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Canadian Media Resource Articles

José Raúl Mulino’s presidential win in Panama boosts First Quantum’s Cobre Panama prospects – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – May 7, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The election of a pro-business president in Panama is raising hopes that Canadian miner First Quantum Minerals Ltd.’s pained prospects in the country might improve. First Quantum’s Cobre Panama mine was ordered to close late last year by outgoing president Laurentino Cortizo after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that its mining contract was unconstitutional. Mr. Cortizo’s term ends on June 30.

The winner of Sunday’s election was José Raúl Mulino. His campaign focused heavily on various initiatives aimed at boosting the economy. He became a candidate late in the campaign when former Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli was barred from running after being convicted of money laundering.

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South African Unions Urge Anglo Shareholders To Reject BHP Bid – by Antony Sguazzin (Bloomberg News – May 7, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — South Africa’s biggest labor union federation urged local shareholders, including the powerful Public Investment Corp., to oppose BHP Group Ltd.’s bid to buy Anglo American Plc. The Congress of South African Trade Unions, which includes the National Union of Mineworkers among its members, said a deal wouldn’t be in the national interest. South African shareholders hold about 26% of Anglo, with the PIC owning 8.4%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

BHP’s proposal to acquire Anglo on April 25 raised the ire of some members of South Africa’s government, including Mines Minister Gwede Mantashe. The Australian company responded by deploying a senior team including its chief executive officer to South Africa to win over government officials, regulators and local Anglo shareholders.

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[California Lithium-rich Salton Sea] The green treasure below a toxic lake – by Jean-François Bélanger (CBC News – March 31, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/

The place is as little-known as it is majestic. It’s a deep blue lake bordered by the desert and mountain ranges as far as the eye can see. As the largest body of water in California, the Salton Sea used to be a favorite vacation hotspot for Hollywood stars back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Frank Sinatra, Jerry Lewis and the Marx brothers were among the regulars. The Beach Boys as well.

This is what drew Donna Winters to settle in Desert Shores, about 130 kilometres east of San Diego, a quarter of a century ago. The retiree, in her 80s, keeps very fond memories of her first years here. Her once-lakefront home had stunning views.

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Fire and the mining frontier – by John Sandlos (Canadian Mining Journal – May 5, 2024)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

The massive expansion of Canada’s mining industry in the early twentieth century brought miners into close contact with one of the most fire-prone ecosystems on the planet ― the great boreal forest. Although prospectors sometimes lit fires to clear land for exploration, the smell of smoke and the site of flames more often signaled a mortal threat to new mining communities in northern Canada.

With their hastily constructed wooden buildings, rudimentary fire fighting capabilities, and lack of viable transportation infrastructure, mining communities had almost no defenses against fire. Some fires might start within a town or a mine (such as the July 1909 fire in Cobalt, Ont.), but large forest fires also spelled potential doom for anyone or anything in their pathway.

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What’s Anglo Worth? For Now It’s Less than the Sum of Its Parts – by Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – May 2, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — As BHP Group considers its next move, there’s one big question facing the mining world’s bankers, analysts and executives at rival producers: What’s Anglo American Plc actually worth? Anglo’s shares are trading about 8% above the price implied by BHP’s initial proposal, which was swiftly and firmly rejected, and Bloomberg reported on the weekend that the larger firm was considering an improved offer.

But how high can BHP go? The world’s biggest miner needs to thread the needle with an offer that can win over Anglo investors while maintaining the support of its own shareholders — especially given the company’s history of disastrous dealmaking.

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Colombian largest drug cartel extracting gold from protected area – governor – by Staff Writer (Mining.com – May 5, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

The governor of Colombia’s central-northern department of Santander, Juvenal Díaz, denounced the presence of members of the Gulf Clan, also known as the Gaitanista Army of Colombia (EGC), in the Santurbán moor.

The EGC is a neo-paramilitary group and likely the country’s largest drug cartel, which was created after the demobilization of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. Their presence in Santander is meant to control illegal gold mining operations. According to Díaz – a retired army general turned politician –, the criminals are not only taking over the area but also polluting water sources.

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Meeting the metals mining shortfall – by Wilson Monteiro (Canadian Mining Journal – May 3, 2024)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Moving away from fossil fuels to meet essential global carbon reduction targets means mining for metals and minerals will need to increase significantly over the coming years. Electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels, and overall electrification are all areas of increased demand, meaning metals like copper, iron, and zinc will be continuously required.

How the need for more metals will be met with our current infrastructure is uncertain. Taking copper as an example, production is predicted to reach a crisis point by 2030 with an annual deficit of five million tonnes. Stemming from a surge in demand driven by the exponential growth in electric vehicles and a myriad of other electrification applications, surpassing current production capacity, this is an alarming prognosis that would ultimately impede global sustainability goals.

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Trans Mountain reminds us Canada can still be capable of greatness against the odds – by John Ivison (National Post – May 6, 2024)

https://nationalpost.com/

It is the kind of project that Canada no longer seems to be able to build

The completion of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX) was not commemorated by an iconic photograph, such as the one taken one a wet November morning in 1885 in the mountains of British Columbia. What Pierre Berton, in his epic story of the building of the country’s first transcontinental railway, billed as The Great Canadian Photograph has a sense of occasion, as a white bearded old gentleman, Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) director Donald Smith, hammers home an iron railroad spike: The Last Spike.

“Canada had accomplished the impossible — a job done with a remarkable blend of financial acumen, stubborn perseverance, political lobbying, brilliant organization, reckless gambling, plain good fortune and the toil of a legion of ordinary working men … the unknown soldiers of (CPR general manager William) Van Horne’s army,” Berton wrote.

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Underwater power play for metals in full swing – by Alisha Hiyate (Northern Miner – May 2024)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Despite its stranglehold on mining and processing, there’s one arena of critical minerals that China doesn’t control – underwater resources. No one does, as deep sea mining has yet to begin. But it’s not the sci-fi fantasy it once may have seemed.

The International Seabed Authority (ISA), which next meets in July, is hashing out the world’s first underwater mining code. Deep sea mining could technically begin as soon as July, even in the absence of rules which the ISA aims to have in place by 2025.

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Can floating nuclear power plants help solve Northern Canada’s energy woes? – by Matthew McClearn (Globe and Mail – May 3, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Diesel is the only way to keep the lights on in many remote Arctic towns. A new project wants to offer a greener option – but first it has to assuage safety and cost concerns and compete with other renewables

The nuclear industry is seeking to establish a beachhead in Canada’s North – literally – with a proposed floating nuclear power plant to serve remote Indigenous communities.

Westinghouse, a U.S.-based reactor vendor, has partnered with Prodigy Clean Energy, a Montreal-based company, to develop a transportable nuclear power plant. Essentially a barge housing one or more of Westinghouse’s eVinci microreactors, it would be built in a shipyard and moved thousands of kilometres by a heavy-lift carrier to its destination in the Far North. There it could be moored within a protected harbour, or installed on land near the shore.

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The smoking gun for Canada’s weak economic growth? A collapse in energy and resource investment – by Heather Exner-Pirot (The Hub – May 2, 2024)

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The number of major natural resource projects completed between 2015 and 2023 declined by 36.4 percent

There’s a lot of hand-wringing going on in Canada these days as we try to figure out how our productivity, economic growth, and per capita GDP have sunk so badly. If you’re looking for a smoking gun, look no further than the precipitous decline in investment in Canada’s resource sector.

Canada’s resource and energy sector suffered two hits in 2015. One was the global commodity bust. The other was the election of the Trudeau Liberal government, which was intent on transforming the Canadian economy from its rollercoaster dependence on global commodity prices to one built on a more resilient and scalable knowledge economy. As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau articulated to his audience at the World Economic Forum in 2016, “My predecessor wanted you to know Canada for its resources. Well, I want you to know Canadians for our resourcefulness.”

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Liberals hold up $34B Trans Mountain boondoggle as example of socialist success – by Jesse Kline (National Post – May 3, 2024)

https://nationalpost.com/

If this pipeline is so great for the economy, wouldn’t having more pipelines be even better?

After more than a decade of jurisdictional squabbling, political grandstanding, activist obstructionism, legal wrangling and bureaucratic delays, the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion gained final approval earlier this week and began shipping oil on Wednesday.

Despite coming in years behind schedule and nearly $27 billion over budget, the pipeline is being hailed by some Liberals as a triumph of Big Government, with the “golden” or “final” weld on April 11 drawing parallels to the Last Spike driven into John A. Macdonald’s Canadian Pacific Railway on Nov. 7, 1885.

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Mike Henry, the Canadian boss of mining giant BHP, faces a reputational make-or-break takeover attempt – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – May 3, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Mike Henry’s long career at BHP, the world’s biggest mining company, did not rock the resources world. In his various roles – he has been CEO since 2020 – he was competent, capable and cautious, according to former employees and executives at rival companies, making him more evolutionary than revolutionary.

Today, Mr. Henry seems to be breaking form to unleash a potential revolution at BHP. A leak last week forced the company to reveal a takeover proposal for rival Anglo American that implied a value of US$39-billion. Anglo promptly rejected the bid, which can now be declared hostile, as undervalued, opportunistic and complicated.

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Ecuador court puts nail in $3bn copper project’s coffin – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – May 1, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

Ecuador’s constitutional court has decided not to process appeals aimed at resuming activities at the disputed $3 billion Llurimagua copper-molybdenum project, in the country’s northern Imbabura province.

The 982-million-tonne copper asset, about 80 km northeast of Ecuador’s capital of Quito, was initially being advanced by the country’s national mining company, Enami EP, with the help of Chile’s Codelco.

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Resources are still our golden goose. We need to protect them – by Philip Cross, Jack M. Mintz (Financial Post – May 2, 2024)

https://financialpost.com/

They drive exports, productivity, incomes and government revenue. It’s time we stopped being embarrassed about them

Let us now praise Canada’s resource sector. It’s long past time somebody did. Natural resources generate 14.9 per cent of Canada’s GDP, with energy alone accounting for half that. They also account for over 45 per cent of our country’s manufacturing output. Nearly one in 10 Canadian jobs is related to resources, more than that for those of us living outside our major cities.

Natural resources have a heightened importance in investment and exports and the sector’s productivity is by far the highest of any industry’s. Canada’s comparative advantage in trade is heavily slanted to resources, which generate 58 per cent of all merchandise export earnings.

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