(Bloomberg) — Most of the world’s top gold miners have seen their shares surge this year as bullion prices hit repeated record highs. Not Barrick Gold Corp.
Missed production targets, higher operational costs and political turbulence at mines in Africa and Asia have investors turning increasingly sour on the world’s second-biggest gold producer. On Thursday, Barrick posted gold output that missed analysts’ estimates for the 11th straight quarter.
For a few days in mid-September, Halifax, Nova Scotia, became the world’s centre for geochemical expertise when the International Conference on Acid Rock Drainage (ICARD) convened there. Given the interruption caused by the global pandemic, and that the conference happens only every three years, this was the first in-person event since 2018’s meeting in Pretoria, South Africa, so there was a lot of ground to cover.
And the ground has shifted. Charles Dumaresq, vice-president of science and environmental management at the Mining Association of Canada, noted in the opening day panel that a series of high-profile tailings dam failures has trained the attention of regulators, operators and the broader public on the geotechnical risks associated with mines and legacy sites, which has the potential to divert resources away from addressing geochemical concerns.
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George Christidis is the interim chief executive of the Canadian Nuclear Association. Heather Exner-Pirot is the director of Energy, Natural Resources, and Environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Advocates of nuclear energy tout its environmental and economic benefits, but there are also compelling geopolitical reasons to pursue nuclear.
Energy security concerns have thrust nuclear forward as a critical solution for many countries traditionally dependent on, or integrated with, Russian nuclear energy and gas supplies. Their desire to disentangle their energy systems from Russia presents Canada the opportunity to use its nuclear expertise and supply chain to contribute to European energy security.
Now that Donald Trump has been re-elected as president of the U.S., Canada is bracing for a trade war with its biggest export customer. Damage will be done to Canada’s $900-billion (U.S.) trade relationship with the United States.
There will be harm on both sides of the border if Trump proceeds with his avowed imposition of a 10-per-cent to 20-per-cent tariff on U.S. imports.
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Canada’s auditor general criticized the federal critical minerals strategy for not adequately probing the impact increased mining will have on the environment and Indigenous communities.
The government program issued in 2022 budgets $3.8 billion on critical minerals support over eight years. Yet, the strategy doesn’t properly measure results and progress on ecosystems and First Nations, the Office of the Auditor General, the government’s own watchdog, said in a report on Thursday. The matters included greenhouse gas emissions, the protection of culturally significant sites and improvements to local living conditions, it said.
‘People love to jump in their cars, use their cell phones and Xboxes and jump on light rail, but they don’t understand the minerals and metals that go into that, says Ryan Montpellier, a leading mining sector executive in Canada.
“Even those young people that do have an awareness continue to hold very dated perceptions of our industry. They still view this as a dark, dirty and dangerous industry, and that couldn’t be further from the truth,” he says.
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For the mining crowd, the annual Denver Gold Forum is a chance to swap speculation on potential deals. At this year’s gathering in September, all the takeover talk revolved around junior companies with promising properties being snapped up by larger rivals.
The country’s smallest gold miners – those developing projects that are years away from producing bullion – are becoming attractive takeover targets. Soaring gold prices have boosted the valuations of senior and intermediate mining companies and left them flush with cash, while stock prices continue to languish at exploration companies.
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Sometimes a discovery is so big, it takes generations to discover, define and develop – in order to become a mining district that produces metals for future generations. Over the past two decades, the Lundin Group technical team has found a cluster of giant copper-gold deposits in the Andes – the region that produces 40% of the world’s copper.
Their Vicuña district deposits include Filo Corp.’s (TSX: FIL) Filo del Sol and Lundin Mining‘s (TSX: LUN) Josemaria in San Juan province, Argentina; and NGEx Minerals’ (TSX: NGEX) 69%-owned Los Helados in Chile’s Region III, plus its Lunahuasi discovery in San Juan.
https://www.northernminer.com/
Ivanhoe Mines (TSX: IVN; US-OTC: IVPAF) on Wednesday reported record third-quarter copper production but cut its full-year guidance by 6%, blaming power outages at its Kamoa-Kakula complex in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Toronto-based company lowered the copper guidance to 425,000–450,000 tonnes, from 440,000–490,000 tonnes. The disruptions stemmed from deficient transmission capacity and instability in the DRC’s southern grid, managed by state-owned Société Nationale d’Électricité. Delays in upgrading the Inga II dam’s transmission line and grid bottlenecks at the Kolwezi substation limited reliable power delivery.
Global Atomic (TSX: GLO) said on Tuesday it anticipates securing a project financing loan from the US development bank by early Q1 2025 to advance its Dasa uranium project in Niger.
The company reported that in recent discussions, the bank confirmed its intention to approve a $295 million debt facility, which would cover 60% of the project’s projected costs. Dasa is the highest-grade uranium deposit in Africa, surpassed only by grades found in Canada’s Athabasca Basin, and is scheduled to achieve commercial production in early 2026.
When he was 16, Adam Lundin was lowered by helicopter into the remote wilderness of northern Canada. For the son of a wealthy mining mogul, this was something of an initiation. He spent the summer hunting for gold — shadowing grizzled prospectors and geologists, bushwhacking through the Boréal forest.
He even dug holes for where the outhouses would go. “I just wanted to be kept busy,” he said. Adam, 37, is now the chairman of Lundin Mining Corp., a publicly traded Canadian metals producer. His younger brother, Jack, 34, is the company’s chief executive officer.
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Barrick Gold Corp. is asking an Ontario judge to dismiss lawsuits alleging that its subsidiary in East Africa committed human-rights atrocities in the vicinity of its North Mara mine, arguing that the matter should be litigated overseas.
Barrick is defending two civil cases in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, one from November, 2022, and another from February of this year. The plaintiffs are Indigenous Kurya from villages around the mine in Tanzania who were injured in 2021 and 2022 when mine security police allegedly shot at them, as well as family members of victims who were killed during this period allegedly by the police.
Saudi Arabia’s Manara Minerals is closing in on a deal to buy a minority stake in Canadian miner First Quantum Minerals’ Zambian copper and nickel assets, three people familiar with the details told Reuters.
Manara, a joint venture between Saudi Arabian mining company Ma’aden and its $925 billion Public Investment Fund, is in advanced talks to acquire between 15% and 20% equity in the Zambian assets, the sources said.
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A coal mining proposal has divided two neighbouring municipalities in Southern Alberta – and one of them recently received a blow from the Alberta Energy Regulator, which denied its application for an adjournment of licence hearings for a new coal development.
To the north is Ranchland, a municipality of rolling terrain in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with around 100 residents. To the south is Crowsnest Pass, a municipality of about 5,700 people. Both picturesque, the two municipalities could not be more different when it comes to their positions on coal mining.
The trade group said it faces a “pivotal” moment before demand exponentially increases
The North American Graphite Alliance on Thursday called on Canada to enact 25 per cent tariffs on six Chinese products used to make batteries, further amplifying trade tensions around the electric vehicle supply chain.
Graphite is used in lithium-ion battery anodes, and Canada produced around one per cent of the global total in 2022. The trade group said it faces a “pivotal” moment before demand exponentially increases from the EV transition and that it needs protection from China.
