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Mining the Gobi: The Battle for Mongolia’s Resources – by Bernhard Zand (Spiegel Online International – August 7, 2013)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/

Mongolia is over four times the size of Germany, with nearly 3 million inhabitants and a GDP of $10 billion (€7.5 billion) in 2012.

British-Australian mining corporation Rio Tinto employs 71,000 people in more than 40 countries and is worth about $60 billion.
These two unequal partners — a poor, potentially rich nation and the second largest mining corporation in the world — have joined together to mine one of the globe’s largest deposits of copper and gold. But will they be capable of distributing this wealth fairly?

The mine in question lies an hour’s flight south of the Mongolian capital Ulan Bator, near the border with China. There is enough copper in the ground here to build the Statue of Liberty more than 800,000 times over. Once the planned mine goes into full operation, it could increase the country’s GDP by a third. It could, at least in theory, bring prosperity to this country where many people still live in simple yurts and huts.

But in practice, the transaction between this global corporation and this country that is poor but rich in raw materials looks quite different. In fact, the project serves as a prime example of what is happening in a growing number of newly industrialized and developing countries.

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Chinese copper demand could catch short-sellers by surprise – by Eric Onstad (Reuters U.S. – August 5, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Aug 5 (Reuters) – Gloom over weaker economic growth in China has led some investors to miss signs of robust underlying copper demand, which may wrong-foot those betting on a further slide in prices.

Benchmark prices in copper, viewed by many investors as a proxy for global economic health, hit the lowest levels in nearly three years at $6,602 a tonne in late June.

The price on the London Metal Exchange (LME) slid 21 percent from a peak this year in February, mainly due to worries about China, which accounts for 40 percent of copper demand. It has since rebounded modestly to trade just under $7,000 a tonne.

Despite China’s weak factory data and a credit crunch, spending on the power grid and other areas has meant copper consumption is fairly buoyant in the world’s biggest metals consuming nation.

China’s apparent copper demand, after adjusting for changes in stocks, surged over 20 percent in the second quarter, Barclays analyst Gayle Berry said.

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Finding Chuqui’s lost ore – Lowell on tackling world-class mystery – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – August 1, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

The massive Chuquicamata copper deposit has long been theorized to be missing ore, possibly faulted off to the south. Now exploration legend David Lowell is looking.

HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) – David Lowell, the famed octogenarian explorer credited with finding the Escondida copper deposit, among others, is now taking a crack at one of the world’s greatest exploration mysteries: finding lost – or believed to be lost – Chuquicamata copper ore. Forgive the superlative. For the known Chuquicamata copper-molybdenum deposit and mine in Chile, now owned by Codelco, is ranked by many as the greatest – or certainly one of the greatest – copper ore bodies in the world.

Chuquicamata, Chuqui for short, is big and, for its size, very high grade. A mid-2000s estimate tallied 2 billion tonnes @ 1.54 percent copper as having been mined. These days, a grade a third that is considered pretty normal – good even – for a large porphyry deposit like this. So Chuqui is abnormal. And many billion tonnes of ore remain at the known Chuqui deposit. As the massive Chuqui open pit wanes, Codelco aims to continue mining in a giant block cave mine it estimates will cost about $4.2 billion to build. The pit is reaching its limits, about 900 metres deep, and four kilometres long and three kilometres wide.

The Chuqui mystery is this: a fault, called the West Fault, cuts through the Chuqui ore body and appears to have moved a chunk – how much is not clear – of Chuqui ore elsewhere, where or exactly how far is uncertain.

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Women in Mining: Judy Baker – Challenges in junior exploration faced by both genders – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – August 2013)

(L to R) Judy Bake, CEO Superior Copper Resources; Delio Tortosa, Geologist; Morgan Quinn, Geologist.

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.

http://www.superiorcopper.ca/

For Judy Baker, challenges in the junior exploration side of the mining industry aren’t necessarily linked to gender. It’s a formidable field that poses challenges for anyone who takes the work on. “The junior exploration and mining business is a tougher segment of the industry, because basically you’re taking the highest risk capital available to explore for mineral wealth, and the risk factor’s so high, it’s tough for anyone to be in, let alone women,” she said.

Baker, CEO at Superior Copper Resources, which is exploring at the former Coppercorp copper mine near Sault Ste. Marie, first developed an interest in the field while still in high school. Attending night courses in geology at Brock University, the theory of plate tectonics put forward by John Tuzo Wilson—the idea that the earth’s crust is comprised of a series of shifting plates—captured her interest and guided her into mining.

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Congo Raises Tax on Copper, Cobalt Concentrates by Two-Thirds – by By Michael J. KavanaghJuly (Boomberg News – July 25, 2013)

http://www.businessweek.com/

The Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga province raised its tax on copper and cobalt concentrates to $100 per metric ton from $60 as the country prepares to ban their export at the end of this year.

“We needed a way to discourage companies from continuing to export concentrates, so we raised the tax,” Valery Mukasa, chief of staff for Mines Minster Martin Kabwelulu, said yesterday in an interview in Kinshasa, the capital.

The Central African nation is trying force mining companies to increase the value of their exports by fully processing minerals within the country’s borders, Mukasa said.

Congo was the world’s eighth-largest producer of copper and the biggest producer of cobalt last year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. At least 13 companies exported concentrates of copper, cobalt, or a copper-cobalt concentrate last year, according to Katangan provincial Mines Ministry statistics.

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Financial, human toll of ‘horrific’ Big Gossan accident costs FCX dearly – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – July 24, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

28 fatalities, the loss of millions of pounds of copper and thousands of ounces of gold, as well as creating a new oil & gas subsidiary, slammed FCX’s 2Q.

RENO (MINEWEB) – The tunnel collapse in a Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold training facility in Indonesia “was an incredibly horrific convergence of events that came together because of the geology of the rock and the influence of water and air on our ground support facilities, and unfortunately just happened as we were having this training meeting,” CEO Richard Adkerson told analysts during a conference call Tuesday.

On May 14th, the accident occurred at PT Freeport Indonesia, which resulted in 28 fatalities and 10 injured when the rock structure above an underground ceiling for a training facility collapsed in an unprecedented and unexpected event. While the accident occurred outside of mining operations, mining and processing activities at the Grasberg complex were temporarily suspended as Indonesian government authorities also conducted inspections.

“In the quarter, we lost roughly 125 million pounds of copper and 125,000 ounces of gold,” said Adkerson. “The full year impact will be greater than that. We estimate 230 million pounds of copper and 250,000 ounces of gold.”

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Inside Bingham Canyon– N. American mining’s largest, most successful landslide – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – July 22, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Lost jobs, robotic mining, halved production, and lower tax revenues are some of the consequences of what experts say may be the most successful landslide event ever at Bingham Canyon.

RENO (MINEWEB) – On April 10th this year, one of the world’s largest landslides tumbled 150 million tons of rock and dirt down the northeastern pit wall of Kennecott Utah’s Bingham Canyon copper-gold-molybdenum mine, likely becoming one the more expensive landslides in modern history.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the landslide unleashed 128 million cubic yards of rock and dirt into a pit nearly a mile deep, equal to about two-thirds of the material removed for the construction of the Panama Canal. Put another way, however, the largest landslide in modern history, the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption, loosened 3.7 billion cubic yards.

Perhaps the biggest victory of this event was the ability to forecast and plan for it. Pit wall movement for the 24-hour/7-days-a-week operation was first detected in early February. A combination of radar, prisms and geotechnical sensors was employed to gather data used in mine planning. Mine employees were trained to observe and make slope stability determinations in areas that impacted their work.

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Copper: The metal that will build our future? – by Cole Latimer (Australian Mining – July 16, 2013)

http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/home

As we slowly come off the back of the mining boom, a number of questions are starting to be asked. Has the boom been played out, where to next, what will happen to iron ore? But what all are asking is what will be the metal of the future? What should we be digging that will provide the greatest return?

Perhaps the future is a metal which is a major part of humanity’s past – copper. Iron ore has been the metal that really drove Australia’s mining boom. It was the hero of the hour.

On the back of seemingly unending demand from Asia to fuel the growth of China we saw commodity prices skyrocket and essentially drag our nation out of the Global Financial Crisis.

Coal was also surging head, as both China and India required the energy needed to turn them into first world nations. As
a background to this gold prices also spiked, reaching never before seen heights.

But now the good times are over for these metals and the prices have steadily dropped, stabilising at more reasonable levels, or in some cases plummeting to just above cost levels.

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[KGHM] Ajax trolling city for ideas on convincing residents – by Bronwen Scott (Kamloops This Week – July 16, 2013)

http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/

The recent KGHM Ajax survey (‘Yes, that phone poll was from KGHM Ajax,’ July 11) appears to be aimed at trolling the public for ideas on how the company can convince Kamloops residents its proposed open-pit copper and gold mine could be environmentally friendly.

At least, that’s the impression when the company’s pollsters terminate the survey if respondents don’t agree that mining is an “essential part of the Kamloops economy” and only bother interviewing potential allies.

In fact, KGHM Ajax admits the survey wasn’t designed to find any statistical information or quantitative results. It’s just casting a wide net in the hopes of getting “an overall perspective and understanding of the [mining-friendly] residents’ opinion towards mining.”

The in-house team at KGHM Ajax doesn’t seem to be doing a credible job of informing or persuading a decent majority of the public that the mine’s a good idea — and good PR firms are expensive.

So, while we’re all forced to wait patiently and asked to withhold judgment until KGHM Ajax releases its meters-high stack of information and intentions this fall, the company keeps throwing money at community organizations and conducting surveys of the converted.

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Special report: In tax case, Mongolia is the mouse that roared – By Anthony Deutsch and Terrence Edwards (Reuters India – July 16, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

AMSTERDAM/ULAN BATOR – (Reuters) – Turquoise Hill Netherlands is a little-known Amsterdam-based company with three employees, no office, and not even its own mailbox. To the government of Mongolia, though, the company represents billions in taxes that it will never see.

Turquoise Hill was created in 2009, five years after Mongolia and the Netherlands signed a tax treaty to avoid double taxation and boost investment in Mongolia. But in 2011, Mongolia decided to cancel the pact, arguing that it would cost the country income from one of the most lucrative gold and copper mines in the world.

The move was rare – tax experts say only a handful of such deals between countries have ever been cancelled – and it highlights a big contradiction.

The Netherlands, which has more than 90 such treaties globally, spent roughly 13 million euros ($17 million) on three aid programs to Mongolia in 2009 and 2010. Globally its aid budget is about $5.5 billion – the fifth most-generous rate among rich nations at 0.71 percent of Gross National Income, according to the OECD.

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1880s saw first ore flow from Johnson Camp Mine east of Tucson – by William Ascarza (Arizona Daily Star – July 15, 2013)

http://azstarnet.com/

MINE TALES: William Ascarza is an archivist, historian and author of five books, including “Southeastern Arizona Mining Towns” and “Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.” Email him at mining@azstarnet.com

SITE NEAR DRAGOON STILL ACTIVE TODAY, HAS LARGE RESERVES OF ORE

Located 65 miles east of Tucson on the eastern slopes of the Little Dragoon Mountains, the Johnson Camp Mine is a working copper mine in Cochise County. Substantial mining operations didn’t start there until the early 1880s upon the arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad through the nearby town of Dragoon, seven miles south of the mine.

The property has been the site for underground mining, open-pit mining and mineral processing. Early smelting operations began with the erection in 1882 of a 30-ton smelter that had an output of 4 tons of copper bullion a day. The ore during that time contained as much as 7.4 percent copper.

Two towns emerged in what became known as the Cochise (Johnson) Mining District. The first was Russellville, which was soon replaced by Johnson.

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The History of KGHM International Ltd.

 

This historical overview is from the 2013 KGHM International Corporate Social Responsibility Report, click here: http://www.kghm.com/files/doc_downloads/WEB_KGHM%20CSR%202013%20English.pdf

KGHM International Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of KGHM Polska Miedź S.A., the 7th largest copper producer and the largest silver producer in the world based in Lubin, Poland. The KGHM International story is one of rapid growth, from a junior mining company to a global industry player.

The Early Years

KGHM International, formerly known as Quadra FNX Mining Ltd. (“Quadra FNX”), was formed as the result of a merger between two equals: Quadra Mining Ltd. (“Quadra”) and FNX Mining Company Inc. (“FNX”). Both were incorporated in 2002, and later listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange, with the goal of becoming mid-tier base-metal producers.

The Quadra strategy: to grow through acquisitions

Quadra acquired its first asset, the Robinson Mine located near Ely, Nevada, in April 2004 and restarted production in December 2004. Quadra continued to grow through a series of acquisitions; in 2004, the company acquired the Sierra Gorda property in Chile through option agreements, and in 2005, added the Carlota Project near Globe, Arizona to its portfolio of assets.

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Big Annie’s legacy honored [Great Keweenaw Copper Strike] – by Kurt Hauglie (Daily Mining Gazette – July 5, 2013)

http://www.mininggazette.com/

CALUMET – For Lyndon Comstock, the story of Anna “Big Annie” Klobuchar Clemenc hasn’t been told thoroughly enough, and because of that, he recently wrote a book called “Annie Clemenc and the Great Keweenaw Copper Strike.”

Because of her efforts on behalf of copper miners and their families before, during and after the 1913-14 copper strike, Comstock nominated Clemenc for induction into the Labor’s International Hall of Fame. The nomination was accepted, and at 7 p.m. July 26, Comstock will be part of the ceremony to honor her induction, which will take place at the Keweenaw National Historical Park Calumet Visitor Center. The ceremony is taking place in Calumet as part of the observance of the centennial of the strike, which started July 23, 1913.

Comstock said he became aware of Clemenc’s importance to the miners during the copper strike while doing research for his cousin, Joanne Thomas, who created an exhibit about her now on display at the Coppertown USA Mining Museum in Calumet Township.

Comstock said he and Thomas had Croation ancestors involved in the strike, so they both felt a connection to the period. Thomas, who lives in Bolinas, Calif., but grew up in Muskegon, said as a result of working with Thomas, he decided to write the book. “That really came out of doing that research,” he said. Thomas said Clemenc, who was born in 1888 in Calumet to Slovenian immigrant parents, was unique for her involvement with the strike.

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Export income dispute holds up Rio’s Oyu Tolgoi mine – Mongolia – by Terrence Edwards (Reuters India – July 4, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

ULAN BATOR, July 4 (Reuters) – The Mongolian government and Rio Tinto have not yet reached an agreement on whether the miner can repatriate earnings from the $6.2 billion Oyu Tolgoi mine, the country’s mining minister said, delaying first copper shipments.

The dispute could heighten investor concerns about the risks of mining in Mongolia and threaten Rio Tinto’s plans to grow its copper portfolio to ease dependence on iron ore.

Metals traders have been closely watching whether Rio gets official approval to export concentrate from Oyu Tolgoi amid a shortfall in shipments from the Grasberg mine in Indonesia, run by Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold. The unlocking of ore shipments would increase supply in top copper consumer China and boost treatment and refining charges charged by smelters there.

Exports from the copper and gold mine were initially due to start on June 14, but were then postponed to June 21, before the Mongolian government told Rio to delay them again without setting a date. Uncertainty over the reasons for the delay has slashed the share price of other Mongolian miners.

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INTERVIEW-Indonesia trade minister eyes speedy end to Freeport contract talks – by Michael Taylor (Reuters India – July 2, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

JAKARTA, July 2 (Reuters) – A deadly tunnel collapse at Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold’s Indonesian mine seven weeks ago should not delay contract talks with the U.S.-based firm, a member of the government negotiating team said, adding that he hoped to strike a deal as soon as possible.

Contract talks between Freeport Indonesia and the government were put on hold after a training area in a tunnel caved in on May 14, killing 28 people at the world’s No.2 copper mine in remote West Papua.

“It is tragic what happened, but Indonesia needs to be cognizant of where it needs to be going forward as an economic relevance to the world,” Trade Minister Gita Wirjawan told Reuters. “It is important for a conclusion to be reached sooner rather than later because it will reflect upon the desires of both Freeport and the Indonesian government.”

“ASAP,” said Wirjawan, when asked about the ideal time for the talks to be concluded. “I’m hopeful that there will be a meeting of minds between both sides.”

Open-pit mining at Freeport’s Grasberg mine is due to end after 2016, just five years before its current mining contract expires. Freeport estimates it will cost about $15 billion to turn the complex into a vast underground mine, an investment that only makes sense if it has a new contract with the Indonesian government beyond 2021.

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