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De Beers studies [Ontario] Victor extension as end of mine life looms (Northern Miner – September 12, 2014)

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

With a mine life that ends in 2018, the ore is running out at Ontario’s only diamond mine — De Beers’ Victor mine, 90 km west of Attawapiskat.

The open-pit mine, which began production in 2008, produces around 600,000 carats of high-value diamonds a year from a single 15-hectare kimberlite. But with 15 other diamond-bearing kimberlite pipes at the project, there is potential for an extended mine life at Victor.

De Beers has already started an environmental assessment on the Tango Extension kimberlite, the most promising of the other pipes in the Victor cluster. Situated about 6.5 km northwest of the Victor mine, the company believes it could extend Victor’s mine life by seven years.

The company is studying the potential to mine Tango Extension as an open-pit operation at a rate of 3 million tonnes per year. However, the project is not yet economic. The Tango Extension kimberlite is smaller, lower-grade, and contains less valuable diamonds than Victor.

While Victor is a low-grade mine at around 0.23 carat per tonne, its diamond values are among the highest in the world at more than US$400 per carat. So far, samples from Tango Extension indicate the quality is good, but they won’t fetch the same kind of price per carat as Victor diamonds, says Tom Ormsby, De Beers Canada’s director of external and corporate affairs,

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A giant of the past [U.S. Steel] resurrected as newest Wall Street hot stock – by Tim Shufelt (Globe and Mail – September 15, 2014)

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.

After years of despair that left shareholders reeling, United States Steel Corp. is regaining at least some of its former might.

Once a pillar of the American economy, the company’s long-slumping stock has been one of the hottest large caps over the past three months. That could be just the beginning of a return to form for a stock riding an organizational and industry transformation.

“The potential for transformational change at U.S. Steel is one of the most intriguing stories in the U.S. steel sector at the moment,” Credit Suisse analyst Nathan Littlewood said in a recent note. “The company’s raw material cost advantages as well as privileged steel price environment should position U.S. Steel as one of the most profitable steel makers in the world.”

A century ago, U.S. Steel was known on Wall Street simply as “The Corporation” by virtue of its size alone. More recently, the company benefited from the demand for resources fuelled by China’s rise. The vast quantities of steel required for the building of cities and infrastructure kept prices high through the early 2000s.

The financial crisis snuffed out the global growth needed for a buoyant steel market. And with China consuming half of the world’s steel, a slowdown in Chinese growth over the past couple of years has extended price weakness.

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Anger and confusion after worst disaster in Canadian mining history darkens prosperous B.C. town – by Brian Hutchinson (National Post – September 13, 2014)

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

“Check your knives at the bar,” reads a sign inside this village’s only watering hole. In hard times, before the Mount Polley mine opened 17 years ago, there wasn’t much work to be found, and folks sometimes turned as sour as the cheap beer and boxed wine. Things could get rough inside the Likely saloon.

Likely has enjoyed much better days lately, thanks to the mine and the wealth it was generating. But one morning in early August, a section of the tailings pond dam up at the Mount Polley mine crumbled, releasing 10 million cubic metres of dirty mine water and almost five million cubic metres of finely crushed rock, known as tailings.

The water and tailings formed a thick slurry that roared down Hazeltine Creek, knocking down trees and anything else in its way. It poured into Quesnel Lake, one of the largest — and the deepest — fresh water lakes in B.C.

Since that cataclysmic event, the worst of its kind in Canadian mining history, a cloud has hung over little Likely, a village of perhaps 350 huddled at the top of Quesnel Lake, 600 kilometres north of Vancouver. There is anger here, and resentment. Divisions have formed and blame is assigned. But confusion reigns.

Some local residents and First Nations members claim their lake is now fatally toxic, that the water is peeling skin from fish and is even burning human flesh. Others say that’s just wild fear-mongering. The fact is, no one knows what the accident really means for their lake and their town, even four weeks later.

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Gold Industry Needs ‘Cleansing’ of Weakest, Fidelity Says – by Liezel Hill (Bloomberg News – September 15, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

The gold industry, recovering from the worst slump in prices in 30 years, needs more mergers to help improve investor returns and eliminate unprofitable mines, Fidelity Investments said.

About a third of gold production is probably money-losing when the price of the metal is lower than $1,250 an ounce, said Joe Wickwire, who manages more than $1.8 billion of assets including the Fidelity Select Gold Portfolio. (FSAGX) With gold trading at about $1,235, it “might not be a bad thing” if the number of producers was reduced by a similar percentage.

“It’s part of the life cycle of industries that every so often you need to have a cleansing of that which is not working,” Wickwire said in a phone interview last week from Boston, where Fidelity is based.

Gold producers, which are gathering for the annual invitation-only Denver Gold Forum that began yesterday, cut budgets, sold assets and adjusted mine plans after the metal plunged 28 percent last year, prompting more than $26 billion of writedowns. The industry already has started a consolidation process, Wickwire said.

“The industry did a very poor job from a capital-allocation standpoint, from a risk-management standpoint and from an operational-execution standpoint,” he said. “For long-term oriented investors it would be better for the industry to get more right-sized where companies are focused on generating profit at a conservative gold price assumption.”

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The quest for improved agricultural productivity spurs investor interest – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – September 11, 2014)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Rising demand for protein and more sophisticated diets in developing countries are spurring investors to get excited about investing in fertilisers.

The ‘protein story’ was still providing a good thesis for investment, as the developing world continued to consume more meat and dairy products, which required exponentially more agricultural inputs than traditional staples, which in turn, required improved nutrients to ensure better-yielding crops.

“It bodes well for phosphates, nitrogen and potash,” Brazilian entrepreneur and founder in 2005, at the age of 23, of fertiliser junior Verde Potash, Christiano Veloso told Mining Weekly Online in an interview.

He noted that the protein story was still evolving, with much of Africa still to follow the route Asia had gone in recent years. This would mean increased demand for high-quality fertilisers to achieve improved agricultural output, driven by the need for increased productivity owing to the scarcity of arable land, climate change, scarce water supplies and labour, among other factors.

In Asia and Africa, protein consumption per capita was still far below the norm in Europe and North America. The development of Brazil into what could very well be the world’s food basket for numerous generations to come, augured well for TSX-listed Verde Potash, which was developing the largest potash mine in the country.

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Falling prices threaten Canadian oil patch momentum – by Jeffrey Jones and Jeff Lewis (Globe and Mail – September 12, 2014)

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 — World oil prices sank to their lowest intraday level in more than two years after the West’s energy-security watchdog cut its forecast for demand growth, threatening the earnings momentum that had returned to the Canadian oil patch.

The International Energy Agency said in its September oil market report that economic weakness in Europe and China prompted it to temper its outlook for global oil demand in 2014 and 2015. Meanwhile, supplies are up from last year as the boom in light, tight oil from such regions as the North Dakota Bakken formation and Eagle Ford formation in Texas turns away imports to the United States.

The price weakness is remarkable in that it comes in the midst of heightened tensions in hot spots such as Iraq, Libya and Ukraine. It shows how fears of supply disruptions are having a shrinking influence on markets as production in countries outside OPEC, including Canada, surges and demand growth shrinks.

Deep discounts on heavy oil, once the bane of the Canadian sector, have shrunk since early 2013 as export transportation options have grown. But now returns for oil producers are shrinking again due to the lower world benchmarks.

“China data has been less than spectacular. Two days ago the numbers … inside the country, where demand growth for oil was supposed to be really large, disappointed [the market].

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Dams under review after Mount Polley breach, mining leader says – by Wendy Stueck (Globe and Mail – September 11, 2014)

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.

VANCOUVER — Industry and government officials across the country are reviewing dam design, maintenance and oversight in the wake of a tailings dam breach at Mount Polley mine in B.C., says the head of the Mining Association of Canada (MAC).

“No one in the industry, after this incident, didn’t wake up in the morning and go, ‘I better go check’ – even though they had reams of information and assurances that everything was safe,” MAC president Pierre Gratton said Thursday following an address to the Vancouver Board of Trade. “I think every one of them wanted to go out and get that reassurance again.”

On Aug. 4, a tailings dam at the Mount Polley mine – operated by Vancouver-based Imperial Metals – gave way, sending a torrent of mud and debris into neighbouring waterways and resulting in drinking-water bans in affected areas. Most of those advisories have been lifted, but a do-not-use order remains in effect for the “impact zone,” which includes Hazeltine Creek, Polley Lake and part of Quesnel Lake.

The cause of the breach is unknown and an independent investigation is under way.

The incident rattled the mining sector and raised questions about oversight and regulation of tailings dams in British Columbia and elsewhere in the country. Following the Mount Polley breach, the B.C. government moved the deadline for companies to file annual inspection reports for tailings dams from March 31, 2015, to December 1, 2014, and also ordered those inspections to be independently reviewed.

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Allan potash mine: All trapped workers returned to surface, some ‘grouchy and hungry’ (CBC News Saskatoon – September 11, 2014)


 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon

All miners returned to surface, some after more than 24 hours underground

Miners who spent some 24 hours trapped underground at PotashCorp’s Allan mine east of Saskatoon have made their way to the surface, after a fire forced dozens of workers to seek shelter in safety stations on Wednesday.

Around 8:30 p.m. CST Thursday, the last three workers who were in safe spaces below ground were up and out. Earlier in the day, 51 of their co-workers returned to the surface.

A union leader said he was able to speak to some of the workers who were brought up and reported they were safe, but some were “grouchy and hungry”. Mike Belyk was one of the workers who returned to the surface Thursday afternoon.

“[I’m] just relieved to be back up, to get home see your family,” he said. “Other than that it wasn’t too, too bad.” Belyk said miners were in contact with rescue teams and people found ways to pass the time. “We had communication. Played cards. Played a lot of cards.”

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Kinross Gold in talks to sell Ecuador project to Lundin family – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – September 11, 2014)

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.

Kinross Gold Corp. is in talks to sell its mothballed gold project in Ecuador in a move that could see the Lundin family develop the deposit, according to people familiar with the matter.

For about a year, Kinross has been trying to exit Ecuador and divest the Fruta del Norte after clashing with the local government on the economic terms of the project. The Ecuadorean government gave Kinross approval to sell Fruta del Norte last week, one person familiar with the matter said.

Fruta del Norte, also known as FDN, was at one time seen as critical to Kinross’s growth. The company acquired the precious metal deposit when it bought Aurelian Resources for $1.2-billion in 2008.

But after more than two years of negotiations with the Ecuadorean government, Kinross threw in the towel and said it was not going to waste any more capital developing the mine. It recorded a $720-million charge on the asset in 2013 and slashed its gold reserves by a third to reflect the loss of Fruta del Norte.

“We continue to work co-operatively with the Ecuadorean government on our exit from the country and the FDN project,” Kinross spokeswoman Andrea Mandel-Campbell said. “We do not comment on speculation,” she said.

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Vale’s Q2 nickel production plunges in Sudbury (Northern Miner – September 10, 2014)

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

Vale ’s (NYSE : VALE) companywide nickel production in the second quarter of 2014 was 61,600 tonnes, an 8.6% drop from the first quarter and 5.3% fall from the year-ago period. Vale says the decline mainly reflects the impact of four weeks of planned maintenance work carried out on the acid plant and furnaces in Sudbury, Ont. For the first half of 2014, Vale’s companywide nickel output was only off 0.7% to 129,200 tonnes.

Vale’s Sudbury operations produced 9,100 tonnes nickel in the second quarter, a decline of 48.4% from the first quarter and 49.2% from the second quarter of 2013. For the first half of 2014, Vale produced 26,800 tonnes nickel in Sudbury, off 23.6% from the 35,000 tonnes produced in the first half of 2013.

(Elsewhere in Canada in the second quarter, Vale produced 6,900 tonnes in Thompson, Man., or up 11% year-over-year; and 12,100 tonnes at Voisey’s Bay, Labrador, down -19.7%.)

The low point of the quarter came on April 6, when millwright Paul Rochette was killed at Sudbury’s Copper Cliff smelter complex. The United Steelworkers Local 6500 and Vale carried out a joint investigation into the fatality.

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Ring of Fire: First Nations scold Mines Minister Michael Gravelle – by Jody Porter (CBC News Thunder Bay – September 10, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay

First Nations ‘grow weary’ of being shut out of decisions

CBC News has obtained letters from several First Nations in the Ring of Fire detailing a breakdown in the relationship with Ontario that could threaten the already fragile mining project.

Chiefs are reacting to the Aug. 28 announcement that the new Ring of Fire Infrastructure Development Corporation was established with an interim board, made up of four senior Ontario civil servants, and no First Nations representatives.

“I am growing weary of your lack of attention to EFN’s [Eabametoong First Nation’s] concerns and our clearly stated request to work collaboratively,” wrote Chief Elizabeth Atlookan in an Aug. 29 letter to Northern Development and Mines Minister Michael Gravelle.

“I know you have heard EFN’s concerns, but the MNDM continued to push this item forward, particularly in the press,” Atlookan wrote.

“So, are we to be ‘key’ partners in this potential development, as your press release states, if EFN’s legitimate requests are being ignored? Not likely.” Gravelle said the Aug. 28 announcement was necessary to meet an election promise, and to appease “other interests.”

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First Nations protesters shut down northern B.C. drilling site – by Mark Hume (Globe and Mail – September 9, 2014)

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.

VANCOUVER — After a summer of protests aimed at mining companies, members of the Tahltan Nation in northern B.C. say they have shut down an exploratory drilling operation by taking over the site.

“HAPPENING RIGHT NOW!!!!” states a Monday night posting on the Facebook page for Tahltan elders. “The Klabona Keeper members are occupying a black hawk drill pad above Ealue Lake!!!”

The elders’ group, which is based in Iskut just south of Dease Lake, has staged several protests in the area in recent years blocking resource companies from working in a place known as the Sacred Headwaters. The region is highly valued by the Tahltan because it holds the headwaters of three important salmon rivers – the Stikine, Skeena and Nass.

Rhoda Quock, a spokeswoman for the Klabono Keepers, said Tuesday a group of protesters hiked to the remote drill site and took it over.

She said Black Hawk Drilling Ltd., a Smithers, B.C., company that works for Firesteel Resources Inc. of Vancouver and OZ Minerals of Australia, flew its drilling crew out after the occupation began.

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In Canada’s north, a suicide epidemic – by Colin Alexander (National Post – September 10, 2014)

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

Colin Alexander was publisher of the Yellowknife News of the North and senior consultant for education for the Ontario Royal Commission on the Northern Environment.

Today, September 10, is World Suicide Prevention Day — a day with special significance for traditional Indians, Inuit and the Canadian North.

In 2013, there were 45 suicides in Nunavut, almost entirely among the Inuit population of 27,000. That’s a new statistical peak since the founding of the territory in 1999. That rate comes to 166 per hundred thousand. If this pattern played out in Ottawa, with a population of 900,000, the city’s annual rate would be about 1,500, or four per day.

The suicide rate in Nunavut is almost five times the world’s highest national rate of 35 per hundred thousand in Lithuania. There, many of the suicides derive from financial problems among older and working-age people. But among Canada’s Indian and Inuit, the incidence is concentrated among male youth, with one suicide, in 2013, of a boy of 11, in Repulse Bay.

The overall suicide rate in Canada has been holding fairly steady at about 12 per hundred thousand. So the Nunavut rate is running 14 times the national average. By comparison, the rate of shooting homicides in Canada holds steady at under two per hundred thousand (with a significant proportion of them gang-related, and also disproportionately among aboriginals in dysfunctional communities.)

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If We Build It, They Will Stay [Ring of Fire and North] – by John Van Nostrand (Walrus Magazine – September 2014)

http://thewalrus.ca/

Instead of extracting resources and leaving, we could populate the mid-Canada corridor—and create a bigger, better country

FORTY-SEVEN YEARS AGO, perhaps in the outsized spirit of Expo 67, the retired major general and author Richard Rohmer put forward a bold proposal in Mid-Canada Development Corridor: A Concept. It described a vast landmass stretching from Newfoundland and Labrador across Quebec, Ontario, and the Prairies, to British Columbia and up through Northwest Territories and Yukon, occupying the area between southern settlements and the treeline—a band dominated by boreal forest. His idea was to implement a national strategy to develop and populate it.

Rohmer reasoned that Canada was poised to be a world leader in resource extraction, and that our future was tied to that endeavour. Mid-Canada was rich in minerals, oil, and gas, largely untouched, and had a habitable climate. The key to the plan was new infrastructure, which both the government and private sector would finance.

At the time, there were a few north–south arteries in place, and more were needed; east–west links needed improvement. Some existing settlements could be expanded to serve as urban hubs. The middle of the country could be settled in much the same way the West had been settled three generations earlier, when Canada saw its future in agriculture.

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First Nations water problems ‘shameful’ – by Jody Porter (CBC News Thunder Bay – September 09, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay

Thunder Bay chapter of Council of Canadians works toward solutions to long-standing water issues

Canadians should be shocked by the lack of clean drinking water in many First Nations, according to the Thunder Bay chapter of the Council of Canadians.

A CBC investigation recently revealed ten First Nations in northern Ontario have been without clean drinking water for more than a decade.

“We just find this such a shameful situation,” said Janice Horgos, chair of the Council of Canadians Blue Planet committee. “It’s shocking in a country rich with water like Canada.”

Horgos said her committee is “honoured” to have several First Nations members to help “further our understanding of the complex issue.”

“We need to understand what’s happening if we’re going to become a better ally,” she said. Horgos said each First Nation faces different challenges when it comes to providing safe drinking water, but all are confronted with the same problem without it. “How can people even think about economic prosperity if they don’t have safe, clean drinking water?”

The Council of Canadians is also expressing concern about federal legislation, The government calls the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act “a vital step towards ensuring First Nations have the same health and safety protections for drinking water as other Canadians.”

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