For a company with “gold” in its name, Barrick Gold Corp. has become noticeably fixated on copper. The world’s second-largest bullion producer recently approached First Quantum Minerals Ltd. to discuss a potential takeover, Bloomberg reported last week.
And while the move was unsuccessful — Barrick’s informal overtures were rebuffed — its interest in buying a $17 billion copper miner provides the starkest evidence yet of a shifting focus at the company whose origins lie in Nevada’s gold veins.
First Quantum Minerals Ltd. recently rebuffed an informal takeover approach from Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s second-largest producer of the precious metal, as miners scour the globe for deals, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Barrick made overtures to First Quantum in the last few months as part of its search for ways to expand in copper, the people said. First Quantum indicated it wasn’t keen on a combination and declined to enter any substantive talks, according to the people.
https://www.northernminer.com/
Surge Copper (TSXV: SURG; US-OTC: SRGXF) has released a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for its Berg project in central British Columbia that outlines a long-life asset with total payable production of 3.7 billion lb. of copper.
The study, published on Tuesday, puts preproduction capital costs at $2 billion and the project’s mine life at 30 years. The PEA calculates Berg’s after-tax net present value at $2.1 billion, using an 8% discount rate. The project’s internal rate of return is pegged at 20%, based on long-term metal prices of US$4 per lb. copper, US$15 per lb. molybdenum, US$23 per oz. silver, and US$1,800 per oz. gold.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Magna Mining, SPC Nickel bring new ideas in finding new mineral zones around old mines
Two Sudbury junior miners are laying the groundwork for the next generation of nickel, copper and platinum group metal mines in the basin. Magna Mining is tapping the width and depth of a mineralized zone near the surface of its Crean Hill Project that could speed a former mine back into production.
The hometown junior miner sees open-ended potential in a footwall zone at the former Crean Hill Mine. The zone was originally discovered 15 years ago but never mined by a previous operator.
Community leaders around Panguna mine in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville want mining giant Rio Tinto to help out following recent flooding. Rio Tinto was the owner/operator of the mine which has laid derelict for more than 30 years.
Fears of the threat from flooding in the river system near the mine have increased in recent years. Recent heavy rain has choked rivers with mine tailings waste, resulting in several communities being swamped.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The Phoney War was the period early in the Second World War, when there were few battles on the Western Front. The relative calm ended when Germany invaded France in the spring of 1940.
The battle for Teck Resources, Canada’s biggest diversified mining company, is definitely in the phoney war stage. After a raucous start, a whole lot of nothing has happened for weeks in the campaign that will ultimately determine the shape of Canada’s base metals industry. There are signs that a renewed assault on Teck could start soon, one that will make or break the effort by Switzerland’s Glencore to make Teck its own as it strives to become one of the world’s top producers of the metals needed to propel the green energy revolution.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/
Avoiding a climate catastrophe is often portrayed as a question of political will. Yet the push to reduce carbon emissions is also a daunting technical challenge. Retooling power and transportation systems to run on renewable energy will require far more copper than the companies able to produce it are currently equipped to deliver.
The question is whether a traditionally cautious mining industry will embrace the scale of investment needed to rewire the world. Failure would throw the transition to cleaner power sources off course.
1. Why is copper so important?
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota regulators have concluded that state rules governing where copper-nickel mines can be built are insufficient to protect the pristine Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from noise and light pollution, creating another potential obstacle to the proposed Twin Metals mine in northeastern Minnesota.
But the Department of Natural Resources declined as part of that decision Wednesday to declare a watershed that flows into the Boundary Waters off-limits to copper-nickel mining altogether, which had been a goal of the environmental group that challenged the regulations, Minnesota Public Radio reported.
The U.S. District Court in Arizona granted mining giant Resolution Copper permission on Monday to join the U.S. government as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by grassroots group Apache Stronghold.
The Native organization has been fighting to prevent Resolution from building a huge copper mining operation that would obliterate Oak Flat, one of the Apaches peoples’ most sacred sites. Oak Flat, or Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, “the place where the Emory oak grows,” is also culturally important to other Southwestern tribes, and is one of Arizona’s remaining riparian zones and a popular site for recreational users.
https://www.northernminer.com/
When mineral mastermind Chris Taylor gets behind a grassroots exploration project it behooves investors to sit up and pay attention – he did after all sell an Ontario pre-resource stage gold project for $1.8 billion in hard cash and is looking to repeat that success with brainchild Kodiak Copper (TSXV: KDK; US-OTCQB: KDKCF).
Kodiak’s most advanced asset is its MPD copper-gold porphyry project in the Quesnel Trough in south-central British Columbia – a multi-centered porphyry system that is slowly giving up its secrets. The explorer’s share price gathered momentum since 2020 after discovering the Gate Zone, which has high-grade mineralization within a wide mineralized envelope.
(Bloomberg) — The Democratic Republic of Congo displaced Peru as the second-biggest copper exporter last year, official data from the two countries show, in a changing of the guard for the mining industry.
While the numbers used in the chart below refer to shipments rather than production, the shift in positions underscores a couple of important trends. Firstly, an up-tick in social unrest and political uncertainties are constraining investment in South America, as more money flows into Africa’s rich ore-bodies.
https://www.mining-technology.com/
BHP Group estimates the world needs to double the copper supply in the next 30 years to keep pace with green technologies.
The BHP Group and Microsoft have collaborated to improve copper recovery from the Escondida mine in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
Producing more than one million tonnes of copper in 2022, Escondida is the world’s biggest copper mine and will use using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to improve operations. Microsoft’s Azure platform will optimise concentrator performance and retrieve better ore grades. The mine is jointly owned by BHP, Rio Tinto and Japan’s JECO.
Glencore Plc is getting closer to increasing its offer for Teck Resources Ltd., in a move aimed at ending weeks of limbo in the battle over the Canadian miner’s future.
The Switzerland-based commodities giant is working on a potential improvement to its bid that could be announced as soon as the coming weeks, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. By raising its offer and ratcheting up shareholder pressure, Glencore is seeking to force Teck to the negotiating table, the people said.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Panama is sitting on massive reserves of copper and other minerals crucial to the energy transition. Now it – and other Latin American nations – are wringing massive concessions from mining companies like Vancouver’s First Quantum Minerals
The Cobre Panama mine has been gouged from the rain forest at a scale only great underground wealth could achieve.
Its 38 ultraclass mining trucks, each loaded with 400 tonnes of ore, whiz past at 35 kilometres an hour, their speed boosted by electric trolley lines. They feed conveyor belts that move 300,000 tonnes of ore a day, the equivalent of 16 CN Towers in a week, in a place that can see more than seven metres of annual precipitation.
The Department of Interior (DOI) of the US has once again delayed the release of the record of decision (RoD) for the Ambler road project, which will give access to untouched deposits of copper, zinc, lead, silver and gold in north-western Alaska.
The resolution on Trilogy Metals’ (TSX, NYSE: TMQ) and South32’s (ASX, LON, JSE: S32) proposed 340-km (211-mile) road from the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects (UKMP) to the Dalton Highway is now expected on the second quarter of 2024. As of last week’s status report, the DOI was promising a decision by the end of the year.
