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Canpotex leads to fewer jobs in Sask. mining – by Kai Xue (Saskatoon StarPhoenix – June 26, 2014)

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

Xue is a corporate lawyer in Beijing and food security activist. This is his personal opinion. To create jobs in Saskatchewan and help the hungry in poor countries, the province should reconsider its support for Canpotex.

The Saskatoon-based export cartel is composed of PotashCorp, Mosaic and Agrium, with each potash producer holding a fixed share in its sales. Canpotex and another cartel in Eastern Europe formed by Russia and Belarus controlled most of the world’s potash reserves and were able to until recently dictate the world price.

Canpotex is a legal cartel that aims to raise prices outside of Canada and is therefore exempt from enforcement under the Competition Act.

Saskatchewan strongly supports Canpotex, stemming from the belief that what is good for PotashCorp is good for the province. This conclusion is a mistake, based on assumptions about the economic benefit of the cartel in tax revenue for the province, jobs for locals, and the ownership of Potash-Corp.

By raising potash prices, Canpotex is assumed to create mining jobs. After all, in the mining of other minerals, a higher price leads to expansion of operations and more jobs. However, Canpotex raises prices not because farmers want to buy more potash but because its members cut off supply and artificially inflate the world price.

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Agnico Eagle CEO Prowls for More Gold Deals After Osisko – by Liezel Hill (Bloomberg News – June 26, 2014)

 http://www.bloomberg.com/

Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. (AEM) just closed the biggest deal in its 57-year history, but that doesn’t mean Chief Executive Officer Sean Boyd is putting away his checkbook.

The gold producer is looking to build up its Latin American presence with smaller deals after it completed the acquisition last week of 50 percent of Canada’s biggest gold mine. Yamana Gold Inc. (YRI) bought the other half of Osisko Mining Corp. in a $3.44 billion deal, the largest in the industry since 2010.

“One of the questions we got when we were out talking to our shareholders with Osisko was, ‘OK, you’re done now I guess?’” Boyd said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Toronto office. “Actually, no we’re not.”

Gold merger and acquisition activity has revived this year after falling to the lowest total deal value in 10 years in 2013 as companies grappled with a sharp drop in the metal’s price. Dealmaking will continue as the largest producers sell assets to simplify unwieldy businesses, while others seek to add lower-cost mines, Boyd said.

Toronto-based Agnico wants to add assets in Mexico, although it would consider entering a new country, Boyd said. Agnico, which also has a mine in Finland as well as four in Canada, is looking for “small” deals where it can increase the value of a project and potentially lower the overall company’s average costs, Boyd said.

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Nautilus Minerals Inc says it’s poised to begin undersea mining following dispute settlement – by Peter Koven (National Post – June 26, 2014)

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

A lot of investors won’t believe it until they see it. But Nautilus Minerals Inc. maintains it is back on track to become the world’s first company to mine metals under the sea.

“It’s been a very exciting year,” chairman Geoffrey Loudon said at the company’s annual meeting in Toronto on Wednesday. “A lot of things have happened that we’ve waited an awful long time for.”

Most significantly, the company settled a two-year dispute with the government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) over ownership of its Solwara 1 copper-gold project in April. The dispute was a giant black cloud over the company.

But there are significant hurdles ahead. For one thing, Toronto-based Nautilus still needs to secure a ship, something it has been talking about for many years. At the meeting, chief executive Mike Johnston said that should be a done deal by November, with Nautilus either chartering a ship or buying one.

Following that event, he laid out a path that could bring the company into first production as soon as 2017. And once Solwara 1 is mined out, Nautilus can theoretically move its ship and seafloor mining equipment over to the next deposit.

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Supreme Court expands land-title rights in unanimous ruling – by Sean Fine (Globe and Mail – June 26, 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 Supreme Court of Canada has given aboriginal groups a major victory, expanding their rights to claim possession of ancestral lands and control those lands permanently.

“The right to control the land conferred by Aboriginal title means that governments and others seeking to use the land must obtain the consent of the Aboriginal title holders,” the court said in an 8-0 ruling written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. “If the Aboriginal group does not consent to the use, the government’s only recourse is to establish that the proposed incursion on the land is justified” under the Constitution.

The case has enormous implications for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. British Columbia has hundreds of unresolved land claims, and the pipeline would cross some of those lands.

The court said that where title is asserted but has not yet been established, the government needs to consult with the aboriginal group in question and accommodate it where appropriate. But once aboriginal title is established, and the aboriginal group refuses to consent to an incursion on its lands, government would have to prove an important public purpose and fulfill its duties of trust and care towards the aboriginal people, before a project can go ahead.

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These two provinces just can’t plug in – by Konrad Yakabuski (Globe and Mail – June 26, 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.

Provincial elections have now come and gone in Ontario and Quebec, with majority Liberal governments elected in both. Presumably, that means less political posturing, potentially clearing the way for a new era of electricity co-operation between Canada’s largest provinces.

Don’t hold your breath.

Electricity regulators in Ontario recently asked stakeholders whether the province should import more hydro power from Quebec. Their draft report is due next week. This coincides with a big push by Ontario’s anti-nuclear lobby to scrap the planned multibillion-dollar refurbishment of the Darlington and Bruce power stations in favour of buying “cheaper” electricity from Quebec.

Reorienting electricity policy in Canada, however, is tantamount to turning around an oil tanker. All the forces in the political universe seem to conspire against it, ensuring that past is prologue.

For decades, both provinces have operated in electricity policy silos, with self-sufficiency and economic development trumping consumer interests.

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The untold story of Sudbury’s Big Nickel – CBC News Sudbury (June 25, 2014)

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

http://www.thebignickelbook.com/

The man who came up with the idea of the Big Nickel is revealing the whole story in a book he’s written with his son. Ted Szilva was a firefighter 50 years ago when the city launched a contest to get proposals from the public to celebrate its centennial.

Szilva submitted his idea of a Big Nickel, underground mine and mining museum. At the time he was told his idea wouldn’t do anything good for Sudbury and they picked a police station instead.

“Of course … [the police station] had a lot of visitors too.” said Szilva with a chuckle. Wednesday on Morning North with Markus Schwabe, Szilva told the story of the hurdles he went through to make his dream happen all on his own.

You can tune in Thursday at 6:10 am on Morning North to hear more on this story as Ted is joined by his son Jim.

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The cost of climate change alarmism – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – June 25, 2014)

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

Exactly how much climate alarmism and economic scaremongering will people endure before they turn off and decide to drive to the beach and otherwise have a good time, global warming or no global warming? Nobody knows, but a group of U.K. scientists said Tuesday that the tipping point may have already passed.

In a report titled Time for Change? Climate Science Reconsidered group of eminent British academics from various disciplines and associated with University College London (UCL) warns that “fear appeals” may be turning the public against the climate issue as “too scary to think about.”

If that’s true, U.S. President Barack Obama and his billionaire activists buddies — Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg and others — are on track to destroy their own campaigns.

A whole chapter of the U.K. report — chaired by UCL Professor Chris Rapley — is dedicated to “The Consequences of Fear Appeals” on public opinion. “Alarmist messages have also played a direct role in the loss of trust in the science community,” it says. “The failure of specific predictions of climate change to materialize creates the impression that the climate science community as a whole resorts to raising false alarms. When apparent failures are not adequately explained, future threats become less believable.”

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A nickel mine and the missing Placentia processing plant – by Trevor Cole (Globe and Mail – June 24, 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.

It’s amazing how often serendipity plays a role in uncovering a great story. One morning in May of 2000, I’d come back from the cafeteria with a coffee in my hand and I was standing restlessly at my desk at the magazine, where I was a staff writer. I’d finished my work on a previous assignment and it was time to look for the next subject. In the few minutes I’d been gone, a pile of office flotsam had landed on my desk.

It was mostly a collection of press releases and industry publications I’d never bothered to look at. At another time, I might simply have moved the pile on to someone else’s desk. But this time I shuffled through it. And about 10 centimetres down, my eyes landed on an edition of The Charter, a thin, weekly newspaper from the little town of Placentia, Newfoundland.

Who knows what it was doing there; maybe the mailroom had misdirected it. With the mildest sense of curiosity, I began to turn the pages of cheap newsprint, and within a minute, I saw that something was going on in Placentia. Furious letters to the editor, stories quoting tirades by Placentia’s mayor against other town leaders. The anger seemed to have something to do with fallout from the huge nickel discovery six years earlier at Voisey’s Bay, Labrador, some 1,100 kilometres to the north.

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The strike that saved lives [Elliot Lake] – by Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco (CIM Magazine – June-July 2014)

http://www.cim.org/en.aspx

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Elliot Lake wildcat walkout

Ontario government representatives 40 years ago presented research linking radiation to lung cancer at a conference in Paris, France. In the audience were several members of the United Steelworkers of America (USW), whose organization had been fighting the mining industry and the Ontario government for improved health and safety at the Denison and Rio Algom uranium mines in Elliot Lake, Ontario. In addition to a high incidence of injuries, hundreds of miners were ill or dying from silicosis and lung cancer, which the union believed was caused by silica dust.

The union representatives were shocked to discover the government had found there was another cause behind the high rates of lung cancer – radiation – and had not bothered to inform miners or to take any action to protect them. The USW members shared the news with their co-workers back in Elliot Lake, and this proved to be the last straw. On April 18, 1974, about 1,000 miners from Denison went on a three-week wildcat strike.

“I think the conference, combined with the general dissatisfaction with the occupational health and safety regulations and laws in the province at that time, caused the strike,” says Fergus Kerr, now vice-president of operations at Global Atomic Fuels Corp., who joined Denison in 1977 and became its general manager a decade later.

The strike drew the attention of the media, the public and Ontario’s politicians. Mining health and safety suddenly became a hot-button issue.

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Augusta Resource Corp agrees to HudBay Minerals Inc sweetened takeover offer – by Peter Koven (National Post – June 23, 2014)

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

It took four and a half months of hostilities and the sighting of a rare wild cat. But in the end, HudBay Minerals Inc. got just what it wanted.

The Toronto-based miner unveiled a friendly deal on Monday to buy Augusta Resource Corp. for about $555-million in shares and warrants. And to the surprise of many observers, it only had to boost its original hostile bid by 10% to get the deal done.

When HudBay made its initial offer in February, Augusta chief executive Gil Clausen said it had “no chance of success.” Augusta’s shares were trading far above the bid, and the company thought it would receive all the key permits for its Rosemont copper project in the first half of 2014. That was expected to be a key catalyst for the stock price.

HudBay maintained that Augusta’s permitting timeline for the Arizona-based project was too optimistic. That turned out to be correct — but not for any reason HudBay expected.

Last month, an ocelot was photographed near the Rosemont project site. It is highly unusual for these wild cats to be spotted as far north as Arizona, and as a result, the U.S. Forest Service requested a new round of consultations on the project before permitting would be granted.

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Canada targets South Africa as priority market in Africa – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – June 24, 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 — South Africa might be strike-plagued, on the brink of recession and refusing to sign any foreign investment treaties these days, but it will remain the linchpin of Canada’s economic strategy on the African continent, International Trade Minister Ed Fast says.

South Africa was officially overtaken by Nigeria this year as the biggest economy on the continent, but Mr. Fast is not ready to accept the new Nigerian numbers. He says Canada will keep betting on South Africa as its top priority market in Africa.

“I know Nigeria is now claiming to be the largest economy,” Mr. Fast said in an interview in Johannesburg on Monday. “Before we draw any conclusions about that, I think you’d have to allow a number of years to go by. South Africa clearly has been the economic leader in Africa.”

Mr. Fast is in the midst of a 10-day tour of four African countries: Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Tanzania and South Africa. Canada has become the biggest foreign investor in two of those countries, Madagascar and Burkina Faso, because of its multibillion-dollar investment in the gold-mining sector in Burkina Faso and nickel mining in Madagascar.

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Resurgent China may be a boon to copper – by Scott Barlow (Globe and Mail – June 24, 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.

Stronger than expected economic data from China, specifically new orders for manufactured goods, suggest a tradeable rally in copper miners may be on the horizon.

The HSBC/Markit Flash China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index is designed to predict the government manufacturing report due for release on June 30. Released Monday, the Flash PMI came in well above expectations and provided a clear positive indicator for official numbers.

The reading of 50.8 for overall Chinese manufacturing activity, significantly above the 50 mark that signals business expansion, represented the first positive data point since December and hints that government efforts to loosen credit conditions are helping boost economic growth.

Manufacturing New Orders, a sub-component of the report, and is the most forward-looking part of the report because it indicates the future level of economic activity. As a result, it can also be used to forecast profits for resource-related companies that benefit from rising levels of Chinese manufacturing. The manufacturing new orders result released Monday was extremely encouraging. At 51.8, the survey result was the strongest in 15 months.

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Yamana struggles to find buyers for Brazil mines – by Boyd Erman and Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – June 23, 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.

Yamana Gold Inc. has been trying to sell mines in Brazil for months, but is struggling to drum up interest in all the properties, people familiar with the matter say.

The Toronto-based company put its three mines in Brazil up for sale at the beginning of the year and hired Royal Bank of Canada to run the process, the sources said. A spokesman for Yamana declined to comment.

The Chapada, Jacobina and Fazenda Brasileiro mines are nearing the end of their lives and are facing problems. They have a combined net asset value of about $3-billion (U.S.), according to a recent report from Canaccord Genuity.

“I am not surprised that people have passed on it because they are very mature mines,” said John Ing, the president of investment firm Maison Placements Canada. “Jacobina has never worked right. Chapada has been a disappointment and Fazenda is very small.”

Yamana was previously focused on building its portfolio in South America until it teamed up with another Canadian miner to buy half of Osisko Mining Corp.’s large gold mine in Quebec.

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Dearth of aboriginal-owned businesses is bad for resource firms – by Barrie McKenna (Globe and Mail – June 23, 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.

OTTAWA — Connie Saliwonczyk is a rarity in Canada – an aboriginal female entrepreneur and a firm supporter of the Northern Gateway pipeline.

Her endorsement of Enbridge Inc.’s pipeline is born out of naked economic self-interest. Her company, based in Alberta’s Frog Lake First Nation, operates various oil patch service vehicles, including a vacuum truck for cleaning up small oil spills. She would be in line to bid for work if the pipeline gets built.

“As a businessperson, it would definitely benefit me,” she said. “And it benefits people on the reserve because I hire First Nations people. For me, it’s showing people that anybody can do it.”

Ms. Saliwonczyk notwithstanding, Northern Gateway now faces a potentially drawn-out legal fight with First Nations, primarily in B.C., that could stall or even block the pipeline, thwarting the dream of getting oil sands crude to the Pacific Coast and on to Asian markets.

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COMMENT: Who is anonymous and why is he saying all these nasty things? [African Barrick] – by Marilyn Scales (Canadian Mining Journal – June 19, 2014)

Marilyn Scales is a field editor for the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication. She is one of Canada’s most senior mining commentators.

The story broke in the June 18 issue of the Wall Street Journal that African Barrick has been accused of paying bribes to officials of the Tanzanian government to facilitate the company’s purchase of land near the North Mara gold mine.

The problem is that the accusation was made anonymously. Why does this person or persons want to hide their identity?

Several explanations come to mind. The accusers may fear reprisals for blowing the whistle. They may not have supporting evidence. They may want to defame African Barrick for a personal reason. They may be hoping to stir up trouble with local communities. Sending the accusations to the US Justice Department and US Securities and Exchange commission, as the accusers did, is a clear attempt to stir up legal trouble.

Making anonymous accusations is cowardly. If the accusations are true, the accuser should stand behind his opinion and offer proof. Not doing might weaken the case, except there are far too many people willing to think the worst of a foreign company in a poor country.

The very idea of an anonymous accusation goes against this writer’s sense of fair play.

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