed a group called Stop Ajax Mine.

A recent poll commissioned by the Kamloops Daily News showed 40 per cent support for the mine and about one-third opposed. And four out of 10 people said a candidates’ stand on the project would affect how they vote in the May 14 provincial election.

The classic resource conflict – protection of the environment versus a desire for jobs – may underpin the provincial election debate not only in Kamloops’ two ridings, but in the province as a whole. How Kamloops votes in the election could be a sign of how the province will decide these debates.

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Mining makes your life possible – by Stephen Hume (Vancouver Sun – April 20, 2013)

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

Whether it’s your bicycle or cellphone, life as you know it would not exist without minerals

So, you’re parking both the family car and the transit pass, biking to work instead and feeling a tad righteous about helping British Columbia wean itself from its dirty addiction to the mining industry and the minerals it extracts.

Say thanks to a coal miner for the privilege. And don’t forget the hardrock miner. Not to mention the smelter crew and the roughneck yanking pipe on some frigid drill rig.

Oh, and say thanks to the trucker hauling canisters of molybdenum, titanium or tungsten concentrate or the geologist staking gold, silver or rare earths deposits. Without them and the industries that employ them, you’d be walking, not biking.

Bicycles, unless you ride one you made yourself from bamboo, lashings of hemp and dried banana peels, is entirely manufactured from materials obtained by mining – steel processed by burning metallurgical coal, perhaps lightened by adding specialized metals like titanium; plastic and synthetic rubber obtained from petroleum products.

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All of B.C. relies on resource sectors – by Heather Oland (Vancouver Sun – April 19, 2013)

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

1,200 mineral exploration companies are based in Vancouver. While their on-the-ground work is done across B.C., even worldwide, they spend heavily in the city’s economy

The economic growth that is being experienced in Prince George is not only reflected in the northern city’s very low unemployment rate, but also in the city’s steadily increasing housing starts, housing prices, units sold, building permits issued and air traffic volume.

It is being driven by the $70 billion in resource and resource related projects planned and underway in northern B.C. over the next decade. The resource-driven growth also strengthens the city’s fully diversified economy, everything from restaurants to retail to professional services. The growth in Prince George and northern B.C. is also being felt in Vancouver’s economy, as they are inextricably dependent on one another.

The mining sector is a good example of the symbiotic relationship between Vancouver and Prince George as mining is one of the critical drivers of the prosperity of the British Columbian economy.

According to the Mining Association of B.C., the gross revenues generated by the B.C. mining industry in 2011 amounted to $9.9 billion, a $2-billion increase from the year before.

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B.C. well positioned to capitalize on expected mining boom – by Scott Simpson (Vancouver Sun – April 19, 2013)

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

Sixty per cent of the world’s miners are on TSX exchanges, most are them are based in B.C.

All the numbers point to British Columbia as the epicentre of a global boom in mineral exploration and mine development.

We are a mining country. Minerals account for 23 per cent of Canada’s goods exports. Almost 60 per cent of the world’s publicly traded mining companies have their primary listing on either the Toronto Stock Exchange or the TSX Venture (junior company) exchange. The majority have their head office in B.C. Nearly half are managing mineral projects outside of Canada. They attracted 70 per cent of the equity capital raised globally for mining companies in 2012.

There is plenty of focus on projects within Canada, too. This is the world’s most popular country for mining investors – 18 per cent of global mining investment in 2011 came here, according to the Mining Association of Canada. From 2002 to 2011, amid the best mining commodity boom in decades, exploration spending aimed at finding and scoping out potential new mines grew almost seven-fold.

Last year, B.C. attracted a record $680 million in mineral exploration, an increase of 47 per cent over the previous best year, $462 million in 2011. Total direct employment in the mining sector, according to BC Stats, was 14,100 in 2012. That’s projected to grow to 16,770 by 2023. Average annual pay exceeds $115,000 per employee.

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B.C. miners dream of single environmental review – by Gordon Hoekstra (Vancouver Sun – April 19, 2013)

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

 Province signs agreement to have its review stand in for federal assessment, but critics say the federal reviews are far more robust and allow more public input

The British Columbia mining industry still doesn’t have what it wants: an environmental assessment process that happens once with one, final decision. But it’s getting closer. A long complaint of the industry has been the duplication of the complex and often lengthy environmental assessments at the provincial and federal level.

For example, the $1.5-billion Mount Milligan gold and copper mine, under construction in north-central B.C., took four years to receive approval from back-to-back provincial and federal environmental assessments and permitting processes.

The duplicate assessments are onerous and expensive costing millions of dollars and can hurt a companies ability to time a project to when mineral prices are high.

When the Conservative federal government brought in changes in 2012 to streamline the environmental assessment process, it included a provision that allowed federal environmental assessments to no longer be conducted where a province provides an “appropriate substitute.”

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B.C. miners, First Nations learn to get along – by Gordon Hamilton (Vancouver Sun – April 19, 2013)

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

Sharing the land and wealth is possible when both sides work to understand each other’s concerns and desires

If Tawny Fortier ever needs a reminder as to why she is here, pulled over at the side of the road waiting out a whiteout snowstorm while on her way from her Kamloops home to her job in the Peace River gas fields, she just has to think of her daughter.

She left eight-year-old Kyra with her aunt several hours ago on the Kamloops First Nation reserve. If the storm lifts, she hopes to be at her room in a Dawson Creek boarding house by nightfall and at 4:20 a.m. next morning, she will be up and on her way to work as an apprentice electrician on a gas plant construction project.

Her determination is fuelled by a deep motivation to succeed. “Kyra is my biggest motivation for sure. It’s important for me to have a well-paying job to support both of us,” Fortier said in an telephone interview, after she had pulled over near Jasper until the storm ended. The Kamloops woman is halfway through her apprenticeship to becoming an electrician and is taking whatever job is required to make that dream a reality. She works two weeks on, one week off at the Peace River project.

Fortier is at the forefront of a fundamental change that has taken place in the relationship between resource development companies and First Nations in B.C.

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Mining man Ross Beaty: Between a rock and a green place – by Gordon Pitts (Globe and Mail – April 13, 2013)

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 — Last fall, Vancouver mining financier Ross Beaty took off on one of his great escapes – a camping trip with his wife along a remote trail on Vancouver Island. To take pressure off his six-decade-old knees, he decided to travel lightly and live off the land, collecting berries, catching fish and taking nourishment from nature.

Trisha Beaty watched as her husband came back empty handed from his days of hunting and gathering. “It was a complete disaster. I caught no food, and found almost no berries,” he recalls. “Fortunately, my wife brought enough food for both of us, because she knew what would happen.” This surrender to realism suggests a man comfortable with ambiguity, who accepts that the world rarely delivers perfection, and who can, at times, show a blithe disregard for consistency.

After all, Mr. Beaty is one of the world’s most successful people at digging minerals out of the ground, and yet he is also a full-throated nature conservationist. He is a free marketer who advocates interfering with the freedom to mine the oil sands; and a gold and silver advocate who really doesn’t see the world’s financial system falling apart.

“I am a chameleon,” Mr. Beaty says happily over lunch at Diva restaurant on Vancouver’s Howe Street. “I have ultragreen environmental instincts but I don’t want government meddling with my abilities as an entrepreneur. I don’t want them getting in my face and telling me what to do. It is a contradiction and I just have to live with it.”

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Mining firm, unions at odds over admission of documents in foreign workers case – by Dene Moore (Globe and Mail – April 9, 2013)

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.

Legal wrangling bogged down what was to be the first day of a Federal Court judicial review of temporary foreign worker permits issued to a Northern B.C. coal mine.

On Tuesday, lawyers for one of the companies involved in the project, Canadian Dehua International Mines Group, asked the court to disregard some of the affidavits submitted by the unions among the thousands of pages of documents filed in the case.

“These written submissions are full of extraordinarily inflammatory language, accusing HD Mining of being a liar, of misrepresenting, of blowing hot and cold and all sort of other spurious allegations which we would submit are not found in evidence,” said Laura Best, lawyer for Dehua, referring to the second company involved, HD Mining International.

Among the “behemoth” of information filed by the unions in their pursuit of a judicial review, are affidavits based on hearsay and false allegations, Ms. Best said. The unions fired back with written arguments labelling the application by the companies to dismiss the affidavits as an abuse of process.

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B.C. mine’s temporary foreign workers case in Federal Court – CBC News (April 9, 2013)

http://www.cbc.ca/bc/

Unions challenge hiring of Chinese workers for B.C. coal mine

The fight by two labour unions against a company that hired more than 200 temporary workers from China for its coal mine in northeastern B.C. heads to Federal Court in Vancouver today.

The judicial review comes as the federal temporary foreign worker program has raised controversy following a CBC report this week that foreign workers were replacing some Royal Bank staff.

HD Mining International says it hired 201 workers from China for its coal mine in Tumbler Ridge because the 300 Canadians who applied for the jobs weren’t qualified. The two labour unions argue that HD Mining hired temporary foreign workers for jobs Canadians could have filled.

HD Mining International is a B.C.-based company. The majority owner is Huiyong Holdings Group, a private company from China, which operates several coal mines in that country. Vancouver-based Canadian Dehua International Mines Group also owns a stake in HD.

Brian Cochrane, of the International Union of Operating Engineers, hopes the case will result in changes to the temporary foreign worker program.

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Report questions ‘genuineness’ of Chinese mining firm in B.C. to hire Canadians – by Dene Moore (Canadian Press/CTV News – April 7, 2013)

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

VANCOUVER — An internal federal review of a decision to grant permits to a Chinese company to bring temporary foreign workers from China for its British Columbia coal mine found the company met or exceeded all requirements.

But the November report notes that the sequence of events in HD Mining’s application to bring 201 miners over from China for its Murray River coal mine leaves some questions as to the “genuineness” of the company in its search for Canadian workers.

The File Review Report obtained by The Canadian Press through Access to Information found that due diligence was performed on the applications.

“The employer, HD Mining International Ltd., has met all the program requirements for the (Temporary Foreign Worker Program),” said the Nov. 27 report prepared by Michele Morandini, acting director of the program, and approved by Heather Backhouse, executive director of the Citizen Services program delivery branch, B.C. and Yukon.

However, the review noted that of the 201 applications submitted by HD Mining, 84 of the workers had previously been applied for by its sister company, Canadian Dehua International. Fourteen of those workers were resubmitted by HD Mining for different positions.

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