Archive | Canadian Media Resource Articles

North: Mining boom to drive economic growth in territories beyond rest of Canada: report – by Ryan Ratrick Jones (CBC News North – July 12, 2019)

July 12, 2019 in Canada Mining – North of 60, Canadian Media Resource Articles

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

The Conference Board of Canada says outlook rosy for Nunavut and Yukon, but N.W.T. in for a bumpy ride

Economic growth in the territories will outpace the rest of Canada over the next two years, driven by the strength of the mining sector in Yukon and Nunavut, according to the latest forecast from the Conference Board of Canada.

Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut are forecast to experience combined growth rates of 5.3 per cent in 2019 and 4.4 per cent in 2020, the independent research organization said in its summer territorial outlook, released on Wednesday. That’s compared with 1.5 per cent and 2 per cent across Canada’s 10 provinces.

“The near-term outlook is actually quite positive if we combine all three territories,” said Marie-Christine Bernard, director of forecasting for the Conference Board of Canada. “When you have a positive environment for mining, it generally also has positive effects in other areas of the economy.” Continue Reading →

Alberta’s oilpatch may help fill global lithium shortage – by Danielle Smith (Edmonton Journal – July 12, 2019)

July 12, 2019 in Battery Technology Innovation/Electric Vehicles, Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Lithium, Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image

https://edmontonjournal.com/

Earlier this year, Tesla executives warned that the world may soon be facing a critical shortage of minerals and metals needed to build batteries, in particular nickel, copper and lithium.

Cobalt is also going to be a growing problem not only because of scarcity, but because it seems the only place it can be mined in great abundance is through the help of child labour in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

If the great transition to renewables is to take place, the world needs to find and develop more and better sources of these key battery components. When it comes to lithium, Alberta oilfields may hold the answer. Continue Reading →

OPINION: In the knot of reasons migrants are fleeing Central America, there seems to be a Canadian thread – by Denise Balkissoon (Globe and Mail – July 12, 2019)

July 12, 2019 in Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Latin America Mining, Mining Conflict and Opposition

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Teresa Munoz is one of thousands of Central Americans searching for a better life in the United States. She’s not stuck in a cramped, unsanitary detention centre, but her immigration claim is mired in the Trump administration’s crackdown on asylum-seekers.

She’s from Guatemala, one of Central America’s “Northern Triangle” countries, along with Honduras and El Salvador. That’s where the majority of people apprehended at the Mexico-U.S. border are coming from. There are many complicated reasons they’re all leaving, including the violent aftershocks of decades-long civil wars and farmland droughts that are being worsened by climate change.

The situation can seem tragic but also impenetrable, a political tangle of causes and effects happening far away. But among the many miserable migration tales, Ms. Munoz’s story hits close to home: She says she fled because of threats and attacks following her activism against a mine owned by a Canadian company. Continue Reading →

Gold executives promise to ‘stick to their knitting’ and practice prudence as bullion prices soar – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – July 12, 2019)

July 12, 2019 in Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Gold and Silver

https://business.financialpost.com/

Peter Marrone, chairman of Toronto-based Yamana Gold Inc., isn’t betting that a bull run is just around the corner even as gold prices soar to their highest point in a half-decade.

His cautious attitude about rising bullion prices is not unusual in a sector that is still suffering the hangover effects from the last time prices broke out. That was in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and gold mining companies used the added revenue for a shopping spree that left many with debt that has still not been fully paid down.

Now, after several weeks in which gold prices have hovered around US$1,400 per ounce — a threshold not crossed since 2013 — some gold bugs believe a United States-China trade war and continuing low interest rates will push prices even higher in the immediate future. Continue Reading →

The ‘fraud of the century’ finally reaches the end of the line after clogging up our court system for 7 years – by Peter Foster (Financial Post – July 11, 2019)

July 12, 2019 in Aboriginal and Inuit Mining and Oil/Gas, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Climate Change, Carbon Taxes and ENGOs, Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image

https://business.financialpost.com/

The most baseless of cases — especially if they involve the words ‘Indigenous’ and ‘environment’ — can tie up business for years

After clogging up the Canadian court system for seven years, an utterly corrupt multibillion-dollar lawsuit against California-based oil company Chevron on behalf of “poor Ecuadorean villagers” was finally dismissed by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice last Friday.

The suit, dubbed “the fraud of the century” by The Wall Street Journal, related to pollution caused by Texaco — a company that Chevron acquired in 2001 — when Texaco had been operating in Ecuador before 1992.

In fact, Texaco had paid for — and the Ecuadorean government had agreed to — remediation payments, but then a buccaneering American lawyer named Steve Donziger got into the act. A classmate of Barack Obama, Donziger engineered a US$9.5-billion judgment against Chevron in Ecuador. He had no trouble recruiting then-Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa to the cause. Continue Reading →

Marathon Gold ‘prime takeout candidate’: National Bank of Canada analyst (Northern Miner – July 11, 2019)

July 12, 2019 in Canadian Media Resource Articles, Gold and Silver, Junior Exploration Sector, Newfoundland and Labrador Mining

Northern Miner

Marathon Gold (TSX: MOZ) is on track to release a new resource estimate in September for its Leprechaun deposit in the company’s Valentine Gold camp in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The latest drilling has expanded the high-grade area within Leprechaun’s Main Zone corridor to a strike length over 480 meters with a width of 30 to 100 metres and extending to a depth of 350 metres.

Leprechaun is one of four near-surface deposits, mainly pit-shell constrained, at Marathon’s Valentine Gold camp, and remains open at depth and along strike. The four deposits stretch over a 20-km system of gold-bearing veins. Continue Reading →

Area Play: The Val d’Or, Quebec Camp in Canada is Heating Up – by David Erfle (Kitco News – July 12, 2019)

July 12, 2019 in Abitibi Greenstone Belt, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Gold and Silver, Junior Exploration Sector, Quebec Mining

https://www.kitco.com/

Full Disclosure: I have purchased shares of ECR.V and BTR.V in the open market and have also recommended them both to my subscribers.

In the early 20th century, the discovery of the Cadillac Fault ushered in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue Gold Rush and the geological anomaly continues to have a major impact on Quebec’s mining history.

The massive fault is roughly 160 kilometers long and extends from the town of Val d’Or, in Quebec, to Kirkland Lake, in Ontario. Its name derives from the township of Cadillac, where it was first discovered.

Although its name in French means “valley of gold,” there is no valley in Val d’Or, however, there is still plenty of gold remaining in the surrounding area. The town of roughly 32,000 inhabitants was founded by miners in 1934 and its economy depends chiefly on mining gold, zinc, lead, molybdenum, and copper. The lumber business is also important to the economy of Val-d’Or, as the forests of the Abitibi region provide 65% of the lumber produced in Québec. Continue Reading →

Top 10 Canada-based diamond companies – by Trish Saywell (Northern Miner – July 2019)

July 11, 2019 in Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Diamond Mining

Northern Miner

The Northern Miner has compiled a list of the top-10 diamond companies with headquarters in Canada, arranged by market capitalization, as of early July 2019.

1. Lucara Diamond – Market cap: $623 million

Lucara Diamond (TSX: LUC) is part of the Lundin Group of companies and owns the Karowe diamond mine, in Botswana, which has been in production since 2012, and is one of the world’s foremost producers of large, high quality, Type IIA diamonds in excess of 10.8 carats. These include the historic 1,109 carat Lesedi La Rona (the second-largest gem diamond ever recovered), and the 813 carat Constellation, which was sold for a record US$63.1 million.

Since starting production, the company has sold 180 diamonds for more than $1 million each, and 10 single diamonds for more than $10 million apiece. The company has paid out more than US$249 million in dividends, a sum that exceeds the total capital invested to build the mine. Continue Reading →

CEO at Canadian miner Hudbay steps down, industry veteran steps in – by Nichola Saminather and Debroop Roy (Reuters Canada – July 10, 2019)

July 11, 2019 in Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Manitoba Mining

https://ca.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Canada’s Hudbay Minerals Inc said on Wednesday that Chief Executive Officer Alan Hair has stepped down after more than 20 years with the company and named Peter Kukielski, who was backed by its second largest investor in a proxy battle, as interim CEO.

As part of its proxy fight, private equity firm Waterton Global Resource Management had nominated five directors to the company’s board. Three of them, including Kukielski, were elected in May following a settlement that ended the drawn-out battle.

Much of Waterton’s ire surrounded Hudbay’s reported talks to buy Chile’s Mantos Copper for about $780 million last year and what it described as an erosion of shareholder returns under its management and board. Continue Reading →

Hudbay CEO steps down after weathering Waterton proxy fight – by Danielle Bochove and Aoyon Ashraf (Bloomberg News – July 10, 2019)

July 10, 2019 in Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Copper

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

Just months after withstanding a hard-fought proxy battle, the chief executive officer of Hudbay Minerals Inc. is leaving the Toronto-based miner.

Alan Hair, who has been with the company for more than 20 years, has stepped down, the company said Wednesday in a statement. Board member Peter Kukielski will step in as interim CEO while the company searches for a permanent replacement.

It’s been a tumultuous year for Hudbay, which saw one its largest shareholders, Waterton Global Resource Management, wage a public battle for sweeping changes to the miner, including, originally, Hair’s resignation. Waterton had sought to install Kukielski as CEO. Continue Reading →

Acacia Mining, independent consultant push Barrick Gold to increase takeover offer – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – July 10, 2019)

July 10, 2019 in Africa Mining, Barrick Gold Corporation, Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Gold and Silver

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Barrick Gold Corp. has been given more time to table a formal takeover bid for Acacia Mining PLC, as its London-based subsidiary pushes for a materially higher offer.

On Tuesday, just hours before a deadline set by a British takeover panel was set to expire, Barrick was granted a 10-day extension to consider a report by an independent mining consultant that argues Acacia is worth about 38 per cent more than Barrick is willing to pay.

In a release, Acacia said that SRK Consulting (UK) Ltd. has calculated the “preferred” value for Acacia to be 271 pence ($4.45) a share. In May, Toronto-based Barrick said it was willing to pay 0.153 of its own shares for each Acacia share it doesn’t already own, or roughly 197 pence a share. Continue Reading →

OPINION: Why Murray Edwards keeps investing in Alberta’s oil sands – by Andrew Willis (Globe and Mail – July 9, 2019)

July 9, 2019 in Canadian Media Resource Articles, Oil and Gas Sector-Politics and Image

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

In one of the great contrarian investments of our time, billionaires such as Murray Edwards and Li Ka-Shing are pouring money into Alberta’s oil sands.

While foreign energy companies were selling their oil-sands holdings and investors were purging domestic energy stocks from their portfolios, Mr. Edwards’s Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) and Li family-controlled Husky Energy Inc. have increased their stakes in the region.

As part of a massive shift in ownership that has seen more than $37-billion of oil-sands assets change hands, CNRL dropped $16.5-billion to acquire properties from Devon Energy Corp. and Shell Canada Ltd., while Husky spent US$435-million on a heavy oil refinery last summer. Both companies are expected to keep investing. Continue Reading →

Billionaire coal baron Christopher Cline dies in helicopter crash – by Lynn Doan (Bloomberg/Niagara Falls Review – July 5, 2019)

July 9, 2019 in Canadian Media Resource Articles, Coal, United States Mining

https://www.niagarafallsreview.ca/

Christopher Cline, the billionaire coal tycoon best known for reviving the mining industry in Illinois and making a fortune doing it, died in a helicopter crash Thursday.

Cline died in an accident off the coast of the Bahamas that also killed six other people, Brian Glasser, an attorney who represented Cline, said by telephone. He was the founder of St. Louis, Missouri-based coal miner Foresight Energy, a joint venture with Robert Murray’s Murray Energy Corp.

Cline, who died a day shy of his 61st birthday, was born into coal. His grandfather dug up the rock with a pickaxe, and he himself started working the mines at 22. Ten years later, he founded the Cline Group to extract coal from beneath the hollows and rolling hills of Appalachia. He created Foresight to expand into Illinois in 2006. At its peak, the company was valued at more than $2.6 billion. Continue Reading →

Roof collapse at coal mine – by Michael Tutton (Canadian Press/Global News – July 8, 2019)

July 9, 2019 in Canada Mining, Canadian Media Resource Articles, Coal

https://globalnews.ca/

Nova Scotia’s Labour Department said Monday that inspectors have been sent to the mine to look at the extent of the rock fall that occurred over the weekend, when no workers were in the area.

Scott Nauss, the province’s senior director of inspection compliance, says there were no injuries in the incident, which comes after a series of roof collapses last year in working areas of the Donkin mine.

Kameron Coal’s operations in Cape Breton were suspended for just under a month in late December before the company was allowed to partially resume activities in one portion of the mine while it prepared a revised roof support plan. Continue Reading →

Sculptor helps gold mining town celebrate 100 years – by Marc Montgomery (Radio Canada International – July 8, 2019)

July 9, 2019 in Canadian Media Resource Articles, Canadian Mining History, Gold and Silver, Kirkland Lake, Northern Ontario History, Ontario Mining

Radio Canada International

Northern Ontario’s history is tied to that of mining. It was back in 1919 that a rush for silver in the north led instead to a discovery of gold and a another sort of rush.

This led to the development of several mines and creation of the township of Teck, eventually renamed Kirkland Lake in 1972. Renowned bronze sculptor Tyler Fauvelle has created a lifesized recreation of a period prospector which has been placed near the Toburn mine, the first of several which once flourished, and are now gone.

“Although the artwork is a tribute to all of the Kirkland Lake Gold Camp prospectors, I did include some features representing some of Kirkland Lake’s legendary prospectors. I hope visitors will enjoy looking for those symbols, and learning about the local history behind them,” says Fauvelle. Continue Reading →