(Bloomberg) — Two mining giants are re-routing shipments and turning to trucks to deal with disruptions from a Canadian railway stoppage that threatens to undermine the industry’s operations.
Rio Tinto Group will rely on trucking and increase usage of its own railway between Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador to ship and receive raw materials, the company said Thursday in an emailed statement. Rio produces aluminum, iron ore, diamonds and titanium in Canada.
The port and the rail line that feeds it are major part of the federal government’s strategy
A northern Canadian deep water port marked a major event as a shipment of critical minerals on Friday left the Port of Churchill for the first time in more than 20 years.
“It has got a great deal of geopolitical security implications,” Chandra Arya, a federal member of parliament and a member of the standing committee on international trade, said during an event hosted by the port’s current ownership group, Arctic Gateway Group LP.
A recent court decision will fundamentally reshape Crown-First Nations relations for decades to come
The Supreme Court of Canada, ruling on the treaty rights case involving the Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superior treaties, has given one of the sharpest rebukes of the Government of Canada (and, in this instance, Ontario) in legal history.
Federal and provincial governments — current and historic — were chastised, criticized and legally spanked, in a decision that will resonate through the coming decades and that could transform Canada’s approach to resolving Indigenous legal grievances.
https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/
The latest update reveals the plant at the Gahcho Kué mine will be recovering diamonds into 2031, a year later than earlier estimated. The mine, located 280 km northeast of Yellowknife, NWT, is a joint venture of De Beers Canada (operator and 51% owner) and Mountain Province Diamonds (TSX: MPVD) (49%).
The update follows engineering work to steepen the walls of the open pit. This change will allow additional kimberlite to be captured within the mine plan and represents an increase of 2.7 million tonnes at 2.0 c/t or 5.5 million carats in the resource.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Stakeholders are hoping for a restart of the contaminated Eagle gold mine, but experts say finding a buyer isn’t guaranteed, and creditors are likely to take a major haircut regardless of the outcome.
Toronto-based Victoria Gold Corp. was placed in receivership last week, its management ejected and its shareholders wiped out after an Ontario judge ruled it wasn’t moving with enough urgency and lacked sufficient funding to remediate a major cyanide spill in central Yukon.
South African mining giant’s purchase of Osisko highlights how some of the country’s richest mines are now managed by companies with headquarters in Switzerland, Brazil, Australia and beyond
Canada’s mining industry let out a collective groan after the $2.15-billion sale earlier this week of Toronto-based Osisko Mining Inc., which owns one of the largest, highest-grade undeveloped gold deposits in the world.
Chief executive John Burzynski couldn’t complain about the outcome; everyone who invested made money, he said. But his original goal, when he started looking for a bonanza in Canada about two decades ago, was to build a new Canadian mining giant.
(Bloomberg) — US coal producer Arch Resources Inc. agreed to merge with rival Consol Energy Inc. in a $2.3 billion deal aimed at creating a North American mining heavyweight to deliver the fuel around the world.
The companies announced the transaction in a statement Wednesday after the deal talks were reported earlier by Bloomberg. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Arch stockholders will receive a fixed exchange ratio of 1.326 shares of Consol stock for each share of Arch common stock. Consol shareholders will own about 55% of the combined company, to be called Core Natural Resources.
The recent success of Canadian nuclear power projects speaks volumes about the industry’s preparedness and competitiveness.
When you think about Canadian infrastructure projects, what are the first words that come to mind? Late and over budget.
Poor project management, regulatory hurdles, and market impacts make it nearly impossible to build any major project on time, and it’s a genuine surprise if something gets completed under budget. This doesn’t have to be the case: the Canadian nuclear industry is rewriting this narrative. Currently, two of Canada’s largest active infrastructure projects are in the nuclear sector – and they are on time and on budget.
Chile’s SQM (NYSE: SQM), the world’s second-biggest lithium producer, reported a sharp 63.2% decline in quarterly profit on the back of slumping prices of the key metal used in the batteries that power electric vehicles and high tech devices.
The company, which also manufactures fertilizers and industrial chemicals, said it expects the downward trend in lithium prices to continue for the rest of the year. SQM’s second-quarter net profit came in at $213.6 million, or 75 cents per share, falling short of analysts’ prediction of $296.7 million, or 95 cents per share, according to LSEG data.
The LNG revolution will be a boon for the province and its First Nations
Outside of small pleasures and personal adventures, life in British Columbia has offered little that can be celebrated as of late. For proponents of Canadian energy, however, B.C.’s transformation into a major player in oil and gas has been a triumph.
No, vast quantities of fossil fuels are not being extracted from the ground like in Alberta, but the westernmost province has become the great bridge that connects Alberta’s oil and gas to global markets. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities are springing up along B.C.’s coastline, driving technological innovation and unprecedented reconciliation with First Nations.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Grassy Mountain has become a battleground between those who see the economic benefits of coal development and those who warn about the risks to the environment
The wind rips across Grassy Mountain as the truck rumbles slowly along a crude track that, for decades, carried miners and coal around this part of the Crowsnest Pass, Alta. Remnants of the region’s coal industry, which dates back to 1900, litter the mountain; an old cart, twisty rusted metal, pockmarked buildings, weathered planks of wood and a mountaintop carved by decades of open-pit mining.
It’s also a battleground, pitting those who support coal development in the region against those who are firmly opposed. A lead proponent is Northback Holdings Corp., which owns a huge swath of land that was, until the 1960s, teaming with coal mines above and under the ground.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/
Communities asking the province to halt its transport plan while it holds consultations
Residents of a small northern Ontario township 40 minutes west of Sudbury say they were blindsided by Ontario’s decision to transport radioactive waste from an abandoned mill 200 kilometres away to the tailing facilities in their community in the coming weeks.
Nairn and Hyman, with a total of about 300 residents, became aware of the province’s plan when work began on the back roads leading to the Agnew Lake Mine last month, after there hadn’t been much action on that property since the Ministry of Mines took over in the 1990s.
Canada’s Electra Battery Materials Corp. has received a $20 million award from the US government to build a cobalt plant close to North America’s automotive heartland.
The funds will support construction of a cobalt sulfate facility in Ontario that will be North America’s only refinery for the material used in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, Electra said Monday in a statement. The $250 million project is about 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of Toronto at Temiskaming Shores.
(Bloomberg) — For medical and aid workers scrambling to contain an outbreak of mpox on the Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern flank, the location couldn’t be worse. A strain of the virus — which causes lesions that can result in disfigurement, blindness, and even death — has erupted around the gold-mining town of Kamituga, where about a quarter of a million people live.
It’s an area that thousands of small-scale, individual miners travel in and out of, attracting scores of sex workers while truckers ply routes between Congo and the neighboring nations of Burundi and Rwanda, and on to Tanzania.
Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Jonathan Wilkinson announced on Wednesday over C$16 million ($11.6m) in new funding to support the Saskatchewan Research Council (SRC) in Saskatoon. The funding builds on earlier support of nearly C$13.5 million ($9.8m) from Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan) and Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) for SRC to establish its rare earth processing facility and develop new rare earth mineral processing technologies.
Wednesday’s announcement includes C$15.96 million through PrairiesCan to enable SRC to acquire bastnaesite (a type of ore containing rare earth elements) from Canadian sources and create new domestic capacity for bastnaesite processing, which will be integrated into SRC’s rare earth processing facility.
