Canada Mining – Page 247 – Republic of Mining

Dams under review after Mount Polley breach, mining leader says – by Wendy Stueck (Globe and Mail – September 11, 2014)

September 12, 2014

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 — Industry and government officials across the country are reviewing dam design, maintenance and oversight in the wake of a tailings dam breach at Mount Polley mine in B.C., says the head of the Mining Association of Canada (MAC).

“No one in the industry, after this incident, didn’t wake up in the morning and go, ‘I better go check’ – even though they had reams of information and assurances that everything was safe,” MAC president Pierre Gratton said Thursday following an address to the Vancouver Board of Trade. “I think every one of them wanted to go out and get that reassurance again.”

On Aug. 4, a tailings dam at the Mount Polley mine – operated by Vancouver-based Imperial Metals – gave way, sending a torrent of mud and debris into neighbouring waterways and resulting in drinking-water bans in affected areas. Most of those advisories have been lifted, but a do-not-use order remains in effect for the “impact zone,” which includes Hazeltine Creek, Polley Lake and part of Quesnel Lake.

The cause of the breach is unknown and an independent investigation is under way.

The incident rattled the mining sector and raised questions about oversight and regulation of tailings dams in British Columbia and elsewhere in the country. Following the Mount Polley breach, the B.C. government moved the deadline for companies to file annual inspection reports for tailings dams from March 31, 2015, to December 1, 2014, and also ordered those inspections to be independently reviewed.

Allan potash mine: All trapped workers returned to surface, some ‘grouchy and hungry’ (CBC News Saskatoon – September 11, 2014)

September 12, 2014

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon

All miners returned to surface, some after more than 24 hours underground

Miners who spent some 24 hours trapped underground at PotashCorp’s Allan mine east of Saskatoon have made their way to the surface, after a fire forced dozens of workers to seek shelter in safety stations on Wednesday.

Around 8:30 p.m. CST Thursday, the last three workers who were in safe spaces below ground were up and out. Earlier in the day, 51 of their co-workers returned to the surface.

A union leader said he was able to speak to some of the workers who were brought up and reported they were safe, but some were “grouchy and hungry”. Mike Belyk was one of the workers who returned to the surface Thursday afternoon.

“[I’m] just relieved to be back up, to get home see your family,” he said. “Other than that it wasn’t too, too bad.” Belyk said miners were in contact with rescue teams and people found ways to pass the time. “We had communication. Played cards. Played a lot of cards.”

NEWS RELEASE: Canada needs to act now to hold onto its global mining leadership – Head of the Mining Association of Canada addresses the Vancouver Board of Trade

September 12, 2014

VANCOUVER, Sept. 11, 2014 /CNW/ – In a speech to the Vancouver Board of Trade today, Pierre Gratton, President and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada, provided an overview of the past decade of mining development in Canada and the keys to maintaining Canada’s position as a global mining leader.

“Canada benefited tremendously from the past decade of rising commodity prices, seeing a 25 percent increase in the number of new mines, increased employment and rising government revenues. The opportunity is there for Canada to continue to responsibly develop its mining industry, and the jobs, business development and community investments that go along with it,” said Gratton. “Governments and individuals all play a part in deciding whether we seize those opportunities, or let other countries take the leadership position instead.”

In his address, Gratton pointed to a few indicators to demonstrate how mining has contributed to Canada’s prosperity over the past decade, but also some signs of lost ground. Last year, after an eight-year period as the top jurisdiction for global exploration spending, Canada fell to the second spot behind Australia. Similarly, in the Fraser Institute’s latest annual survey, traditionally top Canadian jurisdictions lost their footings. For example, Quebec, which held first place from 2007 to 2009, fell to the 21st spot in 2013. In terms of mineral production, Canada has also declined from being the top five producer of 14 major minerals and metals in 2007 to just 10 today.

To explain these declines, Gratton notes that Canada’s mining sector operates in a much more competitive global environment. Some basic business fundamentals make Canada an expensive place to build new mines. This includes rising energy and operating costs, skills shortages, a lack of critical infrastructure to build new mines in increasingly remote and northern regions, high transportation costs to get goods to market, and complex and lengthy regulatory processes.

Northern Canada, the Conflict-Free Diamond Frontier – by Christopher F. Schuetze (New York Times – September 11, 2014)

September 11, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/

The four C’s of a conventional diamond are color, clarity, cut and carat weight. Deepak Kumar is fond of saying that his stones will have six C’s. “The fifth C is for ‘conflict-free,’ and the sixth C is for ‘Canadian,”’ Mr. Kumar said in a telephone interview from Yellowknife — population 20,000 — the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories.

Mr. Kumar’s company, Deepak International, announced this summer that it had bought two defunct diamond polishing plants in Yellowknife for 1.9 million Canadian dollars, or $1.7 million, together with the exclusive rights to the polar bear symbol, a quality logo for the Territories’ sustainably mined stones.

As consumers increasingly ask where their diamonds are sourced, polished and cut, Canadian diamonds have a reputational advantage. They are marketed as conflict-free and cleanly mined under the Canadian Diamond Code of Conduct, overseen by the federal government, that goes beyond the Kimberley Process certification program, established in 2003, which sets minimum standards for ethical diamond mining.

“Canada is a wonderful story. It is icy, it is clean, it is cold,” said Dylan Dix, an executive with HRA Group, Canada’s biggest diamond producer.

Industrial-scale diamond mining started in Canada in the 1990s — just as stories of war atrocities and exploitation began to roil the market for African gemstones. Canada has since become the world’s third-biggest diamond producer, after Botswana and Russia.

Kinross Gold in talks to sell Ecuador project to Lundin family – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – September 11, 2014)

September 11, 2014

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.

Kinross Gold Corp. is in talks to sell its mothballed gold project in Ecuador in a move that could see the Lundin family develop the deposit, according to people familiar with the matter.

For about a year, Kinross has been trying to exit Ecuador and divest the Fruta del Norte after clashing with the local government on the economic terms of the project. The Ecuadorean government gave Kinross approval to sell Fruta del Norte last week, one person familiar with the matter said.

Fruta del Norte, also known as FDN, was at one time seen as critical to Kinross’s growth. The company acquired the precious metal deposit when it bought Aurelian Resources for $1.2-billion in 2008.

But after more than two years of negotiations with the Ecuadorean government, Kinross threw in the towel and said it was not going to waste any more capital developing the mine. It recorded a $720-million charge on the asset in 2013 and slashed its gold reserves by a third to reflect the loss of Fruta del Norte.

“We continue to work co-operatively with the Ecuadorean government on our exit from the country and the FDN project,” Kinross spokeswoman Andrea Mandel-Campbell said. “We do not comment on speculation,” she said.

High cost of mining a challenge in Far North – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life – September 11, 2014)

September 11, 2014

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Mining Association of Canada CEO raises challenges for mining sector

The high cost of doing business in Canada, especially in the Far North, is the biggest challenge the mining sector faces nationally, said Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada.

Gratton, who was the keynote speaker at a Chamber of Commerce event for the North America Mining Expo in Sudbury on Sept. 9, said according to Mining Association of Canada research, it can cost up to two and a half times as much to build a remote mine there, than a mine near a populated urban centre in the south.

“The fact is, while a vast country rich in resources, Canada has lost ground,” Gratton said. “We were a top-five producer of 14 major minerals in 2007, but today (Canada is on top) of only 10.” What’s more, mineral reserves for most commodities have been plummeting since the 1980s, he said.

To address the high cost of doing business in remote regions, like northwestern Ontario’s Ring of Fire mineral deposits, government needs to partner with mining companies, Gratton said.

Building infrastructure in those regions, which often benefits remote First Nations by connecting them to transportation routes and electrical grids, constitutes a public good, Gratton said.

Infrastructure deficit hampering western Nunavut mine project: MMG (Nunatsiaq News – September 9, 2014)

September 11, 2014

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/

MMG wants partners, maybe government, to help pay for port, airport, road, microwave broadband system

You might call it a “challenge,” as an MMG manager put it, or you could see it as an ultimatum. After sinking $300 million into studies to see if the mineral-rich Izok Corridor in western Nunavut is economically viable, the mining giant says it won’t move ahead with the project unless a partner helps build a port, airport, road and microwave broadband towers.

MMG ‘s delivered its latest message to residents of Nunavut’s western communities of Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk this week: the lack of regional infrastructure is a deal-breaker for its plans to build a $6.5-billion network of lead, zinc and copper mines along the Izok Corridor.

Unless a partner is found to invest a “quite substantial” amount of money to build a deep-water port and airport at Grays Bay on the Coronation Gulf, a 325-all-season road and a microwave broadband network, the majority Chinese-government-owned company won’t go ahead with the project.

Since telling the Nunavut Impact Review Board in April 2013 not to proceed with its recommended detailed review, MMG has crunched its numbers in a $60 million feasibility plan and revised its 2012 Izok Corridor Mine Proposal.

According to information distributed at public meetings in Cambridge Bay, the two Nunavut communities closest to the Izok Corridor, the new, streamlined mine plan includes a relocation of the three-million tonnes per year ore plant at Grays Bay, more modular components into the mine deign and a mining of the most distant deposit, Izok, to followed by High Lake.

Vale’s Q2 nickel production plunges in Sudbury (Northern Miner – September 10, 2014)

September 11, 2014

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry.

Vale ’s (NYSE : VALE) companywide nickel production in the second quarter of 2014 was 61,600 tonnes, an 8.6% drop from the first quarter and 5.3% fall from the year-ago period. Vale says the decline mainly reflects the impact of four weeks of planned maintenance work carried out on the acid plant and furnaces in Sudbury, Ont. For the first half of 2014, Vale’s companywide nickel output was only off 0.7% to 129,200 tonnes.

Vale’s Sudbury operations produced 9,100 tonnes nickel in the second quarter, a decline of 48.4% from the first quarter and 49.2% from the second quarter of 2013. For the first half of 2014, Vale produced 26,800 tonnes nickel in Sudbury, off 23.6% from the 35,000 tonnes produced in the first half of 2013.

(Elsewhere in Canada in the second quarter, Vale produced 6,900 tonnes in Thompson, Man., or up 11% year-over-year; and 12,100 tonnes at Voisey’s Bay, Labrador, down -19.7%.)

The low point of the quarter came on April 6, when millwright Paul Rochette was killed at Sudbury’s Copper Cliff smelter complex. The United Steelworkers Local 6500 and Vale carried out a joint investigation into the fatality.

First Nations protesters shut down northern B.C. drilling site – by Mark Hume (Globe and Mail – September 9, 2014)

September 10, 2014

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 — After a summer of protests aimed at mining companies, members of the Tahltan Nation in northern B.C. say they have shut down an exploratory drilling operation by taking over the site.

“HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!!!” states a Monday night posting on the Facebook page for Tahltan elders. “The Klabona Keeper members are occupying a black hawk drill pad above Ealue Lake!!!”

The elders’ group, which is based in Iskut just south of Dease Lake, has staged several protests in the area in recent years blocking resource companies from working in a place known as the Sacred Headwaters. The region is highly valued by the Tahltan because it holds the headwaters of three important salmon rivers – the Stikine, Skeena and Nass.

Rhoda Quock, a spokeswoman for the Klabono Keepers, said Tuesday a group of protesters hiked to the remote drill site and took it over.

She said Black Hawk Drilling Ltd., a Smithers, B.C., company that works for Firesteel Resources Inc. of Vancouver and OZ Minerals of Australia, flew its drilling crew out after the occupation began.

If We Build It, They Will Stay [Ring of Fire and North] – by John Van Nostrand (Walrus Magazine – September 2014)

September 9, 2014

http://thewalrus.ca/

Instead of extracting resources and leaving, we could populate the mid-Canada corridor—and create a bigger, better country

FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO, perhaps in the outsized spirit of Expo 67, the retired major general and author Richard Rohmer put forward a bold proposal in Mid-Canada Development Corridor: A Concept. It described a vast landmass stretching from Newfoundland and Labrador across Quebec, Ontario, and the Prairies, to British Columbia and up through Northwest Territories and Yukon, occupying the area between southern settlements and the treeline—a band dominated by boreal forest. His idea was to implement a national strategy to develop and populate it.

Rohmer reasoned that Canada was poised to be a world leader in resource extraction, and that our future was tied to that endeavour. Mid-Canada was rich in minerals, oil, and gas, largely untouched, and had a habitable climate. The key to the plan was new infrastructure, which both the government and private sector would finance.

At the time, there were a few north–south arteries in place, and more were needed; east–west links needed improvement. Some existing settlements could be expanded to serve as urban hubs. The middle of the country could be settled in much the same way the West had been settled three generations earlier, when Canada saw its future in agriculture.

Potash Corp. Veteran Challenges Uralkali With Russian Mines – by Yuliya Fedorinova (Bloomberg News – September 8, 2014)

September 8, 2014

http://www.bloomberg.com/

OAO EuroChem, a Russian fertilizer maker building $7.4 billion of potash projects, is gearing up to challenge the dominance of OAO Uralkali with production from its two mines reaching the market in five years.

“We expect we’ll be able to mine the first potash at both mines in late 2017,” Clark Bailey, EuroChem’s mining head, said in an interview. About two more years will be needed to start shipments to external customers, he said.

EuroChem is developing an annual capacity of 8.3 million metric tons of potash, a form of potassium that strengthens plant roots, in two phases at the Verkhnekamskoe deposit in the Perm region and in another two at the Gremyachinskoe deposit in the Volgograd region in western Russia. The company controlled by billionaire Andrey Melnichenko kept its pace even as Uralkali plunged the $20 billion market into turmoil in July last year by ending a marketing venture with Belarus that accounted for 40 percent of worldwide potash exports.

EuroChem, which already produces nitrogen and phosphate nutrients, plans to consume a portion of the potash itself to boost its output of complex fertilizers. Even as it bets on cost advantages such as proximity to a port to take on market leaders, the key to EuroChem’s success in potash could lie in the efficiency of suppliers such as K+S AG (SDF), Europe’s largest.

“While EuroChem’s projects are the only ones at an advanced stage in the industry globally, they’re more likely to take market share from high-cost producers like K+S than from low-cost producers like Uralkali,” ZAO Raiffeisenbank analyst Konstantin Yuminov said by phone.

Mt. Polley Debacle: BC Miles behind US on Mine Danger Info – by Sean Holman (The Tyee.ca – September 8, 2014)

September 8, 2014

http://thetyee.ca/

Public here barred from records freely available in US to help avert disasters.

British Columbia is one of the country’s biggest mineral producers. But compared to Americans, British Columbians have very little information about the safety and regulation of that activity.

And that means journalists, activists and citizens have very little power to stop mining problems before they become mining disasters.

Just such a disaster happened last month when the tailing dam at Imperial Metals Corp.’s Mount Polley Mine collapsed, resulting in a flood of concern and questions about safety at similar operations in the province.

In response to a request from Vancouver Sun reporter Gordon Hoekstra, the government released details on the 49 “dangerous or unusual occurrences” that were recorded as happening at tailing ponds in British Columbia between 2000 and 2012.

Earlier, it also released a summary of inspections at the Mount Polley mine. But a spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy and Mines confirmed the government “does not generally publicly post mine inspection reports or related information, including the dates on which they were conducted.”

The reason: such reports, which can be obtained via the province’s sometimes-lengthy and often frustrating freedom of information request process, “need to be reviewed for any personal and financial information before they can be released.”

Rise in intense rainstorms challenges B.C.tailing dams – by Stephen Hume (Vancouver Sun – September 7, 2014)

September 8, 2014

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

Provincial failure to properly regulate the design and operations of dams means more failures coming

The failure rate for mine tailings dams like the one at Mount Polley has been consistent worldwide at about one every eight months since 2001.

Lest anyone think that “worldwide” refers mostly to a problem in the developing world where impoverished governments can be co-opted to accept lower safety standards because they are desperate for tax revenue, a United Nations study found that 39 per cent of these failures were in North America.

The reasons for tailings dam failures vary from shoddy construction and use of inappropriate materials to seismic or other unavoidable environmental events. However, according to a 2010 survey of all the known tailings dam failures in the past century, most fail for two reasons.

The first is unusually heavy rains that overwhelm dams’ designed capacities. They account for 40 per cent of failures. The second is poor management and flawed regulatory oversight, responsible for 30 per cent of failures.

‘Best restaurant north of 60’: How mining companies use gourmet food, suite-style rooms to attract new recruits – by Katrina Clarke (National Post – September 8, 2014)

September 8, 2014

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

Prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, lemon pepper-dusted sea bass and beef tenderloin marinated in garlic, ginger and scallions are just a few of the delicacies Executive Chef Allan Bedard serves up nightly.

But the customers delighting in his meals aren’t foodies in downtown Toronto. They are hungry miners, up to 500 of them, eager to devour a meal after working a 12-hour shift underground.

“We have people who come to site, they don’t know what a mango is… They try to eat them like apples,” says Mr. Bedard, boasting that he rapidly expands both the palates and the waistlines of miners.

Gone are the days of cheap hot dogs, wilted vegetables and Spam. As mining companies compete to recruit and retain top workers, miners at fly-in fly-out mine sites in northern Canada are increasingly getting treated to gourmet-style food. Food costs at some mine sites can reach upwards of $20 million annually.

“We have the best restaurant north of 60,” says Dale Coffin, director of corporate communications with Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. The “restaurant” is located at Agnico Eagle’s Meadowbank mine in Nunavut’s Kivalliq region, 170 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle.

The mine is a fly-in fly-out operation, with 50% of workers coming from Quebec and 30%from Nunavut. Most workers work a two-on, two-off shift, spending two weeks on site and then getting a two week break.

Goldcorp Inc CEO says gold price plunge to $900 would be an opportunity, not a disaster – by John Shmuel (National Post – September 6, 2014)

September 8, 2014

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

TORONTO — The chief executive of Goldcorp Inc. is not fretting over lower gold prices this year and says he would view any price declines as an opportunity to buy assets.

In an interview with the Financial Post on Friday, Charles Jeannes, president and CEO of Goldcorp, spoke about the company’s growth prospects in the next year.

Gold prices have steadily pulled back since 2011, when they reached a record intra-day price of US$1,909 an ounce. Prices for the precious metal closed Friday at US$1,268.81 an ounce.

“We’re a low cost producer and we’ve done most of the investing we need to to secure our future,” Mr. Jeannes said. “Building these new mines over the last four years, even if we see gold go down to US$900 — which I don’t think we will — we’d look for opportunities. Things come for sale at that price.”

In January, Goldcorp launched a $2.6-billion hostile bid to buy gold miner Osisko Mining Corp. Goldcorp raised that bid to $3.6-billion a few months later, but ultimately let the offer expire following the launch of a rival bid from Yamana Gold Inc. and Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.

Mr. Jeannes said on Friday that despite the failed bid, he is not rushing to look for another large acquisition in its place.