Canadian Media Resource Articles – Page 496

Lithium battery-powered ships tackle pollution on West Coast (CBC News BC – November 11, 2015)

November 12, 2015

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/

Corvus Energy CEO says large cargo ships are some of the worst polluters in the world

A Vancouver-based business that works to reduce pollution produced by the shipping industry around the world is bringing the benefits back to Canada. But is that enough to get the industry to use clean energy?

“We’re very pleased to have our product deployed locally for the first time,” said Andrew Morden, the CEO of Corvus Energy, which produces full and hybrid lithium ion battery systems that power large and small vessels.

“We’ve done the same thing [for ships] that Tesla’s done for cars,” said Morden.

The company’s batteries are currently being used in 35 ships across Northern Europe, and it recently received a $1 million investment from Statoil, Norway’s largest offshore oil company.

Canada’s coal industry hoping for rebound despite global demand drop – by Ian Bickis (Canadian Press/Globe and Mail – November 12, 2015)

November 12, 2015

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.

CALGARY — Coal industry watchers say that while their sector is hurting, the picture isn’t as bleak as two reports this week have painted.

Canada’s coal export market, which is made up almost entirely of metallurgical coal used in steel making, has taken a major hit in recent years as prices have dropped from more than $300 (U.S.) a tonne in 2011 to less than $90 a tonne this quarter because of continued oversupply and slowing demand from China.

Grande Cache Coal cited the difficult market conditions when it announced plans this month to temporarily shut its coal mine in northwestern Alberta, starting Christmas Eve. The move means more than 220 people will be laid off, which is in addition to the 250 jobs the company cut earlier this year.

Gold is in meltdown as investors look elsewhere to stash value – by Ray Turchansky (Canadian Business Magazine – November 10, 2015)

November 11, 2015

http://www.canadianbusiness.com/

Global investors looking for an asset class to store value are increasingly turning to other options like real estate or fine art

Back in Roman times, an ounce of gold bought 300 loaves of bread, roughly the same as it does now. Two ounces would buy you an acre of the best farmland in Alberta in the 1930s; incredibly, it could do the same until very recently.

It was this capacity for holding its purchasing power and moving in the opposite direction of other asset classes that long made gold the ultimate safe haven, something investors going back five centuries to Jakob Fugger the Rich have recommended one hold in one’s portfolio.

Only gold has turned out to be a terrible hedge this year. Amid the worst market volatility since the Great Recession, it’s fallen in value along with stocks and bonds. A growing number of prominent investors are concluding the yellow metal has lost its status as a go-to asset in times of trouble—perhaps for good.

Key takeaways from the Keystone rejection – by Jeffrey Simpson (Globe and Mail – November 11, 2015)

November 11, 2015

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.

If the Republicans win the next presidential election, the Keystone XL pipeline might yet be built. But if Hillary Clinton, the almost-certain Democratic nominee, becomes president, then Keystone will get its last rites, given that she recently opposed the project.

What lessons can we learn from President Barack Obama’s rejection of Keystone XL last week? Here are a few, but by no means all.

U.S. politics will trump Canada-U.S. relations every time. The idea that somehow Canada’s historical relations and friendship with the United States will induce a president to give priority to relations with Canada when domestic U.S. politics are at play fundamentally misunderstands Washington and how little Canada counts there.

The Obama administration strung Canada along for five years over Keystone, hardly the way to treat a “friend.”

Oban Mining to pick up Northern Gold (Northern Miner – November 9, 2015)

November 10, 2015

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

Northern Gold Mining (TSXV: NGM) is the fourth junior this year to sign a business combination agreement with Oban Mining Corp. (TSX: OBM), joining Eagle Hill, Ryan Gold and Corona Gold, which consolidated their properties in Ontario and Quebec under the Oban banner in September.

“We’d been looking at Northern Gold for a while,” says John Burzynski, Oban Mining’s president and chief executive officer. “It’s been in our area of interest for quite some time and is one of a number of acquisitions that we are looking at doing in the near future.”

Oban Mining’s goal is to consolidate areas in the historic mining camps of the Abitibi and then apply its exploration model to find gold and other metals, a strategy that Burzynski, Sean Roosen and Robert Wares used to great success after they founded Osisko Mining Corp.

Osisko went on to build the Canadian Malartic mine in Quebec, which was sold in 2014 to Agnico Eagle Mines (TSX: AEM; NYSE-MKT: AEM) and Yamana Gold (TSX: YRI; NYSE-MKT: AUY) in a cash and share deal worth $3.9 billion.

Mining analyst Stan Sudol weighs in on Ring of Fire development – Interviewed by Up North’s Jason Turnbull (CBC News Sudbury – November 6, 2015)

November 10, 2015

This week at Queen’s Park, the PCs said the Liberals were planning a tax on chromite. Analyst Stan Sudol weighed in. Click here for interview: http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2678464492/

Noront CEO Al Coutts on Ring of Fire Road Infrastructure and Eagle’s Nest Mine – Interviewed by Superior Morning’s Lisa Laco (CBC News Thunder Bay – November 6, 2015)

November 10, 2015

http://www.cbc.ca/superiormorning/ Over the past few years the Ring of Fire has certainly cooled off. Al Coutts of Noront Resources talks about their plans… and keeping anxious investors happy. Click here for interview: http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2678444727

Lonmin stock discount signals trouble in South African platinum industry – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – November 10, 2015)

November 10, 2015

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.

JOHANNESBURG — For the world’s third-biggest platinum producer, it was a stunning admission of its precarious condition. Desperately needing money to stave off collapse, Lonmin PLC announced on Monday that it will issue its latest stock offering at a 94-per-cent discount.

The huge discount, allowing Lonmin to raise the $407-million (U.S.) that it needs to survive, is the latest sign of a major shakeout in South Africa’s troubled platinum sector. But two Canadian platinum companies are still pushing ahead with their South African investments, convinced they can find profits with lower-cost projects.

The platinum industry has been stumbling from crisis to crisis for the past several years. Global platinum prices have dropped by more than 50 per cent since 2011. The industry has been plagued by rising costs and labour unrest in its South African heartland, including a heavily damaging five-month strike in 2014 and the notorious police shooting of 34 protesters at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in 2012.

Algoma granted creditor protection again amid plunging steel prices – by Greg Keenan and Ian McGugan (Globe and Mail – November 10, 2015)

November 10, 2015

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.

Essar Steel Algoma Inc., the economic backbone of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., for more than a century, will make its third trip through creditor protection amid a collapse in steel prices and a battle with a critical supplier.

The steel maker, which was founded in 1901 to make rails for the growing railway industry, was granted protection Monday under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, saying it does not have enough money to make $25-million in debt payments due next week or special payments on pension funds with a combined deficit topping $500-million.

“The urgency of the need for immediate cash is unquestioned,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Frank Newbould said in granting the company creditor protection.

The filing underlines the battered state of much of the steel sector in Canada and North America. Essar Algoma joins U.S. Steel Canada Inc., which was granted CCAA protection in September, 2014 – the second trip for the former Stelco Inc. through a court-supervised restructuring.

Grave mistake’ to be complacent on energy security, International Energy Agency warns – by Yadullah Hussain (National Post – November 10, 2015)

November 10, 2015

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

A prolonged period of lower oil prices would benefit consumers, but would trigger energy-security concerns by increasing reliance on a small number of low-cost producers “or risk a sharp rebound in price if investment falls short,” the International Energy Agency warned Tuesday.

A surge in renewable energy deployment and a period of low oil prices is giving the world a false sense of energy security, the Paris-based agency warned in its benchmark annual World Energy Outlook.

“It would be a grave mistake to index our attention to energy security to changes in the oil price,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol, said in a statement. “Now is not the time to relax. Quite the opposite: a period of low oil prices is the moment to reinforce our capacity to deal with future energy security threats.”

The global oil industry needs to invest US$630 billion “just to compensate for declining production at existing fields and to keep future output flat at today’s levels” the energy watchdog said.

Canadian Mining Companies Better Beware, the Liberals Are Coming for Them – by Justin Ling (Vice Magazine – November 6, 2015)

November 9, 2015

https://news.vice.com/

A regime change in Ottawa means that the government of Canada will be breathing down the necks of its mining companies operating in the the global south, a Liberal MP confirmed to VICE News.

John McKay, who has sat in the House of Commons since 1997, has repeatedly tried to push the previous Conservative government to set up penalties for mining companies who have breached human rights, environmental standards, or labor practises.

But his efforts to update the law, by way of bill C-300, were foiled — once in 2009, and again in 2011.

While McKay says the new government hasn’t discussed the bill yet, he’s optimistic the legislation will be returning in due course. “That, I hope, would be a government initiative,” McKay says.

C-300 would have created a system to allow citizens of foreign “developing” nations to file complaints against Canadian mining companies, directly to either the minister of foreign affairs, or international trade.

Empty words from the climate doomsayers – by Rex Murphy (National Post – November 7, 2015)

November 9, 2015

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

There is perhaps no political territory where piety trumps policy more exuberantly than global warming. Those leaders with a gift for high platitude delivered in the dialect of showy earnestness can always be confident of energetic applause from the multitudes who love to be seen as concerned and “making a difference” on this most vaporous of issues.

It is better to speak well on global warming than actually to follow through on the logic of the thought behind speaking well. The more eloquent the signals of planetary distress, the more dire the alarms raised, the less likely it is that those who summon that eloquence or issue those alarms will actually — as the wretched phrase has it — “walk the talk.”

It is now nearly seven years since the Chrysostom (golden mouth) of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, U.S. President Barack Obama, embedded in his victory speech the promise that the moment of his triumph was also “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

GLOBE EDITORIAL: Ottawa couldn’t help Keystone, but it can still approve pipelines at home (Globe and Mail – November 7, 2015)

November 9, 2015

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.

In the more than half a decade the Keystone XL pipeline proposal spent in limbo – neither accepted nor rejected, neither pumping nor scrapped – thousands upon thousands of miles of new oil pipeline were built across the United States, without fuss or much public interest.

In the years to come, many other pipelines crisscrossing U.S. soil will surely be approved. But Keystone is, or was, different. American politics long ago took hold of it, first putting it into an indefinite deep freeze, and then this week keeping it alive just long enough to finally kill it.

On Monday, the company behind the project, TransCanada Corp., asked the U.S. government to suspend its application. The move made sense, given that it was already apparent that the application had little chance of success under the Obama administration.

But the U.S. State Department, which long ago put the application into suspended animation, refused to agree to the company’s request.

AUDIO: Mine closure in Red Lake, Ont., surprises mining economist (CBC News Thunder Bay – Novemeber 5, 2015)

November 6, 2015

http://www.cbc.ca/

New strategy required for gold extraction, Lakehead postdoctural fellow says

The news of a temporary closure at the Rubicon Minerals mine in Red Lake, Ont., came unexpectedly to one mining economist at the Centre for Excellence in Sustainable Mining at Lakehead University.

The shutdown of the mine is leaving 330 workers without a job in the northern Ontario town with 5,000 residents.

In a paper highlighting key mining developments, Karl Skogstad said the Rubicon mine was one of the more promising projects in northern Ontario.

“That came as a bit of a surprise to me,” Skogstad said. “That was one of the two projects that we said, ‘this is going to open, you know, relatively on schedule, and it’s doing well.'”

The volatile price of gold is presenting challenges to companies such as Rubicon, he added.

Goldcorp’s Jeannes: ‘We’re close to the end of the gold bear market'(Northern Miner – November 2, 2015)

November 5, 2015

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

VANCOUVER — Despite posting a US$192 million net loss during the third quarter, Goldcorp’s (TSX: G; NYSE: GG) management team is telling investors to focus on what it labels “strong fundamentals.”

The company churned out record quarterly gold production and generated around US$243 million in free cash flow over the past three months. President and CEO Chuck Jeannes pointed out that successful cost control measures and promising macro-economic conditions should contribute to brighter days ahead.

Goldcorp produced 922,200 oz. during the third quarter at all-in sustaining costs of US$848 per oz. Assuming an average realized gold price of $1,114 per oz., the company reported adjusted revenues of US$1.3 billion and adjusted operating cash flow of US$374 million for the quarter.

Excluding unrealized losses from the foreign exchange translation on deferred income taxes, Goldcorp’s adjusted net loss totalled US$37 million, or 4¢ per share, during the quarter, which compares to adjusted earnings of US$65 million, or 8¢ per share, in the previous quarter.