Europe Mining – Page 55 – Republic of Mining

In one of coldest spots on earth, Russia bets on boosting gold output – by Diana Asonova (Reuters U.S. – April 13, 2017)

April 18, 2017

http://www.reuters.com/

UST-NERA, YAKUTIA, RUSSIA – In winter it gets so cold that metal snaps. When the weather is warmer people make a living sifting the earth for fragments of gold in the Oymyakon district of Russia’s far eastern Yakutia region.

But the unusually rich deposits of the alluvial gold near the surface are running out and producers have had to switch to the more expensive process of digging mines to extract gold ore.

Production at the first two mines to be opened in the area since the fall of the Soviet Union will start soon. One is being launched by GV Gold, with U.S. fund BlackRock and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development among its shareholders, and another by the locally-owned Yantar group.

The Kola Mining and Metallurgy Combine: Northwest Russia polluter posts impressive cuts in harmful emissions – by Anna Kireeva (Bellona.org – April 12, 2017)

April 13, 2017

http://bellona.org/

In a surprising development, the Kola Mining and Metallurgy Company –which for decades has stubbornly fouled air over Northwest Russia and Scandinavia – last year reduced its emissions of harmful sulfur dioxide by more than 20 percent.

The KMMC, a daughter company of the giant Norilsk Nickel, reported last week that its sulfur dioxide emissions for 2016 totaled 119,700 tons, which is 35,000 tons less than the previous year.

The new emissions figures seem to reverse a rise in the toxic heavy metal pollution that began in 2011. That year, the KMMC posted figures as high as 134,000 tons a year. They rose in subsequent years, plateauing at a towering 154,900 tons in 2015.

Switzerland is Key to Global Gold – by Lawrence (Lawrie) Williams (United States Gold Bureau – April 5, 2017)

April 6, 2017

https://invest.usgoldbureau.com/

Lawrence (Lawrie) Williams is a precious metals market expert. He worked as a mining engineer and analyst in Africa and North America and wrote for the Mining Journal, and subsequently managed the publishing company, for over 36 years. Williams shares his unique knowledge of the precious metals industry at the United States Gold Bureau and other outlets.

The small (in area and population) European nation of Switzerland is the location of four of the world’s largest gold refineries – Argor-Heraeus, Metalor, Produits Artistiques Metaux Precieux (PAMP) and Valcambi.

Between them they refine annually a volume of gold equivalent to more than half global new mined gold output – sometimes far more when Asian demand is running particularly high, as in 2013, and when supply is plentiful (2013 saw huge disinvestment out of the major gold ETFs). That year Swiss refineries processed, and exported, around 2,600 tonnes of gold equivalent to about 80% of global new mined gold output.

Swedish Miner Says Donald Trump Doesn’t Hold Key to Metal Prices – by Hanna Hoikkala and Niklas Magnusson (Bloomberg News – March 28, 2017)

March 29, 2017

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The operator of some of Europe’s largest copper and zinc mines expects President Donald Trump’s plans to spend on U.S. infrastructure to have much less impact on base-metal prices than the needs of burgeoning middle-class populations in emerging markets.

That’s because projects in the U.S. and other developed countries simply won’t use enough zinc or copper to have any significant impact on prices, Lennart Evrell, chief executive officer of Sweden’s Boliden AB, said in a March 22 interview. When poorer and less-developed countries decide to build transport and power networks they consume far more of these materials, he said.

“The U.S. is not big enough when it comes to commodities,” Evrell said. “It may be a very big economy, but when it comes to need for base metals, it’s more about the earlier stages of a country’s development, and the U.S. is not in that phase. We believe the driver behind the recent metals price increases is the rest of the world, and not Trump, as prices fell roughly as much after his election as they had gained in conjunction with his election.”’

Discover The World’s Most Beautiful Coal Mine – by Sheobi Anne Ramos (Travelers Today – March 23, 2017)

March 24, 2017

http://www.travelerstoday.com/

In Germany, there lies a treasure unlike any other: a coal mine. You might scoff at the idea, but the Zollverein Coal Mine in Germany is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, also known as the most beautiful coal mine in the world.

Coal mining in this complex started in 1851 and was a vital part of Germany’s history. The famed “black gold” was dug here to fuel Germany’s industrial revolution, and during the Second World War, over 3.6 million tons of coal were produced.

Back then, the Zollverein Coal Mine was one of the most important industrial complexes in Europe, and for the years that followed, several more buildings and refurbishments were added to further increase the productivity of the place. For 135 years, the complex churned and the workers toiled in “Shaft XII” of the complex until it was decommissioned in 1986.

Does Norilsk Nickel deserve to be Russia’s environmental gold standard? – by Charles Digges (Bellona.org – March 22, 2017)

March 23, 2017

http://bellona.org/

Norilsk Nickel, the giant Northern Siberian nickel producer and historically one of the country’s biggest polluters, won a prestigious environmental nod from the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs for closing down one of its most infamously befouling facilities

According to the Russian business daily Vedomosti, the environmental award from the industrialists’ union is one of the organization’s key annual events. Russia’s environmental minister, Sergei Donskoi, who presented the prize, called Norilsk Nickel “the absolute leader in environmental change occurring in the industrial policy in Russia.”

Greenland closer to building world’s fifth-largest uranium mine – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – March 13, 2017)

March 14, 2017

http://www.mining.com/

It would also be the world’s second-biggest rare earths operation.

Greenland may soon start building the world’s fifth-largest uranium mine and second-biggest rare earths operation, which could fuel independence dreams in the island, an “autonomous administrative division” within Denmark since 2009.

The proposed open pit mine in the southern town of Kvanefjeld is expected to process over 100 million tonnes of ore in the coming decades, helping Greenland to diversified its economy. According to Danish Radio, it would also alleviate the island’s dependence on a locked Danish subsidy of 3.2 billion DKK (about $500 million), which constitutes about half of its budget.

But Greenland Minerals and Energy’s (ASX:GGG) project, which would have an annual processing capacity of 3 million tonnes of ore a year and employ at least 325 locals, is facing opposition from those who don’t want to see major landscape and environmental changes.

Russia proposes creating aluminum OPEC: Trade Minister (Reuters U.S. – February 27, 2017)

March 1, 2017

http://www.reuters.com/

Russia is proposing the creation of an OPEC-like organization for the global aluminum industry, TASS news agency quoted Russian Industry and Trade Minister Denis Manturov as saying on Monday.

Russia’s Rusal was overtaken by China’s Hongqiao as the world’s biggest aluminum producer several years ago, as Rusal cut back its production capacity due to a fall in prices. Manturov told reporters about the idea of an aluminum-making group on the sidelines of an economic conference in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi.

OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, unites some of the world’s largest oil producers. Its members, together with non-OPEC oil producers such as Russia, agreed to reduce oil production and support global prices in 2016.

KGHM builds copper smelter in Poland (Resource World – February 9, 2017)

February 10, 2017

http://resourceworld.com/

The investment by one of the world’s largest copper and silver producers, KGHM Polska Miedź S.A. [KGH-WSE], in the Głogów Copper Smelter (HMG I), in western Poland, represents a milestone in the history of Polish metallurgy and puts KGHM at the forefront of copper producers.

KGHM said the state-of-the-art copper smelter is world’s largest flash furnace and electrical furnace. This unique technology is currently used only in three places in the world – one of them is Głogów. The opening ceremony at the smelter was held January 20, 2017.

This completed the implementation of the multi-annual Programme for Modernisation of Pyrometallurgy. Construction of a concentrate roasting installation, which will be launched in the fourth quarter of 2017, is an additional part of the Programme.

Russians Come in From Cold as Trump, Commodity Markets Align – by Yuliya Fedorinova (Bloomberg News – February 10, 2017)

February 10, 2017

https://www.bloomberg.com/

As Donald Trump edges the U.S. closer to a thaw in relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, commodity investors are already jumping in. A plan by United Co. Rusal, the biggest Russian aluminum maker, for a London sale of shares valued at about $1.7 billion is the latest sign that Russia’s exile from world markets is over for the nation’s metal and mining giants.

It’s a turnaround from years in which slumping raw-materials prices, a weak economy and sanctions imposed by then-U.S. President Barack Obama over the annexation of Crimea punished valuations and drove away foreign investors.

Share sales by Russian mining companies have been rare since 2010. Until two months ago, PhosAgro PJSC’s offering in April 2013 was the last major sale by a non-state Russian mining company. The fertilizer miner and processor is among those that have returned since December.

Industrial Pollution, The Kola Mining and Metallurgy Combine: Pollution cuts from Norilsk Nickel could quiet Norwegian rebels – by Charles Digges (Bellona.org – February 7, 2017)

February 8, 2017

http://bellona.org/

Norilsk Nickel head Vladimir Potanin announced plans to spend $17 billion in the company’s modernization during a meeting with President Vladimir Putin last week, about a quarter of which will go toward environmental improvement, by 2023.

The money would add up to a giant slash in sulfur dioxide emissions from the Kola Mining and Metallurgy Company that have been wafting in the hundreds of thousands of tons across the Norwegian border since before the fall of the Soviet Union.

In the meeting, which was described on the Kremlin website, Potanin reiterated promises that the company would slash emissions of sulfur dioxide by 75 percent from its Norilsk facilities in northern Siberia, and by 90 percent at its daughter Kola Mining and Metallurgy Company near Murmansk.

RPT-COLUMN-Cornish lithium dreams may die in South America’s salt lakes – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – February 6, 2017)

February 6, 2017

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Feb 3 There’s lithium in them there Cornish hills! News that a start-up, Cornish Lithium, is going to explore for the “metal of the future” in Britain’s historic tin-mining region has been greeted with predictable national euphoria.

“Cornwall’s mining industry set for 50bn pound revolution,” proclaimed a headline in The Sun newspaper. Which may be just a little bit premature.

The company, led by Jeremy Wrathall, a graduate of Cornwall’s famous Camborne School of Mines and now a banker with Investec, is currently trying to raise 5 million pounds to start an exploration programme. Any production of lithium is at least five years away.

UPDATE 1-Russia’s Nornickel sees nickel, palladium output up in 2017 (Reuters U.S. – January 31, 2017)

February 1, 2017

http://www.reuters.com/

Jan 31 Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel) , one of the world’s largest nickel and palladium producers, plans to increase output of its main metals from Russian raw material this year, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

Nornickel, which competes with Brazil’s Vale SA for the rank of the world’s top nickel producer, experienced falls in production of nickel, copper and platinum group metals in 2016.

The lower output was mainly due to scheduled decommissioning of an old nickel plant and ongoing reconfiguration of downstream production facilities in northern Siberia.

Balkan push for new coal-fired plants raises environmental concerns – by Maja Zuvela (Reuters U.S. – January 24, 2017)

January 24, 2017

http://www.reuters.com/

SARAJEVO – A Chinese company began work on Monday on a $715 million expansion of a Serbian coal mine and a new power plant, part of a wave of investment in new coal-fired plants in the Balkans that is at odds with EU policy of reducing coal use.

China Machinery and Engineering Corp’s project to expand Kostolac, Serbia’s second biggest coal mine, and build a new 350 megawatt (MW) unit at a nearby power plant is the first new electricity capacity built in Serbia in nearly 30 years.

“Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) is opening a new chapter,” Milorad Grcic, chief executive of Serbian power utility EPS, said in a statement marking the start of construction. The investment, majority financed by China’s Export Import Bank [EXIMC.UL], secured the future of the mine and power plant for half a century, he said.

Canada’s Strongbow’s UK partner to explore for lithium in Cornwall – by Barbara Lewis and Peter Hobson (Reuters Canada – January 19, 2017)

January 19, 2017

http://ca.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – British company Cornish Lithium said on Thursday it had reached a mineral rights agreement with Canada’s Strongbow Exploration (SBW.V: Quote) to explore for lithium in Cornwall, southwest England, stoking hopes for a British mining revival.

Cornwall historically was a mining hub for metals such as tin and copper and the British government is keen to resurrect the industry as it seeks to bolster the economy against the shock of leaving the European Union.

Cornish Lithium said new technology offered the potential to extract lithium from underground hot springs and to supply products to the rapidly growing battery market for electric cars and for power storage.