Canadian Media Resource Articles – Page 630

Ex-MP Stockwell Day joins company planning to build B.C. bitumen refinery – by Lauren Krugel (Globe and Mail – August 22, 2014)

August 22, 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 — Stockwell Day has joined the leadership team of a Vancouver company that’s planning to build a $10-billion oil sands refinery on the West Coast.

The former politician, who has held high-profile cabinet posts in the federal and Alberta governments, has been hired as a special adviser at Pacific Future Energy Corp. and will sit on its board of directors. He’ll also head an arm’s-length advisory council that’s expected to be formed over the next few months.

“I’ve been very gratified that I’ve been involved in a number of projects since leaving politics, but this has to be right up there in terms of something that’s exciting for me,” Day said in an interview from Vancouver.

He said the proposed refinery, which bills itself as the world’s greenest, could be a “legacy project for Canada.”

Oil sands producers have been keen to access lucrative Asian markets, but stiff opposition to proposals such as Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway pipeline has put a damper on those ambitions. One of the biggest environmental concerns has been the prospect of bitumen-laden tankers navigating coastal waters.

Opinion: Extensive safeguards already in place for B.C. mining industry – by Angela Waterman (Vancouver Sun – August 20, 2014)

August 21, 2014

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

Best practices: Tailings dam breach was an extremely rare occurrence

Angela Waterman is Vice-president of Environment and Technical Affairs at The Mining Association of British Columbia.

The breach of the tailings dam at the Mount Polley Mine is an unfortunate event that is of great concern to the Mining Association of British Columbia (MABC) and all our member companies, just as it is to people across Canada.

After this incident, the public, the government and the mining industry all share the same objective: to find the root cause of what happened and determine if there are changes required or actions to be taken based.

The B.C. mining industry is committed to producing the materials the world needs in a way that is safe and responsible for both people and the environment. MABC, its members, and mining associations and companies across Canada are closely following the ongoing investigation.

Tailings dams across Canada are operated under stringent regulations and are subject to frequent and rigorous inspections, and this kind of incident is extremely rare. There has not been a comparable event in Canada in over 20 years. Globally, the general statistics related to likelihood of dam failure is between one in a million and one in 100,000 per dam year.

First Nations poised to emerge as leaders in Ring of Fire development – by Suzanne Leclair (Mining Markets – August 21, 2014)

August 21, 2014

http://www.miningmarkets.ca/

Suzanne Leclair LL.B is the founder of Connect Counsel, a Canadian professional multi-disciplinary business advisory firm dedicated to developing major aboriginal and non-aboriginal partnerships in energy and natural resource related infrastructure projects. She is an infrastructure advisor to Mushkegowuk Council.

In July, on the day after the Ontario Court handed a victory to Cliffs Natural Resources (NYSE: CLF) against KWG Resources (TSXV: KWG) regarding a potential road into the Ring of Fire, Cliffs’ legal representative flew to Marten Falls, an aboriginal community in the Ring of Fire region to explain the implications of the decision to the chiefs at their annual general meeting.

After his presentation, Cliffs’ representative fielded his first question from one of the chiefs: “How can two mining companies fight in a Toronto court over land that is simply not theirs?” With that simple question, the chief underscored the challenges as to who can lead the development of a transportation corridor into the isolated but mineral-rich region.

Also last month, another potential challenge arose with the Supreme Court of Canada’s Tsilhqot’in Nation decision. It’s the first time that aboriginal title has been granted in Canada, and it could have implications for resource development in Ontario. So, what’s changed with respect to the Ring of Fire since Canada’s highest court handed down a major victory for aboriginal communities in the form of the Tsilhqot’in ruling?

Nuclear watchdog requests safety checks after B.C. mine breach – by Dene Moore (CTV News/Canadian Press – August 19, 2014)

August 21, 2014

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

VANCOUVER — A toxic spill from a British Columbia mine has prompted the country’s nuclear watchdog to request a series of checks at uranium facilities. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will discuss the failure of the tailings pond at the Mount Polley gold and copper mine during a meeting Wednesday.

In the interim, the commission has asked the uranium mining and milling operations it oversees to ensure that all necessary inspections and monitoring are in compliance with licence conditions.

“The recent tailings dam breach that occurred at the Mount Polley mine in British Columbia on Aug. 4, 2014, has raised awareness of issues associated with tailings impoundments,” said a letter sent to Areva Resources, Cameco Corp. , Rio Algom, Willet Green Miller, P.J. Brugger and Associates, EWL Management Ltd. and Denison Mines Inc.

“This is a reminder that vigilance must be maintained by ensuring that tailings dams continue to be properly designed, constructed, operated, maintained and monitored to prevent such occurrences.”

The companies were asked to confirm that mitigation measures are in place in the event of a tailings breach. They’re also asked to confirm the safety of tailings facilities and report any identified gaps to the commission by Sept. 15.

Editorial: Once more into the breach – by John Cumming (Northern Miner – August 20, 2014)

August 21, 2014

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry. Editor John Cumming MSc (Geol) is one of the country’s most well respected mining journalists. jcumming@northernminer.com

It was another week of major developments in the fast-moving story of Imperial Metals and the massive, 15-million-tonne tailings and waste-water breach at its Mount Polley copper–gold mine in central B.C.’s Cariboo region.

One major worry amongst the general population in B.C. is that they’re looking at a Lac-Mégantic rail-disaster type of situation, where the offending company goes bankrupt soon after the incident, leaving local communities reeling and higher levels of government with the task of cleaning up the devastation and a multi-million dollar bill.

That doesn’t appear to be happening with Imperial Metals and the Mount Polley spill, as Imperial was able to flex a little of its financial muscle on Aug. 14 with the announcement that it would raise $100 million in a convertible debenture, with at least some of the funds to be directed towards the clean-up at Mount Polley.

Playing a large and leading role in the financing is Calgary-based oilsands billionaire Murray Edwards, chairman of Canadian Natural Resources and perhaps best known as a co-owner of the Calgary Flames NHL team. Among his many business ventures in Western Canada, he owns a 30% stake in Imperial Metals, which might account for less than 10% of his wealth, which was pegged by Forbes at US$2.2 billion in 2011.

B.C. mining boom, recent tailings breach prompt environmental fears in Alaska – by James Keller (CTV News/Canadian Press – August 21, 2014)

August 21, 2014

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

VANCOUVER — Heather Hardcastle has spent her life fishing for salmon at the mouth of the Taku River, which starts in a remote corner of northwestern British Columbia before dumping into the ocean near her home in Juneau, Alaska.

She was six years old when her parents bought a fishing boat. More than a decade ago, she became co-owner of Taku River Reds, a small commercial fishing outfit that ships salmon throughout the United States.

In recent years, however, Hardcastle’s attention has been focused farther upstream in B.C., where a cluster of proposed mining projects has fishermen, environmentalists, aboriginals and a handful of politicians in Alaska concerned about the potential impact on the environment in their state.

And those concerns have only been amplified by a recent mine tailings spill in central B.C., where the full impact from the disaster on aquatic life remains unclear.

“It’s one thing on paper to say that you have standards that are high, but it doesn’t matter when you have a disaster like this,” said Hardcastle, whose concerns prompted her to become involved with the environmental group Trout Unlimited.

“There’s a real lack of confidence and trust right now.”

Canadian sues Silvercorp over ‘false imprisonment’ in China – by Nathan Vanderklippe (Globe and Mail – August 20,2014)

August 20, 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.

BEIJING — A Canadian man who spent years behind bars in China has filed a lawsuit accusing a mining company of conspiring with Chinese authorities to have him arrested and detained.

Kun Huang was an investigator for a hedge fund manager who in September, 2011, claimed that ore estimates at a Chinese mine owned by Vancouver-based Silvercorp Metals Inc. were too good to be true. Three months later, Chinese officials detained Mr. Huang at the Beijing airport, strip-searched him, seized his computer and placed him in a lengthy detention that culminated in a single-day closed-door trial and a two-year sentence for criminal defamation.

He was released on July 17, and returned to Canada the next day. Now, in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Mr. Huang claims that Silvercorp masterminded his detention as a reprisal for his research, whose publication prompted a steep decline in the company’s share price.

Silvercorp, his court filing claims, effectively enlisted the local Chinese police as its “agent,” giving them money, encouragement and guidance “to falsely imprison and then later knowingly bring baseless criminal charges against Mr. Huang.”

Africa’s middle-class boom is real, study shows – and it’s gaining speed – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – August 20, 2014)

August 20, 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.

JOHANNESBURG — The rise in Africa’s middle class has been over-hyped in recent years, but it is still a genuine phenomenon that is generating huge commercial and political opportunities, a new study says.

The analysis released on Tuesday by Standard Bank, a South African bank with operations across Africa, estimates that the African middle class has tripled in size over the past 14 years – and the boom is gathering speed.

The study analyzed 11 of the biggest economies in the region, accounting for about half of sub-Saharan Africa’s population and GDP. Those economies have grown tenfold since 2000, reaching a collective GDP of more than $1-trillion today, compared with a growth of just 25 per cent between 1990 and 2000.

Using a more rigorous definition of “middle class,” the study concludes that earlier estimates were much exaggerated. But it still finds dramatic growth, from about 4.6 million households in 2000 to almost 15 million households today in the 11 focal countries, if the middle class and lower-middle-class categories are both included.

Lax safety measures to blame for Lac-Mégantic tragedy, safety board says – by Allan Woods (Toronto Star – August 20, 2014)

August 20, 2014

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.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada identified 18 distinct factors that led to the Lac-Mégantic rail crash, including mechanical problems, unsuitable tank cars carrying crude oil, the cost-conscious rail firm and human error.

MONTREAL — Blame a rule-breaking rail company, blame ineffective train inspectors, but don’t blame the federal government for the deadly Lac-Mégantic train disaster, says Federal Transport Minister Lisa Raitt.

In the wake of a scathing report into the July 2013 derailment that killed 47 people in the Quebec town, Raitt pointed the finger at three employees of the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic railway now charged with criminal negligence, and referred questions about lapses leading to the accident to bureaucrats under her command.

“We need to remember that in terms of safety, the government puts the rules in place. The companies are expected to follow the rules,” Raitt said in Ottawa. “The company did not follow the rules and that’s a very important fact here too.”

The Transportation Safety Board’s definitive account of the incident said the crash was caused by a marginal rail company that put profits before safety during more than a decade in business.

Will the mine of the future be a mine at all? – by W.Scott Dunbar (Globe and Mail – August 18, 2014)

August 19, 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.

The Globe and Mail has sought out columns from thought leaders in Western Canada, people whose influence is shaping debate, but whose names may not be widely recognized. Scott Dunbar is the head of the Department of Mining Engineering at the University of British Columbia.

Metals to support our way of life are extracted by mining and processing large quantities of rock. The basic extraction paradigm is “drill, blast, load, haul, dump, crush, grind, separate, process.” There are many variations, but fundamentally, the paradigm has not changed since ancient times.

Innovations have made operations in the paradigm safer, more efficient, automated and even autonomous. Rock containing very small quantities of metal can be economically mined and processed and it is tempting to think that further innovations will allow mining and processing of rock containing even smaller amounts of metal.

However, some constraints are having a significant effect on the feasibility of mining. First, economic metal deposits are very difficult to find. Some deposits exist at depths of one kilometre or more, but heat and rock-mass stability at these depths make their exploitation difficult. Also, the waste-rock dumps and tailings generated by mining and mineral processing pose significant engineering challenges, environmental concerns and financial liabilities.

B.C. mine’s breached tailings pond one of 98 to undergo independent investigation – by Sunny Dhillon (Globe and Mail – August 18, 2014)

August 19, 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 — The B.C. government has ordered independent investigations into the spill at the Mount Polley mine and at every other tailings pond in the province, saying the disaster has shaken public confidence and threatens to undermine other resource-sector projects as well.

The province – which has been criticized by First Nations near the spill for a perceived lack of industry oversight – has also signed a letter of understanding with two bands, whose leaders say they’ll push for meaningful mining reform.

The hiring of an outside panel of experts to investigate the Mount Polley spill is a shift from the province’s earlier stance that probes by the chief inspector of mines and the Conservation Officer Service would suffice. Each of the three experts on the panel has decades of engineering experience, with one having worked on the investigation into the New Orleans levee failures during Hurricane Katrina.

At a news conference Monday, Bill Bennett, B.C.’s Minister of Energy and Mines, stressed that the province must do whatever it takes to restore public confidence in mining in particular and the resource sector in general.

Mount Polley inquiry must be independent – by Stephen Hume (Vancouver Sun – August 18, 2014)

August 18, 2014

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

Dam collapse: Government was involved in inspecting structure, so a true arms’-length investigation essential

The engineering firm that designed the Mount Polley tailings pond containment system that collapsed on Aug. 4 also designed a tailings dam that failed catastrophically in South America on Aug. 19, 1995.

Knight Piésold designed the tailings containment facility for the Canadian-owned Omai gold mine in Guyana. Before the accident, it had handed off operational responsibility to the mining company, which then hired another engineering consultant, the Canadian firm Golder Associates.

The Omai tailings dam collapse spilled an estimated 2.9 million cubic metres of toxic waste into the Essequibo River, the country’s biggest and most important watershed. (Some estimates run higher.) Guyana’s President Cheddi Jagan, whose government held a five per cent share of the mining venture — it was the poor country’s largest private sector employer — and had been championing its economic benefits, called it “the country’s worst environmental disaster.”

A subsequent inquiry found no criminal liability and a civil class action suit was later dismissed. It’s worth noting, perhaps, that by comparison the Mount Polley tailings dam failure, which B.C.’s Mines Minister Bill Bennett has equated with a simple natural landslide, spilled 14.5 million cubic metres — about five times as much contaminated waste as at Omai — into the Fraser River system, B.C’s biggest and most economically important watershed.

Salt at the source: A day in a Lake Huron mine – by Amy Pataki (Toronto Star – August 16, 2014)

August 18, 2014

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.

We visited the world’s largest salt mine, following the mineral from the tunnels under Lake Huron to our dinner tables and driveways.

GODERICH—Here’s a funny thing about road salt: In its rawest form, it is as slippery as ice. They know this down in the world’s largest operating salt mine, a four-hour drive from Toronto in the pretty town of Goderich.

The mine is 533 metres beneath the surface of the Earth, almost as deep as the CN Tower is high, and tunnels 7 kilometres underneath Lake Huron. It’s owned by Sifto Canada. Visitors are rare.

It’s a strangely beautiful environment, a crystal catacomb of glittering walls and surprisingly sweet air. Salt is everywhere, as thick pillars holding up the 20-metre ceiling and as floating particles that coat the skin and lips.
Salt is also thick underfoot. The exposed seam is rink slick. Miners lay down crushed salt for traction.

“We are standing on product,” says operations manager Mark Rowe. “It should be in a bag, and we’ll get there.”

Bagged or bulk, salt makes our winter roads safe and our summer barbecues tasty. The Goderich mine and its sister evaporation plant (where brine is turned into solid sodium chloride) meet age-old needs with modern technology. Here’s how the grains travel from the ground to your shaker or driveway.

China faces buyer’s remorse in Canada’s oil patch – by Jeffrey Jones (Globe and Mail – August 18, 2014)

August 18, 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 — Chinese companies have shelled out more than $30-billion in Canada’s energy industry, but many of those investments have been hit with operational problems, delays and weak returns, leading to growing impatience in some quarters in China.

PetroChina Co. Ltd., Sinopec, CNOOC Ltd., China Investment Corp. and other state-owned enterprises made a raft of big bets on oil sands projects, shale developments and domestic companies since 2005 and many have yet to pay off.

There is “absolutely” some buyer’s remorse stemming from many of China’s big-ticket acquisitions, said Samir Kayande, vice-president of energy research at ITG Investment Research, who has done intensive studies of some of the deals.

Some problems were the result of purchases made during a rush on assets across the industry, when competition from both domestic and foreign buyers was brisk, Mr. Kayande said. Eventually, assets in the best geological regions are likely to pay off, and those further from the earliest developments will lag in performance, he said.

Officials with the Chinese companies, and Canadians familiar with their thinking, say it is far too early to deem the buying spree, in a notoriously difficult industry, a bust.

Mr. Harper, Tear down this wall! – by Stephen Stewart (Mining Markets – August 15, 2014)

August 18, 2014

http://www.miningmarkets.ca/

Stephen Stewart is a managing partner of the natural resource private equity firm Minvest Partners in Toronto.

Canada’s mining sector needs clear, consistent rules to thrive

Mining has been an integral part of Canada’s social fabric for well over a century and accordingly we have cultivated an abundance of talented geologists, engineers, technicians and financiers who give us a tremendous competitive advantage. Yet many of these professionals sit by idly, frustrated with what amounts to an inability to broaden Canada’s mineral wealth, while other nations position their natural resources to prosper in a globalized economy. Our abundance of oil remains thwarted from transport to any one of our three oceans, and world class orebodies lay dormant as disorder surrounds their required infrastructure.

While Canada’s natural resource industry needs to look inwards in order to analyze and exit its current depressed state, the rulemakers — ie. the federal and provincial governments, as well as any number of regulatory bodies — need to work towards a regulatory system that is meant to safeguard without injuring those it seeks to protect.

Understanding risk is fundamental to investment in natural resource projects so the investor, when making capital allocation decisions, can quantify the risks versus rewards. When projects operate within a congested and opaque regulatory environment, investors balk and follow the path of least resistance away from the unknown. The groundswell of politicized agendas, which layers on increased regulation, have created uncertainty, which delays the advancement of countless resource projects and their related infrastructure.