It’s time to move forward, stop fighting Rosemont – by Amber Smith (Arizona Daily Star – August 26, 2018)

https://tucson.com/

Amber Smith is president and CEO of the Tucson Metro Chamber.

Arizona is a mining state. To this day, Arizona mining companies produce 65 percent of the copper in the United States. This history of mining in our region runs deep, most prominently when Tombstone was the largest city between New Orleans and San Francisco soon after Ed Schieffelin struck silver in the late 1870s.

Yet, as reported in the Arizona Daily Star, three organizations are filing suit in the latest attempt to stop the Rosemont project, a mining project named after the mining community that inhabited the area in the late 1890s.

The process to open a mine today is painstakingly arduous. The Forest Service initiated the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process in March 2008, and that process closed in December 2013. During that time, 19 public hearings and open houses were conducted, and more than 36,000 comments were filed.

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BHP’s Costs Crash Diet Is Running Out of Steam – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – August 20, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Going on a crash diet seems great while you’re shedding the pounds. The problem is sticking with it for the long term.

That’s what seems to be happening to the world’s miners, which have spent the years since the commodity boom peaked in 2011 holding down salaries, eking out efficiencies and extracting the highest-quality parts of their deposits to keep costs in line with deflating prices.

The cycle looks to be turning, though: Controllable cash costs at BHP Billiton Ltd. rose by $1.24 billion in the year through June, the company reported Tuesday, mainly because of declines in oil and gas fields, operational problems at two coking coal mines and issues around processing costs at two copper mines.

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COLUMN-Copper and the (very) big fund short – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – August 21, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Aug 21 (Reuters) – Peace has broken out in the Chilean copper industry with two major potential labour flashpoints resolved in as many days.

Last Friday brought news that the major union at the Caserones copper mine had signed an 11th-hour deal to avert a walk-out. A day later came confirmation of a settlement at Escondida, the world’s largest single copper mine.

A year of expected supply turmoil from the large number of expiring labour contracts is turning into a year of unusually trouble-free production.

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Minnesota think tank wades into debate on economics of mining – by By Josephine Marcotty (Minneapolis Star Tribune – August 20, 2018)

http://www.startribune.com/

Just as election season gets into full swing this fall, a Twin Cities think tank will wade into the fierce economic debate about copper-nickel mining in northern Minnesota with a statewide advertising campaign that promotes the potential of the new industry.

John Hinderaker, president of the Center of the American Experiment in Golden Valley, said the $270,000 campaign announced Monday will start after Labor Day. It will include highway billboards, TV and radio spots, YouTube videos and other social media ads that highlight the billions in economic benefits the state will reap from mining, according to a new report from the center.

“If voters understand the huge benefit of mining, they will want to see it happen,” Hinderaker said. “And an election is a good time to be talking about it.”

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Congo Copper Faces Increased LME Scrutiny With Audits – by Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – August 15, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The London Metal Exchange will start requiring that copper producers which source metal from the Democratic Republic of Congo carry out independent audits to prove their material is ethically sourced, according to people familiar with the matter.

The LME is reviewing its requirements to ensure that no metal traded on the bourse has links to child labor, conflict or corruption. Copper producers that buy from Congo will be categorized as higher-risk suppliers alongside manufacturers of tin and cobalt, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the changes have not been made public.

The designation will mean copper producers could be removed from the LME’s list of deliverable brands unless a third-party auditor signs off on their sourcing standards, the people said.

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Metals Poisoned by Turkey Contagion as Copper Nears Bear Market – by Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – August 15, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

From Turkey’s financial crisis to China’s trade war, the emerging-market contagion is infecting metal markets.

Base metal markets tumbled on Wednesday, with most contracts falling more than 2 percent in London. Copper sank below $6,000 a metric ton and is now approaching a bear market. Not even gold, the usual safe haven, was spared from the selloff. Bullion prices sank 0.7 percent to $1,186 an ounce. Natural resource shares were also in the red.

“It’s going to be difficult to shake this bearish sentiment,” Nicholas Snowdon, a metals analyst at Deutsche Bank AG, said by phone from London. “When you look at the broad selloff across metals, the key drivers are clearly macro factors.”

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Chile braces for potential strike at Escondida copper mine – by Antonio De la Jara (Reuters U.S. – August 13, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

Aug 13 (Reuters) – Chile’s copper industry on Monday braced for the announcement of a potential strike at the world’s biggest copper mine, Escondida, as government-led mediation is expected to close by day’s end.

Escondida’s union and the mine’s owner, Anglo-Australian firm BHP , have until Monday evening to agree to a contract deal in tense negotiations that have been closely watched by other miners and international markets.

The negotiations have been held under tight wraps, but a union source told Reuters that “all will be known today” about negotiations at Escondida, which last year produced 925,400 tonnes of copper, almost 17 percent of the country’s total.

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Cat Calling, Whistling and Groping Greet Women in Mines of Chile – by Laura Millan Lombrana (Bloomberg News – August 8, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Despite efforts pushing for gender equality, the Chilean mining industry, slow to change, is still notoriously inhospitable to women.

The first time Karen Requena entered the cafeteria at BHP Billiton’s massive Escondida mining operation in northern Chile, she couldn’t help feeling countless eyes fixed on her body as she walked across the vast hall.

“It can’t get worse than that,” she thought. Then as Requena looked for a place to sit, the noise started. Thousands of men began banging their knives and forks against their plates. The pace of the deafening clattering picked up as she searched for an empty seat.

That’s how it went day in and day out at the world’s largest copper mine. It was 2012, and Requena was working 10-day shifts as an Escondida safety officer for BHP Billiton contractor Villatol. Soon she began eating in her room alone.

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Barrick says copper operation in Saudi Arabia not affected by diplomatic dispute – by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud (Mining.com – August 8, 2018)

http://www.mining.com/

A representative of Canadian gold giant Barrick Gold (TSX, NYSE:ABX) told the Globe & Mail today that the company’s Saudi operations are not affected by the current diplomatic dispute between Ottawa and Riyadh.

In an email to the newspaper, spokesman Andy Lloyd said that Barrick has a strong relationship with Ma’aden (TADAWUL:1211), the 50-per-cent state-owned company with which the miner operates the Jabal Sayid copper mine, located 350 kilometers north-east of Jeddah, in the western part of the country.

“We expect that partnership will continue to deepen over time,” Lloyd told the news outlet. The Toronto-based firm gained the Jabal Sayid project when it acquired copper miner Equinox in 2011 for $6.8 billion.

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These Massive Renewable Energy Projects Are Powering Chilean Mines – by Laura Millan Lombrana and Jamey Stillings

https://www.bloomberg.com/

A surge in solar, geothermal, and wind development is helping to wean the industry off imported fossil fuels.

Minerals are so abundant in Chile’s northern Atacama Desert, you can get copper just by kicking the mountain—or so says one of the miners’ favorite proverbs. A century after many of the mines there were first opened, finding copper—or gold, or lithium, or iron ore—isn’t that easy.

The concentration of minerals in the earth decreases as the miners dig deeper, meaning companies need to process more ore to extract the same amount of metal, a messy and highly polluting process to begin with. To fuel that effort, they need vast amounts of energy.

Chile has little in the way of fossil fuels, leading it to rely on imports and making electricity there extremely expensive. In 24 of the last 30 years, the country’s energy prices were higher than the world average; at its peak in 2011, the price per kilowatt-hour reached $150.90, almost double the global average.

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Miners Set to Spend $11 Billion in Search of the Next Jackpot – by David Stringer (Bloomberg News – August 7, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Miners and investors are poring over satellite images, tracking drilling rigs and quizzing company executives for clues on whether the sector’s heavyweights are close to a new jackpot discovery.

As Rio Tinto Group searches Australia’s Great Sandy Desert for copper and Anglo American Plc scours a 19,000-square kilometer package of land in Brazil, they’re among the mining giants stoking excitement over potential reserves that’ll replenish project pipelines and overturn the industry’s lack of recent success in unearthing deposits.

It’s part of a broader global push across the industry that’s driving a revival in exploration spending on key metals, forecast to top $11 billion after hitting a low of about $9 billion in 2016, according to Melbourne-based MinEx Consulting Ltd.

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Commentary: Dr Copper’s gloomy message is being amplified by new fund friends – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – August 6, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Typical, isn’t it? Copper bulls have been waiting all year for a strike and along come three potential Chilean flashpoints in the space of a week.

The main union at the Caserones mine is threatening to walk off the job on Tuesday if government mediation fails to generate a breakthrough in deadlocked talks.

Unions at Escondida have rejected an offer on a new labour contract, raising the prospect of another walk-out after last year’s 44-day strike at what is the world’s largest single copper mine. Meanwhile, workers at Chilean state copper producer Codelco’s Chuquicamata division staged protests last week in a long-simmering dispute over restructuring plans.

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Murky waters: Deep-sea miners say they offer a clean, ethical way to harvest precious metals for a low-carbon future. Environmentalists aren’t convinced. – by Janet Davison (CBC News – August 5, 2018)

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/

They don’t look like much at first, the black, potato-shaped blobs that lie scattered on the seabed, deep beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean. But as is so often the case, looks can be deceiving.

These nodules, and the metals that lie within them, are at the heart of a new and potentially lucrative mining frontier.

Metals like cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese have been mined on land for years, but going deep into the ocean to find them is becoming an increasingly tantalizing prospect. Companies like DeepGreen Metals and Nautilus Minerals — both with Canadian ties — have invested millions in preparation to raise the minerals from the seabed.

The metals in question are found in three sources: those potato-sized nodules; seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits around hydrothermal vents; and cobalt-rich crusts near underwater mountains.

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Chile is canary in copper mine as price of metal falls – by Benedict Mander (Financial Times – July 30, 2018)

https://www.ft.com/

Concerns are growing in Chile that it could be the first country in resource-rich South America to feel the impact of the slowdown in China and the US’s escalating trade war with Beijing, with a fall in copper prices already putting pressure on the economic agenda of President Sebastián Piñera.

As the world’s leading copper producer, and one of South America’s most open economies, Chile is particularly vulnerable to a drop in copper prices, which last week touched its lowest level of the year on worries over China’s economic growth. The metal accounts for more than 43 per cent of Chile’s exports.

The challenges faced by Chile are a warning signal for other commodity exporters in the region, economists said, especially given the metal’s reputation for predicting turning points in the global economy.

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[Minnesota Mining] Economist’s View: Mining generates 10 times more economic value than leisure, hospitality – by John Phelan (Duluth News Tribune – July 29, 2018)

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

John Phelan is an economist at the Center of the American Experiment (americanexperiment.org), based in Golden Valley, Minn.

This month, the News Tribune published a commentary by Sandra B. Zellmer and Alexandra B. Klass of the Center for Progressive Reform. In it, they argued against Twin Metals and the possibility of sulfide-ore copper-nickel mining in Northeastern Minnesota (Professors’ View: “U-turn on Twin Metals a massive giveaway of irreplaceable public resources”).

“(A Twin Metals) mine promises to be an economic loser,” they contended, saying that, “A 2017 study by Key Log Economics showed that copper-nickel mining in the Boundary Waters watershed would cost Northeastern Minnesota $288 million in lost revenue from visitor spending and lost property values amounting to about $509 million.
The 4,490 local jobs at risk would be 10 times the number of new mining jobs expected to be created, according to a study from the School of Business and Economics at University of Minnesota Duluth. The total tab? Between $402 million and $1.6 billion in lost annual income.”

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