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Europe Mining

Ukraine Emerges as Battleground in US-Russia Nuclear Contest – by David Brennan (Newsweek – February 04, 2024)

https://www.newsweek.com/

Apivotal nuclear showdown is simmering behind Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, as Kyiv pushes its international partners—primarily the U.S.—to kneecap one of Moscow’s most influential and lucrative strategic industries.

While Ukraine’s troops weather fresh Russian winter offensives in the south and east of the country, Kyiv’s energy minister is advancing a long-term plan to pivot away from Russian-designed and fueled nuclear energy reactors, the export of which has given the Kremlin powerful leverage over a raft of European nations.

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Europe’s thirst for lithium threatens livelihoods, biodiversity in Portugal – by Marta Vidal (Al Jazeera – January 30, 2024)

https://www.aljazeera.com/

Open-pit mines are planned for Portugal’s northern region, worrying locals who say their livelihoods are at risk.

Covas do Barroso, Portugal – Paulo Pires walked up the hill with his flock of sheep and dogs on a warm day in August, as a stream of water gushed down an ancient irrigation channel that has been maintained by local communities over many generations. “There is a lot of wealth here,” said Pires, now resting in the shade of an oak tree by the flowing water.

For centuries, Covas do Barroso’s water, pastures and forests have been managed collectively to integrate farming, livestock and forestry in a sustainable manner. But Pires is worried. Savannah Resources, a company based in the United Kingdom, aims to develop Western Europe’s largest open-pit lithium mine in Barroso, bordering the Peneda-Geres National Park in northeastern Portugal.

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Norway defends deep-sea mining, says it may help to break China and Russia’s rare earths stronghold – by Sam Meredith (CNBC.com January 29, 2024)

https://www.cnbc.com/

Norway says its controversial decision to approve deep-sea mining is a necessary step into the unknown that could help to break China and Russia’s rare earths dominance. In a vote earlier this month that attracted cross-party support, Norway’s parliament voted 80-20 to approve a government proposal to open a vast ocean area for commercial-scale deep-sea mining.

It makes the northern European country the first in the world to move forward with the process of extracting minerals from the seabed. Norway’s government said the practice could be one way to help facilitate the global transition away from fossil fuels, adding that every country should be exploring ways to sustainably collect metals and minerals at their disposal.

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Swedish town pays a price for its mining success – by Erika Page (Christian Science Monitor – January 25, 2024)

https://www.csmonitor.com/

Annica Henelund swings open the front door of her fabric shop as she has thousands of times before. Inside, not much has changed in the past 51 years. Piles of bright cloth line tabletops and shelves from floor to ceiling. Most of it will never be sold. In a few short weeks, the store must be empty and ready for demolition.

Residents of Kiruna have long known this moment would come. As the state-owned iron-ore mining company LKAB expands its operations underground, this Arctic town is sinking into the ground. So it’s relocating. A shiny new city center located 2 miles east was inaugurated last fall.

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Chinese Engineers Are Keeping Russia’s Metal Furnaces Firing (Bloomberg News – January 27, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Magnitogorsk, in the Ural mountains, was developed as a symbol of Soviet industrial might and its capacity for economic modernization. Today, a new, 75 billion-ruble (roughly $840 million) coking plant in the steel town is being built by a Chinese engineering giant and hundreds of Chinese workers.

The contract between Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works PJSC, known as MMK, and state-owned Sinosteel Engineering & Technology Co. was signed before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and links between the two predate that. But since Chinese engineers and builders began arriving in large numbers to speed up construction last year, the project has been trumpeted by officials on both sides as emblematic of closer ties.

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Long-Lost Ship Found in the Desert Laden With Gold – by Tasos Kokkinidis (Greek Reporter – January 21, 2024)

https://greekreporter.com/

The discovery of a ship that disappeared five hundred years ago and was found in a desert in southwest Africa with gold coins aboard has been one of the most exciting archaeological finds of recent years.

The Bom Jesus (The Good Jesus) was a Portuguese vessel that set sail from Lisbon, Portugal on Friday, March 7, 1533. Its fate was unknown until 2008 when its remains were discovered in the desert of Namibia during diamond mining operations near the coast of the African nation.

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The US plan to break Russia’s grip on nuclear fuel – by Jamie Smyth and Sarah White (January 21, 2024)

https://www.ft.com/

Demand for atomic energy is surging but Moscow dominates the world’s supplies of enriched uranium

Shortly after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the US banned all imports of Russian oil, liquefied natural gas and coal. But not all energy supplies were included in the US sanctions, nor in those of its European allies. On the contrary, western powers have taken care not to interrupt the flow of raw materials and services from Russia’s state-owned nuclear giant Rosatom and its subsidiary Tenex.

Moscow’s invasion exposed many vulnerabilities in US and European energy supplies, not least in the nuclear sector, where more than a fifth of the enriched uranium fuel required to power both regions’ nuclear fleets comes from Russia.

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Kremlin’s blood diamonds on the EU sanctions list – by Michał Kacewicz (Belsat.eu – January 20, 2024)

https://belsat.eu/en/

Diamonds have always been a crucial source of income for Russia, the world’s largest producer. Following two years of war, the EU has finally imposed sanctions on Russian diamonds and related businesses. The European Union has recently introduced the twelfth round of sanctions against Russia in response to its full-scale aggression towards Ukraine.

The sanctions were approved in December and came into effect at the beginning of this year. As part of this strategy, non-industrial diamonds mainly used to make jewelry and mined and processed in Russia cannot be imported into the EU. The ban applies to Alrosa, the leading Russian diamond producer and exporter. The Director of Alrosa, Pavel Marinychev, has been blacklisted and banned from entering EU countries.

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Poland plans to set end date for coal power – by Kate Abnett (Reuters – January 15, 2024)

https://www.reuters.com/

BRUSSELS, Jan 15 (Reuters) – Poland plans to set an end date for coal-fuelled power, the country’s Secretary of State for Climate Urszula Zielinska said on Monday, marking a shift from the previous government’s stance on climate change.

Poland’s October 2023 election ended eight years of Law and Justice (PiS) party rule, and led to a new government that Zielinska said was increasing environmental efforts – including a phase out date for coal power.

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Norway becomes first country to back deep-sea mining despite environmental concerns – by Rosie Frost (Ero News – January 11, 2024)

https://www.euronews.com/

According to a study by the Environmental Justice Foundation published on the day of the vote, deep-sea mining is not needed for the clean energy transition.

Norway has become the first country in the world to greenlight the controversial practice of deep-sea mining. A bill passed in the Norwegian Parliament on Tuesday (9 January) will accelerate the undersea hunt for minerals needed to build green technology such as batteries for electric vehicles. It authorises opening up parts of the country’s sea to mining exploration.

Around 280,000 square metres of the country’s national waters could gradually be opened up – an area nearly the size of Italy located in the Arctic between Svalbard, Greenland and Iceland.

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How sanctions on Russia will change the diamond trade (The Economist – January 4, 2024)

https://www.economist.com/

New rules add up to the biggest shakeup of the industry in decades

Russia’s diamond industry is under pressure. On January 1st the g7, a group of rich countries, and the European Union banned imports of rough diamonds mined in Russia—a third of the total extracted worldwide in 2022. On January 3rd the eu added Russia’s state mining company, and its chief executive, to its sanctions list.

This is the first phase of a comprehensive sanctions scheme: in March the g7 and eu will ban Russian gems that have been cut and polished abroad. In September they will introduce a certification scheme to verify where diamonds were mined. These measures add up to the biggest change to the business in decades. Why has it taken so long to impose sanctions on Russia’s diamond industry—and what impact will they have?

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EU adds Russia’s biggest diamond-mining company and CEO to sanctions list – by Mared Gwyn Jones (Euronews – January 3, 2024)

https://www.euronews.com/

PJSC Alrosa, which is owned by the Russian state, accounts for over 90% of all Russian diamond production, representing a highly valuable revenue stream for the Kremlin.

The EU said Wednesday that Alrosa and its CEO Marinychev had been added to the list of sanctioned persons and entities for “actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.” “The company constitutes an important part of an economic sector that is providing substantial revenue to the government of the Russian Federation,” it added.

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The Majestic Marble Quarries of Northern Italy – by Luca Locatelli and Sam Anderson (New York Times – July 26, 2017)

 

Business Insider Video – June 25, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/

Fueled by insatiable demand in the gulf states, the Italian marble trade is booming. A look at how the stone is wrenched from the earth.

The story of Italian marble is the story of difficult motion: violent, geological, haunted by failure and ruin and lost fortunes, marred by severed fingers, crushed dreams, crushed men. Rarely has a material so inclined to stay put been wrenched so insistently out of place and carried so far from its source; every centimeter of its movement has had to be earned.

“There is no avoiding the tyranny of weight,” the art historian William E. Wallace once put it. He was discussing the challenge, in Renaissance Italy, of installing Michelangelo’s roughly 17,000-pound statue of the biblical David.

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EU sets critical mineral goals, but faces struggle to hit them – by Philip Blenkinsop (Reuters – December 18, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

BRUSSELS, Dec 18 (Reuters) – The European Union has set targets to dig up, recycle and refine lithium, cobalt and other metals it needs for its green transition, but a shortage of new money, crippling energy costs and local opposition could put them beyond reach.

The bloc will likely need to find ways to trim demand, find substitute materials and forge partnerships that break China’s stranglehold on mineral supplies. The Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), due to enter force in early 2024, says the bloc should mine 10%, recycle 25% and process 40% of its annual needs of 17 key raw materials by 2030.

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Report: Russia has laundered $2.5 billion of African gold since February 2022 – by Martin Fornusek (Kyiv Independent – December 12, 2023)

https://kyivindependent.com/

The Kremlin has laundered $2.5 billion of African gold since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to a report by an international group of researchers and human rights activists published on Dec. 12.

Russia’s illicit activities and ties to authoritarian regimes in Africa have been under the public eye for years. Russian mercenaries on the continent, whose operations help to fill Moscow’s coffers, have been repeatedly accused of human rights abuses against local populations.

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