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Europe Mining

Sweden to relocate entire city to meet China’s energy needs – by Dominic Hinde (Washington Times – May 24, 2015)

http://www.washingtontimes.com/

KIRUNA, Sweden — To feed China’s growing appetite for raw materials, this venerable mining town 90 miles north of the Arctic Circle is poised to become a cutting-edge Tomorrowland as it prepares to move buildings, residents and even a century-old wooden church to a new location a few miles away.

“These will be the first to go,” said Kjell Torma, editor of KirunaTidningen, the local newspaper, pointing to a row of red brick apartment blocks surrounded by construction fences. “If you want a cheap kitchen fan or some radiators, get in there.”

Over the next 10 years, Kiruna officials plan to demolish the apartments and most other buildings in this town of 18,000 residents and then rebuild them as far as three miles away — all part of an ambitious $375 million project to make way for the expansion of a giant iron mine as demand from China has suddenly made extraction here worth the investment.

But officials aren’t constructing an exact duplicate of Kiruna, founded in 1900 as the most northerly town in Sweden. With funding from Sweden’s state-owned mining company — Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB, or LKAB — officials in Kiruna aim to create one of the most environmentally friendly cities in Europe.

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European mining seemingly regaining lost lustre as at least one mine opens each year since 2008 – by Ilan Solomons (MiningWeekly.com – May 22, 2015)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

HANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Europe is remarkable in that its mining industry predates the Roman Empire, yet large portions of unexplored territories with highly prospective resources remain, says European metals and minerals mining representative body Euromines president Mark Rachovides.

Mattia Pellegrini, head of the raw materials, metals, minerals and forest-based industries unit of the European Commission* Directorate-General for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, tells Mining Weekly that the body recently commissioned a study to assess the competitiveness of the European mining industry.

The results highlighted that the 28 member countries of the European Union (EU) have an active nonenergy extractive industry that produces a wide range of commodities.

He adds, however, that the results also showed the EU’s “modest” contribution to the global production of mineral resources. “Nevertheless, when one considers investment in exploration in some of the EU member States during the past five years, there is an encouragingly increasing trend,” states Pellegrini.

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Controversial UK potash project nears decision day – by Rod Nickel (Reuters U.S. – May 20, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

NEW YORK – Sirius Minerals PLC, the British company behind a controversial proposed potash mine, said it hopes to win a key regulatory approval this summer that could lead to production within four years.

Sirius aims to be the biggest producer of granulated polyhalite, which contains multiple crop nutrients such as potash, sulfur and calcium.

The company is also awaiting results of a feasibility study this summer before proceeding with the mine in England’s North York Moors National Park.

Polyhalite, unlike conventional muriate of potash (MOP), contains little chloride that is harmful to fruit crops. The company expects to sell it at a huge premium over MOP, of which there is excess global mining capacity.

“We’ve got a product that is better for the environment and better for food productivity,” said Chief Executive Chris Fraser on Wednesday on the sidelines of a BMO investor conference in New York.

There is no reason to delay the project just because there is a surplus of the conventional potash form, he said.

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Ukraine’s DTEK says will become coal importer – by Sarah McFarlane (Reuters U.S. – May 19, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

NICE – May 19 Ukraine’s biggest power producer and major coal miner DTEK will become a coal importer due to difficulties in the domestic mining industry, an executive from the company said on Tuesday.

“In a country like Ukraine which typically produces 75 to 80 million tonnes of coal a year, it’s insane to think we’re going to turn into an importer, but there are several factors at work here,” said John Woodham, head of trading at DTEK SA, speaking at the IHS European coal conference.

Woodham said domestic production was in decline due to a combination of the conflict in the east of the country halting production at some mines, while cuts to subsidies for state mines are triggering closures.

DTEK, part of the business empire of Ukrainian tycoon Rinat Akhmetov, accounts for about 29 percent of the country’s thermal power generation and controls about 46 percent of Ukraine’s coal production.

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Poland fights for coal, but Russia may benefit – by Jan Cienski (Politco.eu – May 13, 2015)

http://www.politico.eu/

Poland’s defense of coal, which has been a measure of energy independence from Russia, might actually be an asset to the Kremlin’s influence.

WARSAW — When he was Poland’s prime minister, European Council President Donald Tusk called coal “the strategic foundation” of his country’s energy security, and Polish diplomats have acquired a reputation as some of the EU’s toughest negotiators, doing battle in summit after summit to minimize restrictions on its use.

But paradoxically, Poland’s dogged defense of coal, which generates almost 90 percent of its electricity, may now end up benefiting Russia. That is because cheap Russian coal is grabbing a growing share of Poland’s market, while local coal producers bleed red ink thanks to high production costs and very low prices.

“Individual mines can still be saved, but what cannot be saved is the state-owned coal mining sector,” says Jerzy Markowski, a former deputy minister of economy and coal mining executive.

Poland’s coal sector has long been a mainstay of the economy.

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Norilsk to meet investors amid hopes of Russian reopening – by Michael Turner (Reuters U.S. – May 14, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, May 14 (IFR) – Norilsk Nickel is meeting bond and equity investors in London on Monday, as market participants grow increasingly optimistic that some Russian borrowers might melt through the international fundraising freeze before 2016.

The Russian palladium and nickel firm, rated BBB-/BBB-, is not marketing a specific bond at the meetings, according to two of the sources, but giving fund managers an update. Barclays is arranging the meetings.

“My personal view is that they do not need to raise funds,” said an investor from a Swiss firm who has been invited to the event.

Still, Norilsk Nickel is a potential issuer as the firm has not been sanctioned by the West. Bankers say that investors are showing more interest in potential Russian supply.

“We’ve had some reverse enquiry about Russian corporates,” said one banker. “We’re a way off the market properly reopening but we’re having more interesting conversations than six months ago.”

No Russian issuer has come to the international market since Gazprom sold a US$700m one-year note on November 5.

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Germany Divided Over Future of Coal – by Rachel Knaebel (Equal Times.org – May 11, 2015)

http://www.equaltimes.org/

On 25 April, 6000 people formed a human chain stretching over seven kilometres in the Rhineland mining area in western Germany to protest against the role of coal in the country.

At the same time, in Berlin, 15,000 people were taking part in a demonstration called by the mining sector union IG BCE.

They were protesting against the proposal of the German Minister for Economic Affairs, Sigmar Gabriel, to introduce an extra tax on the country’s oldest coal power plants.

The objective: to reduce Germany’s greenhouse gas emissions. Berlin has committed to reducing CO2 emissions by 40 per cent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels. To achieve this, Germany’s coal power plants need to do their bit, according to the ministry.

Environmental associations agree, and they see the proposal as a first step towards a coal phase-out, following on from the nuclear phase-out to be completed by 2022.

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Norway’s oil fund slashes coal investments after criticism – by Stine Jacobsen (Reuters U.S. – May 4, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

May 4 (Reuters) – Norway’s $900 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, has reduced the value of its coal mining portfolio by almost 40 percent in the first quarter, its head told parliament on Monday.

Environmental groups and some Norwegian politicians have accused the fund of having too large an exposure to coal and not making enough use of its influence to reduce carbon emissions.

As of March 31 the fund had coal mining assets worth 493 million crowns ($3.75 million), down from 805 million at the end of 2014.

The fund owns assets worth 31 billion crowns in general mining, 109 billion in power production and 228 billion in oil and gas production.

The fund, owning around 1.3 percent of all listed companies globally, is still exposed to firms using coal for steel production and those where coal is only one of several business areas, such as large mining conglomerates, the fund’s head Yngve Slyngstad told the parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs.

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Dazed and Confused in Deutschland – by Christopher Ecclestone (InvestorIntel.com – April 29, 2015)

http://investorintel.com/

In the balmy (barmy?) days before the global financial crisis in 2008, Germany was regarded as the Promised Land for Vancouver stock promoters. They had never seen anything like it… so many sheep to be fleeced and none of them up to date on the guiles and wiles of Vancouver’s best and brightest.

It was a happy hunting ground. Even better the various German exchanges went out of the way to make their lists open to all and sundry. Stocks that you couldn’t even find a ticker for in Canada, trading on some third sub-tier of Yellowknife Adventurers Exchange could get itself a listing in Berlin or Stuttgart by merely existing.

This not only gave an extra ticker to fill up embarrassing white spaces, between photos of the moose pasture, on the company website but also gave one status when one strutted the floor of the Munich Gold Show touting one’s vermiculite, granola or alfafa deposit. I have met executives who still sigh for the days when their registers frequently had 40% of the holders located on the Continent.

Sadly all good things had to come to the end and the severe fleecing the German sheep received at the hands of the promoters left their hides red raw and it was a long time in healing. Germany faded from view and most German-speaking investors forswore any involvement or interest in Canada besides the hockey scores at the Olympics.

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Telfer, Giustra deny they tried to influence Russian uranium deal with donations to Clinton Foundation – by Peter Koven National Post – April 25, 2015)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

A pair of Canadian mining magnates are denying suggestions that they donated to the charitable foundation of former President Bill Clinton and his family to help win U.S. approval to sell a uranium company to Russia.

Frank Giustra said the allegations have nothing to do with him, and are merely an attempt to “tear down” presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her election campaign. Ian Telfer, meanwhile, said he committed the funds before he ever realized he would do the deal with the Russians.

The New York Times reported on the donations in an explosive article this week. The story involves a former Canadian mining company called Uranium One Inc., in which Giustra and Telfer were two of the key principals.

In 2010, Uranium One began a process to sell itself to Rosatom, a state-controlled nuclear giant in Russia. Uranium One had assets in Kazakhstan and the United States, and multiple U.S. government departments had to sign off on the deal. One of them is the State Department, which was led at the time by Hillary Clinton.

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Fox News uses input from New York Times reporter (!) for ‘Clinton Cash’ piece – by Erik Wemple (Washington Post – April 23, 2015)

http://www.foxnews.com/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Earlier this week, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow devoted considerable time to examining the agreements of major media outlets with Peter Schweizer, the author of “Clinton Cash,” a soon-to-be-released book highlighting overlaps between the work of the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

No surprise, said Maddow, that Fox News would be partnering with such an author, who advised Sarah Palin and assisted the George W. Bush White House with speechwriting. Some surprise, said Maddow, that a news org like the New York Times would strike an exclusive agreement with Schweizer.

Now for an even bigger surprise: Not only did the New York Times work with Schweizer; it also worked directly with Fox News! See the segment below, in which New York Times investigative reporter Jo Becker provides input for the report of Fox News host Bret Baier on a “bombshell rocking the Clinton campaign.”

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How Putin’s Russia Gained Control of a U.S. Uranium Mine – by William Kennedy and Andy Hoffman(Bloomberg News – April 23, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Since 2013, the nuclear energy arm of the Russian state has controlled 20 percent of America’s uranium production capacity.

Rosatom’s acquisition of Toronto-based miner Uranium One Inc. made the Russian agency, which also builds nuclear weapons, one the world’s top five producers of the radioactive metal and gave it ownership of a mine in Wyoming.

The deal, approved by a committee that included then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, also followed donations from Uranium One’s Canadian chairman to the Clinton Global Foundation, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Ian Telfer, the former Uranium One chairman and current chairman of Goldcorp Inc., said he pledged a donation of $3 million to the Clinton charity in March 2008, “when it was never contemplated that at some point in the future the Russian government would become a major shareholder of Uranium One.”

Why did the Russian government want Uranium One? Russia is only the world’s sixth-largest uranium miner, but has a huge nuclear fuel industry. Rosatom had built that business partly by processing uranium from Soviet warheads decommissioned under the so-called megatons-to-megawatts agreement signed with the U.S. in 1993.

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Clinton, Giustra push back against New York Times’ Uranium One story – by Michael Allan McCrae (Mining.com – April 23, 2015)

http://www.mining.com/

Hillary Clinton and Frank Giustra both released statements claiming that the New York Times failed to prove any connections between the Clinton Foundation and the purchase of Russian assets.

Today the New York Times profiled Uranium One and gifts to the Clinton Foundation. Spokesman for Hillary Clinton, Brian Fallon, called the story wrong.

“Relying largely on research from the conservative author of Clinton Cash, today’s New York Times alleges that donations to the Clinton Foundation coincided with the U.S. government’s 2010 approval of the sale of a company known as Uranium One to the Russian government. Without presenting any direct evidence in support of the claim, the Times story — like the book on which it is based — wrongly suggests that Hillary Clinton’s State Department pushed for the sale’s approval to reward donors who had a financial interest in the deal. Ironically, buried within the story is original reporting that debunks the allegation that then-Secretary Clinton played any role in the review of the sale.

The Times’ own public editor has taken issue with the paper’s arrangement with the author of Clinton Cash, saying, “The Times should have been much more clear with readers about the nature of this arrangement” and “I still don’t like the way it looked.” It certainly doesn’t look any better that the lead Times reporter appeared in a taped interview for a Fox News documentary attacking the Clintons on this matter prior to receiving our responses to her questions.”

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Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company – by Jo Becker and Mike McIntire (New York Times – April 25, 2015)

http://www.nytimes.com/

The headline in Pravda trumpeted President Vladimir V. Putin’s latest coup, its nationalistic fervor recalling an era when the newspaper served as the official mouthpiece of the Kremlin: “Russian Nuclear Energy Conquers the World.”

The article, in January 2013, detailed how the Russian atomic energy agency, Rosatom, had taken over a Canadian company with uranium-mining stakes stretching from Central Asia to the American West. The deal made Rosatom one of the world’s largest uranium producers and brought Mr. Putin closer to his goal of controlling much of the global uranium supply chain.

But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one.

At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.

Beyond mines in Kazakhstan that are among the most lucrative in the world, the sale gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States.

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China expands potash holdings (The Australian – April 21, 2015)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

Dow Jones – China’s sovereign-wealth fund took command of a 12.5 per cent stake in embattled Russian potash producer Uralkali Tuesday by exercising an option on a convertible bond it bought late last year.

The step represents a big move by China–the world’s largest consumer of the fertiliser additive–to secure steady supply in a market where governments have zealously protected against foreign ownership in the past. The deal comes amid a bruising trade battle between Uralkali and Belarus over the collapse of a sales partnership that rocked global potash markets and landed the Russian company’s chief executive in a Belarusian prison.

The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has said the trade fight could only be defused if new owners for the Russian potash miner were found. The bond was issued by a special purpose vehicle owned by Uralkali’s primary shareholder Suleiman Kerimov and his two partners. By converting it to shares, the China Investment Corp.–through its Chengdong Investment Corp. subsidiary–transfers ownership of a sizeable stake of the company out of the Russian partners’ hands.

In addition, Mr. Kerimov is in talks to sell the 21.75 per cent stake he owns through his foundation, and his partners are eager to sell their smaller stakes as well, people close to them say. Together the three men control just over a third of the company. People familiar with the situation say potential buyers include several Russian tycoons, but that there is also interest from investment groups in other Asian countries.

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