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Gold Diggers Revive French Exploration as Prices Drive Hunt – by Francois de Beaupuy (Bloomberg News – July 21, 2014)

http://www.businessweek.com/

In a field near Saint-Pierre-Montlimart, a small hamlet with a turreted church in western France, Jack Testard and Patrick Lebret dig up some earth with an agronomic drill and put it in a plastic bag.

The president and the chief geologist of a French mining exploration startup owned by Australia’s Variscan Mines Ltd will send dirt samples from the field, which is in an area that was home to a gold mine until 1952, to a laboratory in southern France to look for “mineral anomalies” the company is betting will show evidence of the precious metal.

“There are a lot of attractive points to prospect in France,” Testard says, as he points to a map with yellow dots representing areas where traces of the metal have been found. “It’s a really interesting time to prospect gold because the price is higher than before” and extraction technologies “are much more modern.”

Although France hasn’t historically been a large producer of gold, soaring prices of the metal are bringing companies to its door. By granting the first exploration licenses in mainland France in more than two decades to Variscan, Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg is trying to revamp the country’s mining industry and cut reliance on imports of metals such as rare earths critical for military equipment and renewable energy.

The French exploration push comes even as mining companies extend cuts in spending for a second year.

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Lone producer, Canadian firm lead charge on Greek energy – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – July 21, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

ATHENS – In the 1970s, an unlikely company played a key role in opening up Greece’s oil and gas industry. That company was Toronto’s Denison Mines, then better known as a uranium miner but one with ambitions to put the Eastern Mediterranean on the energy map.

It worked for a while. Offshore rigs in the Prinos field, in the brilliant blue northern Aegean Sea, pumped away until the late 1990s, when the oil price collapsed. The Denison-led consortium handed the entire project to the Greek government and walked away.

For the next two decades, pretty much nothing happened in the Greek oil and gas sector even though the country’s energy bill was soaring.

That all changed in 2009, when a new Greek explorer, Energean Oil & Gas, prodded the old field back to life. Today, it is Greece’s only oil producer and, with the help of a small Canadian company, Petra Petroleum, is leading the charge to prove that Greece can meet a good chunk of its energy needs.

“Any discoveries of oil and gas would be a huge benefit to the local market,” said Energean chief executive officer Mathios Rigas, a former investment banker and private equity fund manager. “We will never find out unless we drill wells.” Foreign investors are starting to pay attention.

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U.S.-Russia rift shaking up Canadian mining sector, for better and worse – by Peter Koven (National Post – July 16, 2014)

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

Escalating geopolitical tensions between Vladimir Putin and the West may be setting off tremors in Canada’s mining sector, with Russian backers withdrawing from North American assets, creating both big opportunities and major headaches for Canadian firms.

Toronto-based Corsa Coal Corp. announced Tuesday that it would purchase U.S. coal producer PBS Coals Ltd. for $60-million from Russia’s OAO Severstal — just a fraction of the $900-million purchase price that Severstal paid for PBS in 2008, which had already been discounted from a previous offer Severstal had made before the financial crisis struck.

“We think it’s a transformative deal for the company,” Corsa director George Dethlefsen said. Mr. Dethlefsen said that the Russian steel giant decided it no longer needs be vertically integrated on the coal side. Those issues made PBS expendable and gave Toronto-based Corsa a unique growth opportunity at the bottom of the coal market.

At the same time, however, Vancouver-based Mercator Minerals Ltd. is facing a dire financial position as a deal with Russian firm Intergeo MMC Ltd. appears to be on the brink of collapse.

Intergeo, which is controlled by flamboyant Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, agreed to buy Mercator last December, before the Ukrainian crisis, rescuing the company from liquidity problems. The deal would have given Intergeo ownership of Mercator’s Mineral Park mine in Arizona.

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“You can’t breathe in air with 7000 micrograms of sulfur dioxide.” [Norilsk Nickel – Kola Peninsula] – by Amelia Jaycen (Barents Observer – July 03, 2014)

http://barentsobserver.com/en

BarentsObserver.com is an open internet news service, which offers daily updated news from and about the Barents Region and the Arctic. The site is run by the Norwegian Barents Secretariat in Kirkenes, Norway.

Putin presses Norilsk Nickel to move to a functioning, upgraded plant, dismantle the obsolete polluter in Nikel.

Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology on Tuesday told representatives of “MMC” Norilsk Nickel of the planned decommissioning some of Nikel plant rundown facilities by 2016 and reorganization of metallurgical production at the Monchegorsk plant, which must be upgraded and modernized, the ministry said in a press release yesterday. Monchegorsk is owned by the same company and located some two-hour drive south of Murmansk on the Kola Peninsula.

The program involves modernization and renovation of all stages of processing and consolidation of smelting and refining capacity to a more modern venue including technological upgrading and expansion of refinery at Monchegorsk during 2016-2017. Capital investments in the program total more than 50 billion rubles, the release says.

The decision was made in the course of inter-ministerial consultations, and the updated reconfiguration of Monchegorsk is to be accompanied by a special Russian-Norwegian working group. The parties scheduled a technical workshop for September 2014 in Moscow to plan the next steps.

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K+S Plans Specialty, Salt Growth to Add to Canada Potash – by Sheenagh Matthews (Bloomberg News – July 3, 2014)

http://www.businessweek.com/

K+S AG (SDF), the German potash producer that’s developing a $4 billion mine in Canada, is looking beyond the biggest investment in its history and plans to expand its specialty-fertilizer and salt businesses.

The salt unit has a target of doubling operating profit to 250 million euros ($342 million) by 2020, Chief Executive Officer Norbert Steiner said at a press conference at K+S’s Hattorf mine on the Werra River in central Germany. The company also plans to boost the proportion of sales from higher-margin fertilizers that have magnesium and sulfur content.

“We have ideas” for growth outside of potash, Steiner said. In salt, “we’re only in mature markets. We aren’t global yet.” Southeast Asia and eastern Europe are regions where the company is under-represented, he said, without specifying countries where Kassel-based K+S may expand.

K+S is still pouring the bulk of financial resources into development of the Saskatchewan mine dubbed Legacy. The potash producer cut its annual dividend 82 percent and sold 1 billion euros of bonds in December to help pay for the project. Some investors had called for a delay or cancellation of work on Legacy after an industry cartel breakup a year ago led to a 24 percent slump in potash prices.

The end of an export agreement between potash companies in Russia and Belarus in July 2013 roiled the industry, sending stock prices of fertilizer makers around the world down as much as 24 percent in a day.

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Coal mines in Ukraine could close as fighting continues – by Sam Dodson (World Coal – June 24, 2014)

http://www.worldcoal.com/

As fighting continues between Ukrainian military forces and pro-Russian separatists, coal mines in the country face possible shutdowns, according to DTEK, Ukraine’s largest mining and power group.

Months of hard fighting

The insurgency in the largely Russian-speaking east erupted in April after street protests in the capital Kiev toppled the Moscow-backed leader Viktor Yanukovich. Russia subsequently annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and the West has accused Russia of supporting the insurgency.

Following months of hard fighting, on Monday 23 June, pro-Russian rebel leader Alexander Borodai said the separatists would observe a ceasefire for five days. However, attacks on both Ukrainian military forces – and on civilians – were reported as recently as the 22 June.

With the continued fighting, the country’s resources have been threatened repeatedly. DTEK issued a statement a day after the separatists attacked its Komsomolets Donbassa, one of the largest coalmines in Ukraine, detaining the coal mine’s top management and confiscating assets, including coalminers’ monthly pay, 22 vehicles and office equipment.

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Uralkali Cuts Potash Output Target by 8% to Support Price – by Yuliya Fedorinova (Bloomberg News – June 19, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

OAO Uralkali (URKA), the world’s largest potash company by production, cut its output target for this year by about 8 percent to support prices.

The company cut projected volumes to 11 million metric tons from 12 million tons, Chief Executive Officer Dmitry Osipov said at Uralkali’s Capital Markets Day today in Moscow. The fertilizer maker will continue to consider market conditions when weighing production levels, he said.

Uralkali broke up a trading venture with Belarus last July and said it will operate at full capacity to regain market share, a step that roiled the $20 billion global potash market. Potash prices slumped as much as 30 percent to as low as $310 a ton by December. They have since recovered to some $350 a ton.

“Market share is important for us, but we don’t want prices to fall,” Osipov said in an interview this month, signaling that the company may lower its production target.

Last year’s industry crisis, which followed Uralkali’s exit from the venture with Belarus, led to a “more healthy environment” in the market as producers have since adopted more “rational thinking,” Oleg Petrov, director for sales and marketing said at today’s event in Moscow.

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Kinross lobbying Ottawa over sanctions – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – June 17, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Kinross Gold Corp. has been working feverishly to ensure that its prized Russian mines do not become a casualty of the diplomatic spat between Russia and the West.

During a difficult period in which the company has struggled to placate both sides, federal lobbying records made public in June show that Kinross’s chief executive Paul Rollinson and a lobbyist for the Toronto-based gold miner have had numerous communications with the Canadian government’s top officials, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s foreign affairs policy adviser.

The high level of interactions with the federal government comes as investors fret over Western sanctions against Russia, which were imposed in an attempt to curb the country’s aggression in Ukraine.

In April, Kinross hired three lobbyists with ties to Mr. Harper’s Conservative government. The lobbyists include Michael Coates, the chief executive of Hill and Knowlton Canada and a former adviser to Mr. Harper who helped him prepare for elections in 2004, 2006 and 2008.

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Euromax proving to be an exception for Canadian mining firms in Europe – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – June 16, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Canadian mining companies have had a rough go in Europe. Clobbered by political indecision and fierce opposition from environmental groups, Gabriel Resources seems on the verge of abandoning its 15-year attempt to open the continent’s biggest gold mine, in Romania. Eldorado Gold has been besieged by protests and an arson attack that have slowed, though not killed, its mine development in northern Greece.

Euromax Resources is proving the exception to the rule that no Canadian mining development in Europe shall go unchallenged. The company’s shares, which are listed on Toronto’s Venture exchange, tripled over a three-day period starting June 5, when it released a pre-feasibility study that, it claimed, amply displayed the “economic robustness” of its Ilovitza gold-copper deposit in southeast Macedonia. The shares last traded at 60 cents; at one point in April, they were under a dime.

The encouraging study means that the $500-million (U.S.) open-pit mine is almost certain to go ahead. “We have the chance to build the first greenfield mine that anyone has seen in the Balkans for 30 years,” says Euromax CEO Steve Sharpe.

Even better, the permitting risk, while not absent, seems low. Macedonia is a new country that is working hard to attract foreign investors. To streamline development, it front-end loads the permitting process, that is, government departments and regulators provide permits based on detailed conceptual studies. “You get government buy-in from day one,” Mr. Sharpe says, noting that Euromax expects no problems in obtaining the construction permit.

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Russia’s Gazprom cuts gas supply to Ukraine as talks fail – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – June 16, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

ROME — Political tensions between Russia and Ukraine intensified on Monday when Russian energy giant Gazprom halted natural gas supplies to Ukraine after talks to settle a payment dispute failed.

“Gas supplies to Ukraine have been reduce to zero,” Ukrainian energy minister Yuri Prodan said, according to a BBC report.

Mr. Prodan’s announcement came shortly after Gazprom said it would only deliver gas to Ukraine that is paid for up front. For months, Gazprom and Ukraine have been locked in contract dispute over gas arrears payments. Gazprom puts Ukraine’s unpaid gas bill at $4-billion (U.S.) and demanded that almost half of it be paid by today’s deadline or face supply disruptions.

Gazprom said it had filed a lawsuit at a Stockholm arbitration court to try to recover the debt. Ukraine’s state oil and gas company, Naftogaz, said it was filing a suit at the same court to recover $6-billion in alleged overpayments.

The gas shut-off came as clashes between pro-Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine and Ukraine government forces turn more bloody. On Saturday, rebels shot down a Ukrainian military plane as it approached an airport in Luhansk, killing all 49 on board.

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UK hits 30-year anniversary of miners’ strike – by Alasdair Soussi (Al Jazeera.com – March 6, 2014)

http://www.aljazeera.com/

The strike led to a humiliating and lasting defeat for the miners and a political triumph for Margaret Thatcher.

Glasgow, United Kingdom – Few confrontations in the history of modern Britain come close to the industrial dispute that gripped England, Scotland and Wales in March 1984. Fracturing communities, pitting workers against the forces of law and order and even causing lives to be lost, the bitter clash became one of the greatest trade union struggles since the British General Strike of 1926.

That struggle was the British miners’ strike and today marks 30 years since the head of Britain’s Coal Board, Ian MacGregor, announced plans to cut production – the equivalent of 20 pits or 20,000 jobs – leading to a year-long walkout that would see British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) President Arthur Scargill come to blows and change the face of Great Britain forever.

“It was the longest industrial dispute in Britain in the 20th century and directly involved roughly 120,000-130,000 workers from March 1984 onwards,” Dr Jim Phillips, a senior lecturer of economic and social history at the University of Glasgow, told Al Jazeera.

“It might be seen as pivotal in the sense of Britain’s economic trajectory – moving out of an industrial economy into a more service, finance, and capital-related economy. Some of the 150 or so pits that operated in 1984 were, in narrow economic terms, loss-making and so required some degree of cross subsidy from more financially viable pits to remain in operation… The coal industry was also losing business during the recession of the early 1980s.”

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Meet the Russian CEO on a Mission to Guard Potash Prices – by Yuliya Fedorinova (Bloomberg News – June 10, 2014)

http://www.businessweek.com/

OAO Uralkali Chief Executive Officer Dmitry Osipov favors stable potash prices as he considers how to manage output at the world’s biggest producer of the fertilizer.

That’s a relief for investors and peers after the company’s decision, under his predecessor, to end a venture with Belarus and ramp up production led to a price slump of about 30 percent.

“We are a responsible market player,” Osipov, 48, said in an interview in his Moscow office. “Market share is important for us, but we don’t want prices to fall. It’s too early to say what utilization rate we will have in the second half.”

Osipov, an academic researcher before rampant inflation in 1993 forced him to seek better paid work in industry, replaced Vladislav Baumgertner, 42, after the breakup of the marketing venture landed the then-CEO in a KGB jail in Belarus. While Uralkali has since stuck to a policy of higher output, running at near full capacity from about 70 percent previously, Osipov is keeping his options open for the second half of the year.

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Turkey needs new coal mining law after disaster -commission head – by Gulsen Solaker (Reuters India – June 10, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

SOMA, Turkey, June 10 (Reuters) – Turkey needs a new coal mining law to prevent a repeat of its worst ever industrial disaster in which 301 workers were killed, the head of a commission investigating the incident said on Tuesday.

The miners were killed last month in a mine fire in Soma, a small town 480 km (300 miles) southwest of Istanbul, fuelling anger in a nation which has long had one of the world’s worst workplace safety records.

The disaster highlighted gaps in Turkish regulation, not least the lack of specific rules for the coal industry, as well as insufficiently stringent inspections, local mining experts told Reuters after of the fire.

Ali Riza Alaboyun, a deputy from the ruling AK Party who heads the parliamentary commission investigating the accident, said the highly-complex nature of coal mines required a separate set of regulations.

“By doing this, we will be able to regulate inspections and training related to coal mines separately,” Alaboyun told reporters during a visit to Soma.

Eight suspects including the chief executive of Soma Mining, which operates the facility, have been provisionally charged with “causing multiple deaths by negligence”. The company has denied any negligence on its part.

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Romania’s gold mine project on hold after parliament rejects bill – by Luiza Ilie (Reuters U.S. – June 3, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

BUCHAREST, June 3 (Reuters) – Romania’s lower house of parliament rejected a bill on Tuesday that would have allowed Canada’s Gabriel Resources to proceed with plans to set up Europe’s biggest open-cast gold mine, putting the project on hold indefinitely.

The bill, which was initially approved by the leftist government of Prime Minister Victor Ponta, drew thousands of anti-mine protesters into the streets across the European Union country last year, prompting the senate to strike it down.

The lower house had the final say, and data it published on Tuesday showed deputies rejected the draft law with 302 votes against and one in favour.

Romania is one of Europe’s poorest countries but it is comparatively rich in natural resources, including gas, coal and gold. Tuesday’s vote has kicked into the long grass a project the government has said is vital to reviving an ailing mining sector in a Romanian region in dire need of jobs and investment.

Gabriel has been waiting for more than 15 years for approval to use cyanide to mine about 314 tonnes of gold and 1,500 tonnes of silver in the small town of Rosia Montana. The local unit of Gabriel Resources declined to comment on Tuesday.

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France sets its sights abroad: New state-owned French mining company to explore for minerals in francophone Africa and in South America – by Tom Dinardo (CIM Magazine – May 2014)

http://magazine.cim.org/en/2014/May.aspx

The mining industry within France has been dormant for decades and its global portfolio is modest, but the French government is determined to change that. In late February, French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg announced the republic would create the Compagnie Nationale des Mines de France (CMF) as part of a plan to grow the country’s mining sector. CMF will act as a de facto junior mining company, exploring for non-energetic minerals largely outside of France in francophone Africa, South America, and Central Asia. It is the first new state-owned company created by the French government since 1993.

A source close to the minister, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the decision to create CMF was spurred by demand from foreign countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, for French aid in exploring and developing their natural resources. Rather than deal with private junior and major companies, these countries indicated a preference to work government-to-government on such exploration projects, the source said.

There is also currently a heightened sensitivity to the geopolitics of metals, said Jean-Claude Guillaneau, director of georesources at France’s Bureau of Geological and Mining Research (BRGM). “China is producing 95 per cent of the rare earths and they use [them] to attract industrial development,” he said. “To secure our industry, we need to have some long-term control of the metal availability at least on some strategic and critical metals,” he explained, adding other countries like Japan have similar publicly owned mining companies.

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