Canadian Media Resource Articles – Page 674

How Europe is turning to North America to wean itself off Russian energy exports – by Yadullah Hussain (National Post – March 19, 2014)

March 19, 2014

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

As Russia moved at lightning speed to annex Ukraine’s Crimea region, a hapless Europe continued to move at an oil tankers’ pace to wean itself off Moscow’s formidable energy resources.

A handful of EU nations, however, are waking up to the energy abundance of their NATO allies in North America. Ambassadors from Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland sent a letter to U.S. House Speaker John Boehner this month to help expedite approval for liquefied natural gas export licences to their countries, and help reduce their dependence on Russia.

Joe Oliver, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, said he has not received a similar request from the countries, but noted that Canada can be part of the solution by exporting energy products to the European Union.

“Europe’s strategic need to diversify its sources of energy points to Canada and complements our strategic imperative to diversify our markets,” the minister said in a statement sent to the Financial Post.

B.C.’s LNG tax could bomb – by Jack M. Mintz (National Post – March 18, 2014)

March 19, 2014

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

What purpose does the LNG tax have besides being a revenue-grab?

The BC proposal for a new tax on proposed Liquefied Natural Gas plants certainly galvanized negative reaction from some producers. Project proponents like Shell and Chevron expressed concerns over its economic feasibility (Imperial Oil, of which I am director, said less). On the other hand, the B.C. government claims that the projects will be tax competitive with the U.S. and Australia, resulting in large employment gains to the province.

The BC government also forecasts that the projects will yield substantial new provincial revenues – the new LNG tax as well as corporate, personal, and sales tax revenues ranging from $4-billion to $11-billion annually (2012 prices) depending on prices and capacity. So lots at stake for the BC economy in terms of jobs and revenues.

Yet, I think the new LNG tax proposed by BC raises critical issues that go beyond questions of competitiveness and revenues. The new LNG tax could create a policy precedent that could lead to poor tax policy in the coming years in Canada and not necessarily in the interests of British Columbia itself.

Mysterious Canadian’s life in the fast lane fuelled by penny stock scam: SEC – by Joe O’Connor (National Post – March 18, 2014)

March 18, 2014

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

The 700,000 emails were sent at about 2:30 p.m. EDT on Feb. 23, 2012. The senders were AwesomePennyStocks.com and PennyStocksUniverse.com, a pair of affiliated stock promotion websites that touted penny stocks to potential investors.

The must-buy on this day was America West Resources Inc., a small coal-mining outfit headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. Its shares typically traded for about 29 cents each. The company seldom attracted much investor interest.

But Feb. 23, 2012, was different, according to documents filed last week by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in a federal court in Manhattan. The America West promo was an alleged scam. Its mastermind: John Babikian, a 26-year-old Montrealer with multiple passports and whose whereabouts, at present, are unknown.

Mr. Babikian, a scourge among regulators, revenue collectors, investors and securities watchdogs, was, among stock promoters, something of a celebrity, albeit a mysterious one.

The young stock pusher fled Canada in 2012 after being charged with tax evasion. He is believed to possess passports from Guatemala, Lebanon and Nevis and was last reported — by his wife’s divorce lawyer — to be in Monaco.

Short-term investment focus has to go, Franco-Nevada’s Harquail tells PDAC – by Alisha Hiyate (Mining Markets – March 3, 2014)

March 18, 2014

http://www.miningmarkets.ca/

David Harquail, president and CEO of gold royalty company Franco-Nevada (TSX:FNV; NYSE: FNV), first started coming to the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention when he was a kid in the ’60s. His job was to transport rye and scotch from his dad’s car to the suite the exploration geologist had booked at the Royal York.

As potential investors examined the targets on the hand-coloured geological maps spread out over the bed in the smoky suite, Harquail remembers the tinkling of ice in their glasses.

He also remembers that before they left, quite a few of those investors would actually hand over a cheque to the elder Harquail, James, who had worked for mining legend Thayer Lindsley before going on to form a number of exploration syndicates.

“I think those investors, because they were getting a one-on-one with the fellow that was coming up with the project and executing on the project, they had a pretty clear view of what their odds of success were and what they were buying in terms of the prospect that summer,” Harquail told an audience at PDAC yesterday.

“That was a different era and none of those things that they were doing there you could probably do today.”

Mining the moon: The 21st century gold rush – by Stephanie Orford (MetroNews.ca – March 17, 2014)

March 18, 2014

http://metronews.ca/

Five years ago, if you had brought up moon mining among geologists, “you would have been laughed out of the room,” said Gordon Osinski, founder and director of the Canadian Lunar Research Network, and an assistant professor of geology at the University of Western Ontario.

Times have changed. Mining on the moon and on asteroids, formerly the stuff of science fiction, is clearly in the sights of governments and, increasingly, private companies.

In February, NASA announced it was accepting applications from U.S. companies to build robots for lunar prospecting, a step toward creating an economy in space.

And there’s certainly a market for what’s up there. Many elements that are rare on Earth can be found aplenty on the moon. Satellite imaging has shown that the top 10 centimetres of regolith (moon soil) at the south pole of the moon appears to hold about 100 times the concentration of gold of the richest mines in the world, according to a recent paper coauthored by Dale Boucher, the CEO of Deltion Innovations, based in Sudbury, Ont.

Activists allowed to reappeal Rio Tinto’s Kitimat smelter permit – by Justine Hunter (Globe and Mail – March 14, 2014)

March 17, 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.

VICTORIA — The B.C. Supreme Court has granted environmental activists a chance to overturn the environmental permit for the $3.3-billion upgrade of the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter in Kitimat.

Last April, the provincial Ministry of Environment authorized Rio Tinto to increase sulphur dioxide emissions, paving the way for the massive modernization and expansion project. There are more than 2,400 construction workers on site, and the project is already over budget.

The opponents, including two environmental organizations as well as a handful of local citizens, want Rio Tinto to install sulphur dioxide scrubbers, which could add more than $150-million to the upgrade. The process removes sulphur dioxide from the stacks.

Two environmental groups, along with residents of both Terrace and Kitimat, sought to appeal the permit, saying the smelter upgrade would threaten human health and the environment in the Kitimat-Terrace airshed.

Miners: It’s innovation time – by Anthony Vaccaro (Northern Miner – March 14, 2014)

March 17, 2014

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

Chrysalix Global Network, a venture capital fund based in Vancouver, is looking to spearhead the next wave of innovation in the mining industry.

One of the fund’s partners, Charles Haythornthwaite, was in Toronto for the Prospectors Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and sat down with The Northern Miner to explain why Chrysalix has decided to target the mining industry and what sort of opportunities it sees.

Miners should pay heed as Chrysalix represents one of the first forays of venture capital into the industry — and it is a fund with the expertise and the capital to drive the sort of early stage technologies that may be standard process in the mines of the future.

“We are looking for transformation breakthrough ideas that could really move the needle in an energy intensive industry,” he says.

The two veins along which the fund is pursuing new technologies are ones that can deliver an environmentally cleaner process and ones that make the industrial process as efficient as possible. Two aims that clearly compliment one another.

Junior mining firm dreaming of Alberta potash industry – by David Howell (Edmonton Journal – March 14, 2014)

March 17, 2014

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

EDMONTON – Brian (Griz) Testo has been a dreamer and an explorer all his life. He recalls panning for gold in the McLeod River near Hinton at age eight, and discovering a fossil pit at 14.

Now nearing 62, with a colourful background prospecting for diamonds and other minerals, the former pipeline welder is pursuing a commodity nearly unheard of in Alberta: potash.

“It’s the chase, and the discovery,” Testo said in an interview. “My dream is that we hit potash and we get a new industry for Alberta, we make our shareholders a ton of money, we create jobs, create wealth for people, and feed the world.”

Testo is president and CEO of Grizzly Discoveries Inc., which takes its name from his nickname. The Edmonton-based junior mining company announced this week it is in talks with a potential partner about a possible $15-million investment in Grizzly’s Alberta potash project.

Grizzly’s unnamed partner, which Testo will only say is based outside Canada, is now reviewing the company’s data and information. If a deal results, Grizzly would be in a position this year to drill four test wells near Vermilion and Lloydminster.

McEwen Mining’s president gives the BEST answer on why someone should consider a career in mining – by Michael Allan McCrae (Mining.com – March 16, 2014)

March 17, 2014

http://www.mining.com/

McEwen Mining’s president discussed innovation, why the company has not cut back on exploration and why more young people should consider a career in mining.

Ian Ball spoke with MINING.com in early March while he was preparing to meet shareholders before the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada convention. McEwen Mining is gold and silver miner miner operating in the Americas. The company was founded by mining legend Rob McEwen, the founder and former Chairman and CEO of Goldcorp. McEwen Mining’s stated goal is to qualify for inclusion in the S&P 500.

While miners cut back on exploration expenses during the drop in commodity prices last year, Ball said McEwen Mining’s (NYSE:MUX) programs were kept in place since the company believe that is how it would ultimately out-perform its peers. He pointed to the company’s Gold Bar project.

Peter Munk: A mining magnate nears the end of his golden reign – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – March 15, 2015)

March 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.

KLOSTERS, SWITZERLAND – On a chilly evening in early March, Peter Munk picks me up from my hotel in his tiny Fiat Punto, manual transmission, that he drives himself. His wife Melanie is stuffed in the back and our destination is the local schnitzel restaurant, where the Munks are treated like anyone else in Klosters, the Swiss ski village near Davos.

What a change. The last time I spent more than a few minutes with Mr. Munk was in 2008, in Montenegro’s glorious Bay of Kotor, the Mediterranean’s only fjord. We were on his chartered superyacht, the 50-metre Te Manu, a nautical pleasure palace with a crew of 11 that would have made any oligarch proud.

Has Mr. Munk, the founder, co-chairman and former chief executive officer of Barrick Gold Corp., fallen on hard times since then? Yes and no.

At $27-billion, Barrick is worth less than half of its peak in 2011, just before the gold price collapsed and the financial horror of the company’s now-suspended Pascua-Lama mining project in the Andes was exposed. Mr. Munk’s wealth has declined along with the share price (although he owns only 2.1 million common shares), but certainly not to the point where he is flying economy and forgoing oysters and champagne.

Instead, the Fiat represents the new, simpler life of the Hungarian emigrant to Canada who turned a motley collection of gold assets into the world’s mightiest gold producer. Mr. Munk will leave the Barrick board at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Toronto on April 30, after which John Thornton will go from co-chairman to chairman.

Why building a mine on budget is so rare – by Alisha Hiyate (Mining Markets – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 2014

http://www.miningmarkets.ca/

There is a well-established history of capital cost overruns in the mining industry stretching back at least 50 years, mining analyst Christopher Haubrich told the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) conference in Toronto in early March.

In fact, since 1965, capital cost overruns in the sector have averaged between 20% and 60%. Even so, there has been little investigation into the cause of the problem, said Haubrich.

“Retrospectively looking at capital cost overruns has obviously not helped at all,” Haubrick noted. “We still have a problem, we have for at least 50 years as I’ve mentioned, and all reports suggest that we will continue having a problem.”

Haubrich, however, came to the PDAC armed with some new insight into the cause of capital cost overruns, a topic he researched while interning at Colorado-based Resource Capital Funds (RCF) on a fellowship arranged through the Colorado School of Mines for eight months last year. Haubrich noted that the research he presented belonged to RCF, but that the conclusions were his own.

In a statistical analysis of 50 mines built between 2005 and 2013 that were representative of the industry, Haubrich said that only two of the many factors that are often given for capex overruns — including poor execution or engineering, poor weather, inflation and currency fluctuations — had a statistically significant association with capital cost overruns.

Agencies Dodge Responsibility for Human Cost of Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining – by Mary Anne Hitt (Huffington Post – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

Mary Anne Hitt is director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

This week, we got some disappointing news – a judge ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers isn’t responsible for considering the health effects of coal pollution when it issues permits to fill valleys with rubble from mountaintop-removal coal mines. As Appalachian residents continue to suffer every year from well-documented health problems linked to mountaintop removal, this decision highlights a deadly loophole that requires long-overdue action from the White House and Congress.

Responsibility is a tricky thing. In our daily lives we work to be conscientious of our bills, our taxes, our family lives and a myriad of other duties that come up every day. But what happens when say, no one in the house takes responsibility for the dirty dishes? They keep piling up and things get pretty nasty.

Now, instead of dishes, think about what happens when no one chooses to take responsibility for the terrible effects coal pollution has on public health. From soot and smog to asthma, cancer and heart attacks, things go from nasty to life-threatening.

Canada in Afghanistan: From digging trenches to digging mines? – by Murray Brewster (Canadian Press/CTV News – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 2014

http://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/

KABUL, Afghanistan – Canadians could go from digging trenches to helping dig gold and copper mines in Afghanistan if the Harper government has its way.

The country’s ambassador to Kabul signalled this week that the moribund Afghan economy will be a principal focus for Canada, which has formally ended its military mission.

The hope is to turn the page on a decade of military involvement and aid handouts in the desperately poor, war-torn nation. Standards which Canada has long promoted, education, good governance and women’s rights, will still be there, with an additional emphasis on business.

“Our diplomatic focus will also be on economic development,” said Deborah Lyons, who took over as Canada’s first woman ambassador to Afghanistan six months ago. The approach has the enthusiastic endorsement of Shamial Bantija, Afghanistan’s ambassador-designate to Canada and an economic adviser to President Hamid Karzai.

Barrick transformed under steady hand – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 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.

CEO Jamie Sokalsky has overseen ‘most radical change’ in gold miner’s history

Jamie Sokalsky is the first to admit he’s not the flashiest guy in the rough and tumble gold mining game. “I’m an accountant, my wife is an accountant, my oldest daughter is an accountant and my youngest daughter is studying to be an accountant,” says the chief executive of Barrick Gold Corp. with a chuckle.

While the mild-mannered 56-year-old likes to downplay his management style as rather dull, Sokalsky has ironically overseen the wildest times in the history of the world’s largest gold miner after taking the helm nearly two years ago.

“Barrick is quite a changed company in the last couple years. We’ve radically changed how we’re running it,” he says in his first sit-down interview since his surprise promotion to CEO in June, 2012.

Indeed, the bullion behemoth – whose mantra for years had been ‘bigger is better’ and growth at all costs – is almost a shadow of itself, having gone from 27 mines across the world to 19 in the last six months alone as it shed almost $1 billion of money-losing assets amid the plummeting gold price.

Cameco finally starts up production at Cigar Lake after years of delays – by Peter Koven (National Post – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 2014

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

Thirty-three years after it was discovered, and nine years after construction began, Cameco Corp. has finally brought the much-anticipated Cigar Lake uranium mine into production.

The company made the landmark announcement on Thursday. And after a seemingly endless string of delays and setbacks at the giant Saskatchewan-based project, it must have come as a relief.

“There were a lot of doubters who said it would never be done,” chief executive Tim Gitzel said in a phone interview from the mine site. “But I never gave up on the creativity and the perseverance of our workforce.”

When Cameco’s board approved construction of Cigar Lake in 2004, the expected capital cost was $450-million and first production was planned for 2007. By the end of last year, the cost was a staggering $2.6-billion and it still wasn’t in production. Needless to say, it has been a much tougher process than Cameco ever imagined.