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UPDATE 4-Chilean court suspends Barrick’s Pascua-Lama mine project – by Erik Lopez (Reuters U.S. – July 15, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO, July 15 (Reuters) – A Chilean appeals court on Monday suspended Barrick Gold Corp’s controversial Pascua-Lama gold mine until the company builds infrastructure to prevent water pollution, and ordered the mine’s environmental permit be reviewed.

In April, the Copiapo Court of Appeals temporarily and preventively froze construction of the $8.5 billion project, which straddles the Chile-Argentine border high in the Andes, while it examined claims by indigenous communities that it has damaged pristine glaciers and harmed water supplies.

On Monday, a three-judge panel of the appeals court, in a unanimous decision, ordered a freeze on construction of the
project until all measures required in the government’s environmental license for adequate water management, “as well as
urgent and transitory measures required by the environmental regulator,” are adopted.

Chile’s environmental regulator had already suspended Pascua-Lama, citing major environmental violations, and asked
Barrick, the world’s top gold miner, to build water management canals and drainage systems. “Barrick is committed to operating at the highest environmental standards at all of its operations around the world, including at Pascua-Lama, and is working diligently to meet all regulatory requirements at the project,” the Toronto-based company said in a statement on Monday.

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Aglukkaq takes environment post as Ottawa seeks to win over First Nations, U.S. on resource projects – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – July 16, 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 — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has moved his cabinet’s lone aboriginal minister into the sensitive portfolio of Environment as the government works to win crucial First Nations’ support for new pipelines and other resource-development projects.

In the shuffle announced on Monday, Mr. Harper demoted former broadcaster Peter Kent to the back benches and appointed health minister Leona Aglukkaq to the critical post, where one of her first jobs will be to finalize long-promised federal regulations covering greenhouse-gas emissions in the oil and gas sector.

The Conservative government is under great pressure to show it is serious about battling climate change and protecting the environment, even as it aggressively pursues energy and mining development.

Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, who has been the government’s point man on its so-called responsible resource development approach, remains in the post he has held since entering Parliament two years ago.

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Innovation’s vastly cheaper than green subsidies – by BJØRN LOMBORG (Globe and Mail – July 16, 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.

 Bjørn Lomborg is author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently published a report that estimates global shale gas resources. These findings may have a significant impact on energy policy in the future: Shale gas increases global resources of natural gas by a whopping 47 per cent. And this may be the tip of the iceberg. For example, at the end of June, the British Geological Survey released shale gas estimates for just one field in mid-England that increased the global estimate by more than 18 per cent.

Canada’s shale gas resources – the world’s fifth highest in terms of technically recoverable gas, estimated at 573 trillion cubic feet – are nothing to balk at. The economic benefits from fracking are manifold: Whereas natural gas prices in the European Union have doubled since the year 2000, U.S. prices have declined about 75 per cent in the past few years. This has saved U.S. consumers $125-billion a year. So the shale gas revolution promises to be great news for the Canadian economy, but – perhaps surprisingly, it is also good news for our climate.

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China’s next bet is on natural gas – by Peter Tertzakian (Globe and Mail – July 16, 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.

They say, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” but not so in China. Affairs in the Middle Kingdom have huge global influence – at least the mundane affairs of economic activity, primary energy use and environmental impact (in that order of causation). After a dozen boom years, the impact of small changes in China’s gargantuan condition triggers repercussion around the world, not the least for major oil and gas exporters like Canada.

Here’s what’s going on: China’s economy is decelerating, which implies caution (but not alarm) for oil markets; but its energy diet is becoming leaner, which rings a positive tone for future natural gas use. A Chinese transition to more natural gas, much more than the International Energy Agency (IEA) is forecasting, reinforces the importance of Canada’s West Coast liquefied natural gas (LNG) prospects.

China’s annual GDP growth has cooled off from its historically supercharged 10 per cent or more, down to an annualized 7.5 per cent for the second quarter of this year. Other metrics suggest loss of economic momentum; its exports are down 3.1 per cent year-over-year; domestic wages are increasing; manufacturing is weakening; and credit is crunching.

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Special report: In tax case, Mongolia is the mouse that roared – By Anthony Deutsch and Terrence Edwards (Reuters India – July 16, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

AMSTERDAM/ULAN BATOR – (Reuters) – Turquoise Hill Netherlands is a little-known Amsterdam-based company with three employees, no office, and not even its own mailbox. To the government of Mongolia, though, the company represents billions in taxes that it will never see.

Turquoise Hill was created in 2009, five years after Mongolia and the Netherlands signed a tax treaty to avoid double taxation and boost investment in Mongolia. But in 2011, Mongolia decided to cancel the pact, arguing that it would cost the country income from one of the most lucrative gold and copper mines in the world.

The move was rare – tax experts say only a handful of such deals between countries have ever been cancelled – and it highlights a big contradiction.

The Netherlands, which has more than 90 such treaties globally, spent roughly 13 million euros ($17 million) on three aid programs to Mongolia in 2009 and 2010. Globally its aid budget is about $5.5 billion – the fifth most-generous rate among rich nations at 0.71 percent of Gross National Income, according to the OECD.

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UPDATE 3-POSCO drops $5.3 bln Indian steel mill, keeps main project alive – by Hyunjoo Jin (Reuters India – July 16, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

SEOUL, July 16 (Reuters) – South Korea’s POSCO said on Tuesday it will pull out of a $5.3 billion steel mill development in India’s Karnataka state, but will proceed with another $12 billion project billed as the country’s largest foreign direct investment.

POSCO said in a regulatory filing that it had agreed to cancel the project with the government of southern Karnataka state because of delays in receiving iron ore mining rights and opposition from residents which had held back land acquisition.

The move could provide fresh impetus to POSCO’s main steel project in the eastern state of Odisha. Already eight years in the making, it has recently gained momentum with the clearing of legal obstacles to the granting of an iron ore exploration licence.

“We will proceed with a steel mill project in Odisha, which is making progress. The latest move will make us more focused on the project,” POSCO spokeswoman Kim Ji-young said. POSCO, the world’s fifth-biggest steelmaker, had pursued three steel mills in India as a way of hedging its bets on the slow-moving Odisha project.

In 2010, POSCO signed a preliminary agreement with the Karnataka state government to construct a mill capable of producing 6 million tonnes of steel a year. A year earlier it signed a separate steel mill deal with state-run Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL).

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Bye, bye BRIC: A new global investment shift takes hold – by Joanna Slater (Globe and Mail – July 13, 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.

NEW YORK — When the thirteen members of the investment team at Ballentine Partners LLC sit down each quarter to review their holdings, it is a loud and boisterous affair. Last month, their discussion turned to emerging markets.

The Massachusetts-based firm, which manages $4-billion (U.S.) for ultra-wealthy families, faced a decision: Pare its bullish bet on such countries or stick with it, even as stock prices fell.

The debate circled around the potential dangers for these markets and for China in particular. One agitated analyst pounded the table and called the country’s credit-fuelled expansion a “shell game.”

In the end, the firm’s staff decided to scale back on emerging-markets stocks. “It’s going to be a bumpy time,” said Greg Peterson, Ballentine’s head of investment research. So they decided to act out of caution, he said, to see “how all the issues resolve right now.”

Across the world, many investors are coming to a similar conclusion, watchful and uneasy about the future path of developing economies. In recent weeks, some have fled those markets, sparking marked declines in stocks, bonds and currencies.

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Outlook fails to quell ore appetite – by Arpan Muhkerjee (Dow Jones/The Australian – July 16, 2013)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business

DIRE predictions of slumping iron ore prices and warnings of the end of the commodities super-cycle aren’t deterring some deep-pocketed, long-view investors whose appetite for the steelmaking raw material is driving mining-asset mergers and acquisitions activity from Australia to Canada.

The short-term outlook for iron ore isn’t good.Prices have fallen 12 per cent since the start of the year and are down more than 20 per cent from the high of $US158.90 a tonne in February.

Some see iron ore slumping to $US90 a tonne or less due to rising supplies and slowing growth in top consumer China. UBS expects iron ore to average $117 a tonne this year, while Goldman Sachs has forecast $US80 a tonne in 2015.

“People are looking to buy cheap assets, so this is the perfect time when the downside (in prices) is still there,” said Helen Lau, senior analyst at UOB KayHian in Hong Kong. “Investors are able to negotiate even cheaper prices with miners.” Also weighing on prices is likely future iron ore supply rises.

Rio Tinto, Australia’s biggest iron ore exporter by volume, is pushing ahead with an expansion of output in the ore-rich Pilbara region.

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Mettle of big miners’ austerity to be tested – by Matt Chambers (The Australian – July 15, 2013)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business

THE nation’s biggest resource companies release quarterly reports this week in the first chance for investors to gauge progress in the big miners’ self-proclaimed new era of spending restraint and productivity.

BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Woodside Petroleum and Santos will report production, and energy firms revenue, from what has been a weaker quarter than it could have been from the nation’s resource-rich Pilbara in Western Australia. Rio and BHP experienced a very wet dry-season month of June in the Pilbara.

This is understood to have affected production from Rio, which reports tomorrow, and is likely to drag down its regional production, including minority partners’ interests, by a couple of million tonnes from the 61 million analysts had forecast.

Data from Rio’s Dampier and Cape Lambert ports in the Pilbara compiled by Credit Suisse backs this up, showing June exports this year were at their lowest in four years for the traditionally strong month. BHP, which reports on Wednesday, is said to have been hit to some extent.

While any impacts will be unwelcome, they are unlikely to worry investors and will be seen as one-offs that have a good chance of being compensated for over the rest of the calendar year.

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1880s saw first ore flow from Johnson Camp Mine east of Tucson – by William Ascarza (Arizona Daily Star – July 15, 2013)

http://azstarnet.com/

MINE TALES: William Ascarza is an archivist, historian and author of five books, including “Southeastern Arizona Mining Towns” and “Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.” Email him at mining@azstarnet.com

SITE NEAR DRAGOON STILL ACTIVE TODAY, HAS LARGE RESERVES OF ORE

Located 65 miles east of Tucson on the eastern slopes of the Little Dragoon Mountains, the Johnson Camp Mine is a working copper mine in Cochise County. Substantial mining operations didn’t start there until the early 1880s upon the arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad through the nearby town of Dragoon, seven miles south of the mine.

The property has been the site for underground mining, open-pit mining and mineral processing. Early smelting operations began with the erection in 1882 of a 30-ton smelter that had an output of 4 tons of copper bullion a day. The ore during that time contained as much as 7.4 percent copper.

Two towns emerged in what became known as the Cochise (Johnson) Mining District. The first was Russellville, which was soon replaced by Johnson.

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Taseko Mines praises Ottawa ahead of environmental hearings – by Dene Moore (Canadian Press/CTV New – July 14, 2013)

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

WILLIAMS LAKE, B.C. — The company behind a rejected billion-dollar gold and copper mine in the British Columbia Interior has been lobbying for the federal government to change the environmental assessment process that previously rejected the project, documents show.

And Taseko Mines Ltd. likes what it’s heard, according to documents obtained by The Canadian Press.

“I believe that yourself and the government of Canada are showing great leadership by taking an unapologetic approach to the responsible development of this country’s natural resources,” John McManus, senior vice-president of operations for Taseko Mines Ltd. (TSX:TKO), wrote to Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver following a January 2012 meeting in Vancouver.

The proposed New Prosperity Gold-Copper Mine was rejected by a federal environmental assessment panel in 2010 over concerns about the environmental impact, specifically the plan to drain a nearby lake for use as a tailings pond. Public hearings before a new panel are to begin this week in Williams Lake, B.C., for a revised mine proposal. The planned site is located about 125 kilometres southwest of Williams Lake.

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China’s GDP growth slows to 7.5 percent, tests reform push – by Langi Chiang and Jonathan Standing – Reuters U.S. – July 15, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

BEIJING – (Reuters) – China’s GDP growth slowed in the second quarter to 7.5 percent year-on-year as weak overseas demand weighed on output and investment, lining up a test of Beijing’s resolve to revamp the world’s second-biggest economy in the face of deteriorating data.

Other figures showed industrial output in June rising slightly less than forecast compared with a year earlier, but retail sales increasing more than had been expected.

The latest year-on-year economic growth reading compared with the median forecast in a Reuters poll of 7.5 percent and showed the pace of economic activity easing from 7.7 percent annual growth in January-March.

“These figures are not surprising, adding to signs of downward pressure on China’s economy,” said Zhou Hao, an economist at ANZ Bank in Shanghai. The Australian dollar, which is highly sensitive to Chinese demand for Australian raw materials, rose on relief the GDP numbers were not weaker, following last week’s report of a surprise fall in exports in June from a year earlier.

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Industrial policy is back — except in Ontario – by Eugene Lang (Toronto Star – July 14, 2013)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Eugene Lang is BMO Visiting Fellow at the School of Public and International Affairs, Glendon College, York University.

Countries with robust industrial policies — especially in Asia and other emerging markets — have seen superior growth performance post-recession.

Industrial policy — government interventions to grow and improve the competitiveness of select industries — is back in fashion, according to a new paper by John M. Curtis and Dan Ciuriak published by the Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP).

In fact, industrial policies never really went out of style, except in the Anglo-American democracies. For the past three decades governments in the Anglosphere — regardless of the party in power — have shied away from industrial policies and embraced the notion that state interventions to promote specific economic sectors usually do more harm than good. This is allegedly because governments don’t have the necessary information to “pick winners.” The market, according to this view, is always far superior at allocating resources than any government ever could be.

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Double Standards (Vale waste spill) – St. John’s Telegram Editorial (July 13, 2013)

http://www.thetelegram.com/

There’s an old saying about money and moguls: if you owe the bank $10,000 and you can’t pay, you’re in trouble. But if you owe the bank $10 million and you can’t pay, your banker’s in trouble.

It’s got to do with scale: essentially, there’s a point at which your size creates its own kind of motion — or its own kind of inertia — and you end up being treated differently than anyone else might be.

Keep that in mind and ask yourself if it might apply to this question: if Vale/Inco has a problem with toxic waste spilled into Arctic waters, is that really their problem or, given their size, is it a problem for the provincial government?

Because Vale is having a problem — one that they may well be trying very hard to solve, and one that the federal government has recently charged them over. Vale was charged with three charges related to the release of toxic materials into Anaktalak Bay in Labrador.

But just try getting anyone to talk about not only the issues involved in the case, or about Vale’s past record of failing a series of tests on effluent, and you find that everyone is pretty much mum.

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[Mining Documentary] Pandora’s Promise rethinks nuclear power: review – by Linda Barnard (Toronto Star – July 12, 2013)

(Above) Pandora’s Promise – Official Clip #1 (HD) Documentary

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Pandora’s Promise makes some compelling points about how a global acceptance of nuclear power could save the environment.

The “beginning of a movement,” heralded at the end of director Robert Stone’s Pandora’s Promise, won’t be one to make some environmentalists smile, but it will certainly spark a lively debate on both sides of the nuclear power issue.

In that regard, Oscar-nominee Stone (for 1988’s Radio Bikini, about nuclear bomb tests at Bikini Atoll) has achieved a documentarian’s aims. But there’s not much in the way of balance in this often bone-dry documentary about the bum rap nuclear power has gotten thanks to misinformed, if well-meaning, environmentalists and energy experts.

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