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Chinese mining company faces another legal challenge in B.C. to foreign workers – by James Keller (Vancouver Sun – December 19, 2013)

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

Canadain Press – A Chinese-owned mining firm behind a proposed underground coal project in northern British Columbia is facing yet another union legal challenge over its use of temporary foreign workers.

HD Mining has been fending off controversy since it was revealed last year that it planned to use up to 201 temporary foreign workers from China at its Murray River project, near Tumbler Ridge.

The plan prompted federal politicians to suggest the permits shouldn’t have been granted and led to a legal challenge from two unions, which ultimately ended in the company’s favour.

Now, the United Steelworkers union is asking the B.C. Supreme Court to revoke the company’s mining exploration permit, arguing the province’s chief inspector of mines was wrong to grant the permit without adequately addressing concerns the workers would not be fluent in English.

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Global coal demand slows, peak demand not yet in sight – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – December 16, 2013)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Tougher Chinese policies aimed at reducing the country’s dependency on coal would help restrain global coal demand growth over the next five years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) found in its yearly ‘Medium-Term Coal Market Report’ released in Paris on Monday.

Despite the slightly slower pace of growth, coal would meet more of the increase in global primary energy than oil or gas – continuing a trend that has been in place for more than a decade.

“Like it or not, coal is here to stay for a long time to come. Coal is abundant and geopolitically secure, and coal-fired plants are easily integrated into existing power systems. With advantages like these, it is easy to see why coal demand continues to grow.

“But it is equally important to emphasise that coal in its current form is simply unsustainable,” IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven said at the launch of the report.

The IEA found that coal was the fastest growing fossil fuel in absolute and relative terms in 2012.

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BC announces coal rights deferral deal in Sacred Headwaters area – by Dirk Meissner (Vancouver Sun – December 16, 2013)

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

VICTORIA – A remote area of northwest British Columbia considered sacred by aboriginals and resource rich by mining companies has received a reprieve from potential coal-mining activities with a government order that puts new coal tenures on hold for one year.

The Tahltan Nation call the area Klappan, and it has been the site of protests by aboriginal elders who say mining will threaten the spiritual, cultural and wilderness values of the region, which includes the confluence of the Skeena, Nass and Stikine rivers.

Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett said Monday the Klappan Coal Licence Deferral Area Order is a temporary measure that will allow the government, the Tahltan and the mining industry time to negotiate a management agreement for the area.

The deferral order impacts 62 coal licence applications, but existing area coal tenures and authorizations, including the Fortune Minerals’ Arctos project, are not impacted, he said.

Fortune Minerals, of London, Ont., announced last fall that it was pausing exploratory work for an open-pit coal mine in the Klappan, following an earlier decision by Shell Canada to give up its rights to explore and drill for coal-bed methane gas.

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At summit, Eastern Kentucky leaders look to Minnesota for ideas to renew economy – by Bill Estep and John Cheves (Lexington Herald-Leader – December 9, 2013)

http://www.kentucky.com/

PIKEVILLE — Leaders grappling with a painful downturn in coal jobs in Eastern Kentucky got a primer Monday on how another state dealt with a similar collapse in its mining region.

The situation 30 years ago in the iron-ore belt in northeastern Minnesota was dire. Mining jobs dropped by more than 60 percent in 18 months and people started moving out, at times stopping by the bank on the way out of town to drop off keys to houses and cars they couldn’t pay for, said Joe Sertich, a former community-college president in the region known as the Iron Range.

The Eastern Kentucky coalfield has been similarly battered by layoffs. The coal industry has cut 6,000 jobs since mid-2011, with some counties losing more than half the jobs that were once the bulwark of their economy.

Sertich spoke Monday at a daylong summit in Pikeville called Shaping Our Appalachia Region, or SOAR. U.S. Rep Hal Rogers, R-Somerset, and Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, set up the summit to generate ideas to diversify the economy of Eastern Kentucky.

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Glasenberg Raises Glencore’s Bet on Coal as BHP Pauses: Energy – by Thomas Biesheuvel & Jesse Riseborough (Bloomberg News – December 5, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Ivan Glasenberg, the billionaire running commodities supplier Glencore Xstrata Plc, is investing more in thermal coal than his three closest competitors combined even as investors warn the fuel’s outlook is deteriorating.

The former coal trader is betting on prices rebounding from a three-year drop. The Swiss company, in which he owns 8 percent, is spending $4.75 billion, largely on projects inherited in the takeover of Xstrata Plc, to boost output 21 percent through 2016. At the same time, BHP Billiton Ltd., the biggest mining company, Rio Tinto Group and Anglo American Plc, have stalled new investments, sold mines or halted others.

Glasenberg, 56, is deepening his bet on coal as appetite wanes among some investors for companies that extract fuels blamed for making the biggest contribution to climate change. Share prices of the four largest single-commodity thermal-coal producers have tumbled an average 25 percent in the past 12 months as an explosion in lower-cost supplies of U.S. shale gas compounds a weaker outlook for exports to China.

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Coal rush ravages Indonesian Borneo (Malaysian Insider – December 5, 2013)

http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/

Barges loaded with mountains of coal glide down the polluted Mahakam River on Indonesian Borneo every few minutes. Viewed from above, they form a dotted black line as far as the eye can see, destined for power stations in China and India.

A coal rush that has drawn international miners to East Kalimantan province has ravaged the capital, Samarinda, which risks being swallowed up by mining if the exploitation of its deposits expands any further.

Mines occupy more than 70% of Samarinda, government data show, forcing entire villages and schools to move away from toxic mudslides and contaminated water sources. The destruction of forest around the city to make way for mines has also removed a natural buffer against floods, leading to frequent waist-high deluges during the six-month rainy season.

And despite the 200 million tonnes of coal dug and shipped out of East Kalimantan each year, its capital is crippled by frequent hours-long blackouts as the city’s ageing power plant suffers constant problems.

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UN’s war on coal threatens environmental progress in world’s desperate regions – by Donna Laframboise (National Post – December 4, 2013)

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

Activists want new coal plants banned outright

In Warsaw last month, Christiana Figueres, an unelected United Nations bureaucrat, demanded that the World Coal Association embrace three dubious and implausible ideas. This industry must, she said, shut down a particular class of coal plant, install as-yet-unavailable carbon-capture technology on any newly constructed facilities, and “leave most existing reserves in the ground.”

In the first instance, the implications of her words weren’t immediately apparent. But a 2012 International Energy Agency report reveals that when she speaks blithely of closing “all existing subcritical plants,” she’s advocating the mothballing of 100% of South Africa’s coal fleet, 99% of India’s, 97% of Poland’s, and 90% of Australia’s.

It turns out Figueres’ standards are so pie-in-the-sky that 79% of Germany’s coal facilities, 75% of China’s, 73% of America’s, and 71% of Russia’s don’t make the cut, either. All told, this UN official believes three-quarters of the world’s existing coal fleet — fully one third of the global electricity supply — should be taken offline.

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World Coal: UN climate chief Figueres ‘ignoring reality’ – by Sophie Yeo (Responding to Climate Change – December 2, 2013)

http://www.rtcc.org/

The head of the World Coal Association (WCA) has accused UN climate chief Christiana Figueres of ‘ignoring reality’, following her call to the coal industry to invest in more efficient technologies.

In an interview World Coal chief executive Milton Catelin told RTCC that Figueres’ lack of expertise in the mining and energy sectors meant she “misses some of the fundamentals about the energy sector”.

He was responding to a speech Figueres made to a ‘Climate and Coal Summit’ on the sidelines of UN negotiations in Warsaw two weeks ago, where she told the audience that “coal must change rapidly and dramatically for everyone’s sake.”

Figueres called for the closure of all low-efficiency subcritical plants, a roll out of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology and a collective decision to leave most coal reserves in the ground. The UN climate chief was heavily criticised by green groups for attending the gathering, but her message does not seem to have gone down well with the coal investors and representatives inside.

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Chinese firms want to buy coal assets overseas, but on the cheap – by Sonali Paul (Reuters U.S. – December 1, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Chinese companies are on the hunt to buy overseas coal mines as Beijing’s switch to cleaner fuels stokes demand for higher-quality coal produced in countries such as Australia, according to people familiar with the firms’ strategies.

A renewed appetite for acquisitions by the world’s biggest coal consumer will be a big boost for miners who are trying to dispose of assets worth billions of dollars to boost shareholder returns. These include Rio Tinto, which has put Australian and Mozambique coal operations on the block, and Linc Energy , which is selling its New Emerald Coal business.

The Chinese, however, are not rushing to buy. They see asset values coming under further pressure as coal prices remain depressed amid a supply glut that has already driven prices down about a third since 2011.

“We have clients who are interested in taking stakes in coal assets. But the view is the market’s not going to get any better for two years. So why buy something today when it’s going to be a lot cheaper in eight months’ time,” said Sam Farrands, a Hong Kong-based partner at law firm Minter Ellison.

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We all breathe easier in post-coal Ontario – by Stephen Bede Scharper (Toronto Star – December 2, 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.

The elimination of coal-fired plants in Ontario is a deeply hopeful story. It shows that progress can be made in fighting climate change.

A decade ago, in the team-taught core environmental studies course at the University of Toronto, my colleagues and I assigned the Ontario Medical Association (OMA) Smog Report as our touchstone text. The report noted the severe health effects associated with air pollution in Ontario.

In 2000, for example, the OMA detailed, there were 1,925 premature deaths, 9,807 hospital admissions, 45,250 emergency room visits, and over 46 million minor illnesses engendered by increased Ontario smog levels. Taken together, these fulsome effects take your breath away—literally.

These disquieting figures all jumped significantly five years later, as indicated in the OMA 2005 report, and were projected to continue to rise unless something were done about elevated levels of air pollution in the province.

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Canada’s Ontario joins global ‘war on coal’ – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – November 28, 2013)

http://www.mining.com/

The Canadian province of Ontario may soon become the first place in North America to snuff out coal-fired electricity generation for good, as it is set to introduce next week legislation aimed to ban the burning of coal and the building of new such plants.

If the proposed Ending Coal for Cleaner Air Act is approved, it would means that no Ontario generating station will ever burn coal again, once this kind of facilities stop operating by the end of 2014, the government said in a press release.

The plan has been in the works for quite a while. The Liberals first promised to close the coal plants in 2007, then pushed back the timetable to 2009 and again to 2014.

In January this year, Chris Bentley —who was then Ontario’s minister of energy— vowed he would make coal account for less than 1% of the province energy supply by 2014.

He also said the province’s largest coal-fired electricity plants, Nanticoke and Lambton, would be shut by the end the year. And the province will likely deliver— it is finishing the conversion of Nanticoke to run on biomass.

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Opinion: Critics of coal shipments are misinformed – by Mark Gordienko, Steve Hunt, Brian Cochrane and Tom Sigurdson (Vancouver Sun – November 27, 2013)

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

B.C. can’t afford to lose 26,000 jobs supported by the coal industry

Mark Gordienko is President, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada; Steve Hunt is Director, United Steel Workers District 3 [Western Canada]; Brian Cochrane is Business Manager, International Union of Operating Engineers Local 115; Tom Sigurdson is Executive Director, B.C. Building Trades.

Our unions’ members are responsible for mining and transporting metallurgical coal from British Columbia to markets overseas. So we welcome the positive Environmental Impact Assessment released Nov. 18 by Port Metro Vancouver on the proposed Fraser Surrey Docks expansion.

The study, by experts such as Dr. Leonard Ritter, Professor Emeritus of Toxicology at the University of Guelph’s School of Environmental Sciences, shows that many complaints by environmental groups and others are misinformed or exaggerated.

The Environmental Impact Assessment states: “The project is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental, socio-economic, or health effects, taking into account the implementation of the main risk mitigation measures described above, in addition to mitigation measures, construction and operation management plans, best management and standard practices.”

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Poland’s road from coal destined to be long – by Jan Cienski (Financial Times – November 25, 2013)

http://www.ft.com/home/us

Less than six months before Poland hosted more than 10,000 delegates for the UN’s climate talks, Donald Tusk, the prime minister, was in the south-western city of Opole showing where his priorities really are.

He was there to shepherd through an agreement to spend 11bn zlotys ($3.5bn) building an enormous 1.8GW coal-fired power station that Polska Grupa Energetyczna, the country’s leading utility, was so reluctant to build that Mr Tusk had to browbeat Krzysztof Kilian, then chief executive, into going along with the project.

“We are now in the process of shaping the energy mix in which coal will again find its place,” Mr Tusk said during the signing ceremony. “It is important that coal produces energy, that people have work and that Poland has enough energy.”

Poland is under growing pressure from the European Union and elsewhere to move decisively away from coal, which provides about 90 per cent of the country’s electricity. However, there are few immediate alternatives. Natural gas, a much cleaner fuel, is unpopular because most of it has to be imported from Russia. Meanwhile, hopes of a native shale gas industry have failed to materialise until now because of -financial, regulatory and geological hurdles.

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B.C. prepared to risk water quality on Elk Valley coal mine – by Mark Hume (Globe and Mail – November 25, 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.

VANCOUVER — When the provincial government issued an environmental certificate to Teck Coal Ltd. this fall it appeared pollution problems associated with a massive new coal mine in the Elk Valley had been resolved.

But background documents show that is far from the case. The British Columbia government has rolled the dice on the project and is hoping that Teck’s money – and experimental water-treatment plants – can save the Elk River.

A document that gives the minister’s reasons for issuing a certificate for the Line Creek mine, states the environmental assessment “was not able to conclude on the magnitude, reversibility and therefore significance” of an array of pollutants. Nor could it determine “the effectiveness” of two planned water-treatment facilities that will use new methods in an attempt to filter out selenium.

In other words, the government knows the new mine is going to pollute but it doesn’t know whether the water-treatment plan will work.

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Ontario cuts coal, while BC looks for more – by Mike Chisholm (Vancouver Observer – November 22nd, 2013)

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/

It may be the industrial heartland of Canada, but Ontario took a major step forward this week by announcing all its coal fired generating plants would shut down, while in ‘super natural” BC the province is preparing to increase its coal mining and shipments.

On Thursday, the Ontario government announced it is taking the final steps to reach its goal to close all provincial coal burning facilities, including the Nanticoke Generating Station – the largest coal-fired electrical generating plant in North America. And the government has announced a permanent ban on all coal-fired electricity from the province, making Ontario the first jurisdiction in North America to do so.

When burned, coal is one of the greatest generators of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, which contributes to climate change.

“Our work on eliminating coal and investing in renewables is the strongest action being taken in North America to fight climate change,” says Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne. “I believe we can work together as stewards of our natural environment and protect our children, our grandchildren and our fellow citizens.”

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