Twitter

Canadian Media Resource Articles

Canada’s ‘North Sea’ seeks investors to arrest production decline – by Yadullah Hussain (National Post – August 9, 2013)

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

Newfoundland and Labrador may be Canada’s fastest growing province this year, but its stellar rise masks a dramatic decline in the oil sector. The province’s three major offshore fields: Hibernia (1.24 billion barrels of reserves), Terra Nova (419 million barrels), and White Rose (283 million ) are past their best and production from new fields is years away.

“We are past peak production from the three existing fields,” the province’s Minister of Natural Resources Tom Marshall told the Financial Post. “We need exploration and success from that in order to sustain and grow the economy further.”

Newfoundland is one of the last few great, untapped offshore developments in North America. Oil majors including ExxonMobil Inc. and Chevron Corp. have a presence in the area, but the region has been a backwater as the prolific Gulf of Mexico and North Sea continue to garner all the attention.

Alarmed by continued neglect from oil companies, the Newfoundland government is casting its net wider to attract bigger players. Last month Mr. Marshall was in China to meet CNOOC and Sinopec officials to drum up interest in the province’s offshore riches.

Read more

Why the latest anti-Keystone pipeline ad is a low blow to Canada – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – August 9, 2013)

 

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

CALGARY – An anti-Keystone XL pipeline commercial funded by President Barack Obama supporter and hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer confirms what many Canadians have long suspected — American anti-oil activists have gone mad.

The commercial was intended to be aired Tuesday evening on WRC-TV, an affiliate of NBC in Washington, D.C., to coincide with the president’s appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

The commercial is so offensive the station refused to air it. While intended as a parody, it insults TransCanada Corp. CEO Russ Girling, whose company is proposing Keystone XL; it’s a low blow to Canada; and it shows the anti-Keystone campaign is in desperate need of adult supervision.

Read more

Feds supply $6M to get First Nations ready for Ring of Fire (CBC News Thunder Bay – August 8, 2013)

http://www.cbc.ca/thunderbay/

260 people to be trained in trades like mining, welding and environmental monitoring

The federal government has announced almost $6 million in funding to train people from Matawa First Nations in the mining sector. The announcement was made at Confederation College in Thunder Bay Thursday morning.

“There’s no better time than the present, we want to get going on this, we know that this is a legacy project,” said Kenora MP Greg Rickford, who is also minister of state for FedNor, with responsibility for the Ring of Fire. “We want to make sure that all our ducks are in a row.”

The money will go to a group of stakeholders called the Ring of Fire Aboriginal Training Alliance, which includes Matawa First Nations, NorOnt Resources and Confederation College. Matawa CEO David Paul Achneepineskum said building partnerships like this will help First Nations succeed. But Aroland Chief Sonny Gagnon thinks the process should be more grass-roots.

“I’m happy on one hand that we’re moving along, but there’s got to be a better method of how to move along,” he said. “And that means going to the communities and asking what each community wants.”

Read more

Vale aims to stay competitive despite loss in profits (CBC News Sudbury – August 8, 2013)

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

Totten Mine in Sudbury still on track to open and create 200 jobs

For a detailed interview with Vale spokesperson Angie Robson, click here: http://www.cbc.ca/video/news/audioplayer.html?clipid=2400029133

Mining giant Vale is reporting its worst profit decline in a decade. In its second quarter report, the company said its profit was $2.78 billion less than in the same quarter last year — and that foreign currency fluctuations are to blame.

In Sudbury, Vale spokesperson Angie Robson said local operations need to continue to focus on reducing costs while minimizing the impact on staff. She noted the company is working to continue being competitive.

“One of the things that we have happening, as an example, is we’re opening Totten Mine by the end of the year,” Robson said. “It’s our first new mine in Sudbury for more than 40 years … we have to continue to look to the future and look for new sources of ore so that we continue to create jobs and so forth.”

She noted the new mine will create about 200 jobs.

Read more

40 of Canada’s finest miners: Little change among top performers – by Marilyn Scales (Canadian Mining Journal – August 8, 2013)

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.

Last year, 2012, almost all commodity prices softened, and that fact is reflected in the fortunes of Canada’s Top 40 mining companies. Gross revenues, the number on which we base our ranking, grew little if at all.

However, the most successful companies will weather the industry’s cyclical downturns. Note the 10 companies that lead our list. Nine of them remain among the top 10. The exception is Cameco that fell from 10th to 11th, trading places with Yamana Gold.

The other nine miners among this year’s top 10 were among the top 10 last year. With one exception they held the same positions as last year – Teck jumped up one to 3rd, pushing Suncor down to 4th.

The list is again headed by Agrium ($16.69 billion) that mines potash at Vanscoy, Sask., and phosphate at Kapuskasing, Ont. Mining is not the company’s only business; it is a retail supplier of agricultural products and services throughout the Americas and Australia. The world needs to eat, and its appetite for fertilizer appears to be strong.

Again in second place is Barrick Gold ($14.55 billion). Long the largest gold miner in the world in terms of market capitalization, Barrick has been under pressure from both the lackluster gold price and skyrocketing development costs.

Read more

Potash Corp chief plays down price plunge – by Peter Koven (National Post – August 8, 2013)

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

As Bill Doyle sees it, last week’s shocking turn of events in the potash industry is nothing to worry about. “I would just urge people to take a deep breath, relax, and everything’s going to be just fine,” the chief executive of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. said in a unique question-and-answer webcast on Wednesday.

Mr. Doyle is eager to put shareholders’ minds at ease following the stunning news that Russian producer OAO Uralkali has broken up a cartel-like trading company and plans to max out its potash production to seize market share. It made the move after its partner Belaruskali sold product outside their arrangement.

Investors assumed that the days in which potash producers withheld production to maintain high prices are now coming to an end. But Mr. Doyle disagrees completely.

He said that there have been numerous spats like this one in the past between the Russians and Belarusians, and all of them were eventually resolved.

Read more

[Watts, Griffis and McOuat] WGM: Around the world in 50 years – by Virginia Heffernan (Northern Miner – March 5, 2012)

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

To survive half a century as an independent firm, Watts, Griffis and McOuat (WGM) has had to be the James Bond of the consulting world, willing to embrace extremes and extricate itself from some dicey situations: bush planes sinking under the ice, locals wielding AK-47s, and revolutions, to name just a few.

“We all had a sense of adventure, so we didn’t mind doing the foreign work,” says Jack McOuat, the only surviving member of the original trio.

McOuat reckons the firm has made its mark in at least 130 countries since its inception in 1962. That wealth of international experience should serve Toronto-headquartered WGM well as it struggles to break into the geological-consulting market in China, a country with the potential to develop a thriving junior mining sector, but a means of financing exploration that runs counter to the Canadian system.

“The regulations and guidelines governing mining and exploration in China are completely different from the ones in North America,” says Joe Hinzer, WGM’s president.

Read more

Obituary: Watts, Griffis and McOuat (WGM’s) Jack McOuat (Northern Miner – August 6, 2013)

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

John (Jack) McOuat, an icon of the Toronto mining scene and the last surviving co-founder of the independent geological and mining consulting firm Watts, Griffis and McOuat (WGM), died on July 30 at age 80 at the Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. McOuat was born and educated in Toronto, graduating with a geological engineering degree from the University of Toronto in 1956.

Oceanic Iron Ore hired McOuat out of school to work on a project in Quebec’s Ungava Bay, with his boss being, as fate would have it, geologist and iron ore expert Tom Griffis. Rio Tinto then bought Oceanic, and sent McOuat to scout out the nearby Raglan nickel property the company had optioned from entrepreneur Murray Watts.

In 1962, McOuat left the safe confines of Rio Tinto, introduced Watts and Griffis to one another, and teamed with Watts, Griffis and Ross Lawrence to form WGM, with some of the firm’s first foreign contracts being landed in Morocco and Libya, and later, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Yemen, Alaska, Ghana, Argentina, Ecuador, Indonesia. “That’s what set us apart,” McOuat told The Northern Miner last year.

“The international projects, the eclectic mix of clients, but also the ability to go out and find mines — most consultants don’t do that.

Read more

Australia and Canada: Two resource-driven economies on divergent paths – by Richard Blackwell (Globe and Mail – August 7, 2013)

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.

Australia’s central bank has cut its key interest rate again, to a record low, underscoring concern that a global commodity slump and slower growth in China will weaken its resource-based economy.

The country is trying to kickstart consumer and business spending with the cuts because the mining sector has peaked and capital spending in that industry is falling, while economic growth posted by the country’s key trading partner, China, is slowing.

That’s a cautionary tale for Canada, which has a similar resource-based economy, dependant on exports. Weaker commodity prices help to explain, for example, a near-one-third drop this year in the share price of Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd., which ships about 15 to 20 per cent of its coking coal output to China.

Still, there are enough differences between the two countries, economists say, to insulate Canada from the economic turbulence facing our antipodal cousin.

Read more

A nuclear reactor that burns its own waste? – by Shawn McCarthy Globe and Mail – August 7, 2013)

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.

Bill Gates has invested some of his considerable fortune in a nuclear reactor developer that is promising to deliver cheaper power while operating more safely and dramatically reducing radioactive waste.

The Microsoft founder is looking for an “energy miracle” – or several – that can power a 21st-century economy without emitting greenhouse gases that contribute to catastrophic climate change.

And nuclear energy is high on his list of solutions. Especially if the next generation of reactor technology can reduce electricity costs while addressing the risks from radioactivity that leave many people deeply concerned about any growing dependence on nuclear.

Mr. Gates is chairman of TerraPower LLC, a Seattle-area company that is developing a travelling-wave, liquid-sodium reactor (TWR) that, the company says, provides an answer to those problems by essentially burning its own waste.

Read more

BHP CEO says taking long view on potash – by Sonali Paul (Reuters Canada – August 7, 2013)

http://ca.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – BHP Billiton’s new boss on Wednesday shrugged off Russian potash producer Uralkali’s exit from one of the world’s two big potash cartels, saying BHP (BHP.AX: Quote) (BLT.L: Quote) was taking a long-term view on its planned entry into the industry.

In the wake of Uralkali’s (URKA.MM: Quote) surprise move, there has been speculation it may make more sense for BHP to take over U.S. potash producer Mosaic Co (MOS.N: Quote) instead of building a $14 billion potash mine in Canada, up for a decision this year.

“We think very long term. This is something that’s happened short term,” BHP CEO Andrew Mackenzie told reporters, when asked whether the company may delay development of Jansen with potash prices expected to slump.

“We’ve always said that potash is a business which will lose some of its cartel-like structure and become in time globally traded like everything else, so we, to some extent, predicted what’s happened,” he said. Mackenzie said he would have more to say about the outlook for potash and Jansen at the company’s results on August 20.

Read more

Canadians still waiting on oilsands emissions targets – by Les Whittington (Toronto Star – August 7, 2013)

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.

No date set for Harper government’s long-promised curbs on oilsands

TTAWA—Canada’s ability to control pollution from the oilsands will sway U.S. President Barack Obama’s high-stakes decision on building the Keystone XL pipeline. But Ottawa’s new regulations — due July 1—have been delayed again and federal officials won’t say when they’re expected. Late this year, Obama will give a yes-or-no ruling on the proposed $7.6-billion project to carry oilsands derived crude from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

The decision has huge political implications for Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The planned Keystone XL pipeline is the most prominent of a number of current proposals to give Canada’s oil and gas industry better access to export markets, which is crucial to the Harper government’s energy policies and the development of the oilsands in Alberta.

But Keystone has run into fierce opposition from environmentalists who say it will open the way for a vast expansion in oilsands production, which the greens say will increase the greenhouse gases contributing to global warming.

Read more

Energy East pipeline the oil sands’ last exit? – by Peter Foster (National Post – August 7, 2013)

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

With Energy South and Energy West mired in delay, or even dead, Energy East has appeared as something of a last resort

While not wishing to rain on anybody’s “nation building” parade, last week’s announcement by TransCanada Corp. of its $12-billion Energy East project is hardly cause for wild celebration. While the proposal — to pipe 1.1 million barrels per day of Alberta oil to Eastern refineries and to the East Coast for export — may represent a marvel of technology, in a rational world it would be a non-starter (as opposed to a “no-brainer”).

What Energy East really reflects is the extraordinary success of radical environmentalists in blocking more economic export routes. It also appears to embed dodgy Suzukinomics, such as the notion that domestic upgrading is always a “good thing.” Apparently support from the NDP and labour unions is conditional on this autarchic canard.

It is astonishing that so many Canadians remain enamoured of Barack Obama, although he is perhaps more inimical to Canadian interests than any president in history. He holds the ultimate veto on TransCanada’s Keystone XL project, to take more than 800,000 barrels of diluted bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to the refineries of the Gulf Coast.

Read more

Xstrata-Glencore merger prompts name change (CBC News Sudbury – August 6, 2013)

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

Sudbury’s Xstrata Nickel to become Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations

One of Sudbury’s major mining companies is going through another rebranding exercise. Xstrata Nickel operations in Sudbury — formerly known as Falconbridge Ltd. before it was bought by Xstrata in 2006— will now go by the name Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations, or Sudbury I-N-O.

The name change comes as a result of Xstrata’s merger with another Swiss mining company — Glencore. The vice president of Sudbury I-N-O said the takeover means more independence for local operations.

“The interesting thing about Glencore is that it really relies on its local management to develop the business opportunities, [and that’s reflected] in the naming nomenclature,” Marc Boissonneault said. The company’s short-term plans include revitalizing its Fraser Operations near Onaping and to work on a joint project with Vale.

Future rebranding will continue to take place for the next few months, Boissonneault added. “You’ll see our signs change in coming weeks, those are the more visible ones. Other things will just take weeks and, in some cases, maybe a couple of months.”

Read more

Potash news a wake-up call for government: NDP – by Scott Larson (Saskatoon StarPhoenix – August 1, 2013)

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

The jolt experienced in the potash industry should be a wake-up call for the provincial government, NDP Opposition Leader Cam Broten says.

“A wake-up call that shows that we need long-term savings, that we need investments in infrastructure while we can, and a wakeup call to this government that we need to diversify the economy,” Broten said.

Shares in potash companies like Saskatoon-based PotashCorp, Mosaic and Agrium have plunged over the last couple of days after Russia’s potash giant OAO Uralkali said it would exit the export marketing group Belarusian Potash Co. and increase output to full capacity.

Experts say potash prices could fall by 25 per cent, which would impact the royalties the province takes in from the industry. “(That) has the potential to be significant, if you look at the contributions it makes to the provincial coffers as well as the thousands of jobs, the homes that are purchased and the spinoff industries,” Broten said.

“What we’ve seen with this government is an approach to have all of the eggs in one basket.

Read more