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Zeppelins Seen Hauling Caterpillars to Mine Siberia: Commodities – by Firat Kayakiran & Thomas Biesheuvel (Bloomberg News – November 27, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Robin Young of Amur Minerals Corp. wants to dig for nickel and copper in Siberia where forbidding winters and poor roads make it tough to haul in equipment. His best option: fly it in with zeppelins.

Otherwise the London-traded explorer would have to spend about $150 million building a 350-kilometer (218-mile) road to truck in heavy construction gear, Chief Executive Officer Young said in an interview. Peter Hambro, executive chairman of gold producer Petropavlovsk Plc, said he invested in a maker of the airships and foresees the mining industry adopting them.

“To build a bridge to take a Toyota Land Cruiser isn’t horrifically expensive,” Hambro said. “To build a bridge that will take a Caterpillar 777 is very, very expensive,” he said, referring to the 87-ton dump truck used in mines.

Zeppelin and blimp manufacturers need mining contracts to creep back to life, 76 years after the Hindenburg burned and crashed in New Jersey, ending most buyer interest for decades.

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Poland’s road from coal destined to be long – by Jan Cienski (Financial Times – November 25, 2013)

http://www.ft.com/home/us

Less than six months before Poland hosted more than 10,000 delegates for the UN’s climate talks, Donald Tusk, the prime minister, was in the south-western city of Opole showing where his priorities really are.

He was there to shepherd through an agreement to spend 11bn zlotys ($3.5bn) building an enormous 1.8GW coal-fired power station that Polska Grupa Energetyczna, the country’s leading utility, was so reluctant to build that Mr Tusk had to browbeat Krzysztof Kilian, then chief executive, into going along with the project.

“We are now in the process of shaping the energy mix in which coal will again find its place,” Mr Tusk said during the signing ceremony. “It is important that coal produces energy, that people have work and that Poland has enough energy.”

Poland is under growing pressure from the European Union and elsewhere to move decisively away from coal, which provides about 90 per cent of the country’s electricity. However, there are few immediate alternatives. Natural gas, a much cleaner fuel, is unpopular because most of it has to be imported from Russia. Meanwhile, hopes of a native shale gas industry have failed to materialise until now because of -financial, regulatory and geological hurdles.

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Eramet chief warns of crisis in world nickel market – by Agence France-Presse (Global Post – November 22, 2013)

http://www.globalpost.com/

The chief executive of French mining group Eramet has blamed oversupply in the world nickel market for steep losses at a subsidiary as China ramps up its own production, with little end in sight.

Patrick Buffet said the global overcapacity was causing Societe Le Nickel (SLN), the group’s nickel subsidiary in New Caledonia, to rack up monthly losses of 2.5 billion French Pacific francs ($27 million).

“The crisis in the nickel (market) is very, very intense and nobody expected it to reach such a level,” Buffet told reporters in Noumea on Thursday after a board meeting of SLN, the largest private employer on New Caledonia’s main island of Grande Terre.

The French Pacific territory is home to a quarter of the world’s reserves of nickel, a key ingredient in the manufacture of stainless steel, rechargeable batteries and coins.

Buffet’s warning came after parent group Eramet last month posted a 5.0-percent drop in third-quarter sales to 754 million euros ($1 billion), mainly because of slumping nickel prices.

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PRESS RELEASE: Outokumpu Chief Medical Officer Markku Huvinen’s long-term study published in British Medical Journal

OUTOKUMPU OYJ

November 21, 2013 at 3.30 pm EET

British Medical Journal has published an article by Outokumpu’s Chief Medical Officer Markku Huvinen. The article is based on his 30-year study and reports its findings on cancer incidence among ferrochrome and stainless steel production workers in Kemi and Tornio, Finland. The study shows that there is no added risk of cancer to individuals working in steel mills and living nearby.

Says Outokumpu CEO Mika Seitovirta: “We are extremely proud of Markku’s research and the work done by our health and safety team. Markku initiated the first systematic measurement in the world on the exposure to chromium and other compounds connected with stainless steel production. Safety comes first in all our operations – we want our employees to return home safely at the end of their working day. If we cannot remove all risks, we make every effort to control them.”

The study assesses the risk of cancer, especially cancers of the lung and nose, since the start of the production in 1967 until 2011. The overall cancer incidence was similar as in general in the same region, and the lung cancer risk was actually lower.

Says Markku Huvinen: “When I started as doctor at Outokumpu in 1970s, one of the ferrochrome smelter workers came to my office, blew his nose and asked me, ‘What does this dust do to my health?’

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Like it or lump it: Coal isn’t going anywhere soon – by Carl Mortished (Globe and Mail – November 19, 2013)

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.

Not one but two climate change meetings are currently under way in Warsaw. You may be aware of the conference sponsored by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, another effort to agree cuts to carbon emissions after the failure in Copenhagen in 2009. In a provocative gesture, the Polish government is simultaneously hosting a summit meeting of the World Coal Association.

Whether we like it or not, it is the activities of the latter organization which have more significance for human health, wealth and the state of the planet.

Coal is no longer king of energy, it is global emperor. Coal is the fastest-growing source of energy and, according to the International Energy Agency, will remain the top fuel for power generation for the next two decades. Its affordability and accessibility will make it the electricity-generating fuel of choice in Asia, replacing expensive liquefied natural gas.

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Russian billionaire Prokhorov to buy stake in potash giant Uralkali – by Polina Devitt (Globe and Mail – November 19, 2013)

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.

MOSCOW — Reuters – Tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov has agreed to buy a stake in Uralkali, the world’s largest potash miner, as Russia seeks to ease tensions over the collapse of a potash sales cartel with Belarus that drove down global prices.

The deal was blessed by President Vladimir Putin, sources familiar with the matter said, in a bid to repair ties with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko. Russia’s ally had arrested Uralkali’s boss after the Russian firm quit the marketing pact.

Prokhorov’s investment firm, Onexim, said on Monday that it expected to quickly complete the purchase of Suleiman Kerimov’s 21.75 per cent stake in Uralkali. Talks continued on the sale of stakes held by Kerimov’s partners to other buyers in side deals, which linked together would secure Prokhorov and his allies strategic control over the business.

Lukashenko, riled by the Uralkali gambit that which hit a major export earner for Belarus, has demanded that Kerimov sell out as a precondition for freeing Uralkali chief executive officer Vladislav Baumgertner from house arrest in Minsk.

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UN climate chief urges coal industry to leave most remaining coal reserves untapped – by Monika Scislowska (The Associated Press/Vancouver Sun – November 18, 2013)

 http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

WARSAW, Poland – The U.N.’s chief climate diplomat on Monday urged the coal industry to diversify toward cleaner energy sources and leave most of the world’s remaining coal reserves in the ground.

On the sidelines of a U.N. climate conference, Christiana Figueres told dozens of CEOs of coal companies meeting at Poland’s Economy Ministry that their industry needs to change radically to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases that scientists say are warming the planet.

“The world is rising to meet the climate challenge as risks of inaction mount, and it is in your best interest to make coal part of the solution,” Figueres said.

The coal event was seen as a provocation by climate activists, who used a crane to reach the ministry’s roof, where they unfurled banners criticizing Poland’s — and the world’s — reliance on coal and other fossil fuels.

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Miners hope Czech election will end gold extraction moratorium – by Jan Marchal (Business Day – November 18, 2013)

http://www.bdlive.co.za/ [South Africa]

CZECH gold deposits are whetting the appetites of foreign prospectors hoping to see the new government lift a mining moratorium in the aftermath of snap elections.

But rather than a dream come true, the prospect of a gold rush is a nightmare for environmentalists and residents of the hilly region south of the capital, Prague, a popular resort area that holds the biggest deposit.

“No one wants an open-cast mine here, in this wonderful natural setting near the Vltava River,” says Jiri Stastka, mayor of the village of Chotilsko. A few hundred metres from the village, the Vesely Vrch wooded hill and its surroundings conceal about 140 tonnes of the metal worth an estimated 100-billion koruna ($5bn ).

Known as the Mokrsko deposit, this is just more than a quarter of the Czech Republic’s estimated 380-400 tonnes of gold, which is about 1% of the globe’s deposits. But locals fear irreversible environmental damage, particularly the pollution of groundwater since toxic cyanide is used in the extraction of gold.

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Every Sunday, There’s a Protest Outside Billionaire John Paulson’s Enormous Townhouse – by Kristen French (New York Magazine – November 14, 2013)

http://nymag.com/

On a blustery Sunday in November, the wind tore down East 86th Street from the hills of Central Park, whipping leaves and debris around a handful of protestors gathered in front of the 28,500-square-foot townhouse of hedge-fund billionaire John Paulson, one of America’s wealthiest men and biggest gold investors. Silvia Pena, 32, a tall, big-eyed beauty from Bucharest who came to New York from Romania three years ago to attend the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, held a giant poster board aloft.

It bore photographs of a pensive Paulson, a verdant Romanian valley, the moon-faced landscape of an open-pit gold mine, and a scowling stick figure with one arm pointing fiercely off the page, “GTFO” scrawled in red block letters beneath it. “Get the fuck out,” Silvia explained with a curled smile and a wink in her eye.

Silvia and a coterie of Romanian expats were assembling in front of Paulson’s home for the seventh Sunday in a row to demand that the billionaire withdraw his investment from Gabriel Resources. The Canadian company has been trying for fourteen years to get the Romanian government to green-light its development of Europe’s largest open-pit gold mine in a picturesque and historic town called Rosia Montana. (Hundreds of lawsuits from NGOs over the years have held it up.)

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INTERVIEW-Russian nuclear exporter’s foreign hires battle Soviet-style secrecy – by Alissa de Carbonnel and Svetlana Burmistrova (Reuters India – November 14, 2013)

 http://in.reuters.com/

MOSCOW, Nov 14 (Reuters) – An ambitious export drive by Russia’s nuclear reactor corporation is being hamstrung by dated Soviet-style secrecy rules, foreign executives at the company say.

Rosatom has hired a former Finnish nuclear regulator, Jukka Laaksonen, to be the face of Russian nuclear energy abroad and a guarantor of safety.

But in a throwback to Soviet secrecy rules, Laaksonen and two other new foreign vice presidents are barred from working out of its Moscow headquarters, a hulking colonnaded building that housed the Soviet Union’s atomic ministry in the 1950s.

Before Rosatom’s export branch, Rusatom Overseas, moved to its own offices, its Czech vice president, Leos Tomicek, often worked out a cafe across the street, a company spokesman said.

Tomicek and Laaksonen say strict internal commercial secrecy rules prevent the Russian state firm from advertising its latest technology and are the biggest obstacle to Russia’s ambitions to triple sales by 2030.

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Commentary – CETA to benefit PDAC members: Joe Oliver (Northern Miner – November 13, 2013)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry. 

Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, met with the full board of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada in Toronto on Nov. 12. The following is an excerpt of his prepared speech, as it relates to the proposed Canada-European Union free trade agreement, formally called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which is supported in principle by the PDAC.

Our government is working hard to position Canada to take full advantage of growth in emerging economies. Key to achieving this success will be market access through new infrastructure and market diversification.

Your industry is ahead of the curve in this regard — with markets and market access already well-established worldwide.

As you know, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso recently announced an agreement-in-principle on a free trade agreement with the European Union.

The Canada–EU trade agreement is by far Canada’s most ambitious trade initiative ever. The EU is the largest economy in the world — with its 27 member states, 500 million consumers and annual economic activity of $17 trillion.

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PRESS RELEASE: Rosia Montana-Report of the Special Committee of Parliament-New Romanian Legal Framework for Gold and Silver Mining Proposed

TORONTO, CANADA, Nov 12, 2013 (Marketwired via COMTEX) — Gabriel Resources Ltd. (“Gabriel” or the “Company”) CA:GBU +7.32% announces that the report (“Report”) of the Joint Special Committee of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate (“Special Committee”) on the draft legislation related to its majority owned Rosia Montana gold and silver project (“Project”) and the development of mining activities in Romania (“Draft Law”) has been published.

The Company will issue a further market update in due course once it has had the opportunity to consider fully all findings, proposals, conclusions and recommendations of the Report. This notwithstanding, the Company notes that the conclusions of the Report include:

— recognition that the existing mining law is not sufficient to legislate
for the scale and complexity of the Project;
— a recommendation for the creation of a new legal framework applicable to
gold and silver mining projects and consequently a rejection of the
Draft Law;
— a positive assessment of the economic benefits of the proposed
amendments to the agreement and legislation promoted by the Romanian
Government; and

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Gabriel Resources still confident of way forward for Rosia Montana – by Alex Williams (Mineweb.com – November 12, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

While Romania’s parliamentary committee voted overwhelmingly against legislation that would have fast tracked the mine, CEO, Jonathan Henry remains positive.

LONDON (MINEWEB) – Rosia Montana has a future as a gold mine, Gabriel Resources CEO, Jonathan Henry, told Mineweb on Tuesday. “I’m confident that there’s a way forward,” he said. “We just need to see it.”

On Monday a parliamentary committee overwhelmingly voted against legislation that would have fast-tracked the mine’s construction by declaring it a “public utility.”

However, the company views Monday’s committee decision as a rejection of the legislation supporting Rosia Montana, rather than a rejection of the project itself. The committee has left open the possibility of a wide-ranging review of its mining laws, under which Rosia Montana could technically be approved in the future.

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Romania shuts door on Gabriel’s giant Rosia Montana gold mine – by Armina Ligaya (National Post – November 12, 2013)

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

The last lifeline for Gabriel Resources Ltd.’s controversial mining project in northwestern Romania went dead on Monday, after a parliamentary commission voted down a draft bill which would have allowed Europe’s largest open pit gold mine to move forward.

The rejection of the draft bill, which would have finally set out a course for development of the mine, came after 14 years of waiting for permits amid mounting political turbulence.

The news sent the Canadian mining company’s already-depressed stock down 10%, or 9.3¢ to close at 82.7¢ on the Toronto Stock Exchange Monday. Jonathan Henry, the chief executive of Gabriel Resources, however, said he was “confident” there could still be “a potential path forward” for the project.

The draft bill specific to Rosia Montana was rejected, he said, but Romania may go forward with a general gold and silver mining bill which could leave the door open for Gabriel’s project, he said Monday.

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Gabriel Resources’ Romanian mining project suffers setback – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – November 12, 2013)

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 – Gabriel Resources Ltd.’s 15-year effort to develop Europe’s biggest gold mine suffered yet another setback when a Romanian parliamentary commission overwhelmingly rejected a draft law that, if passed, would have allowed construction of the $1-billion (U.S.) project.

But Toronto-listed Gabriel said the rejection of the draft bill does not mean that the proposed Rosia Montana mine in Transylvania is dead.

A spokesman noted that the draft law was turned down because Romania wants broader legislation to deal with all gold and silver mines, not just the Rosia Montana project. The draft bill dealt only with Rosia Montana.

“The commission believes the bill under consideration does not entirely meet all the complex requirements on the conduct of business in mineral resources exploitation in Romania and therefore proposes its rejection,” Attila Korody, one of the 19 lawmakers on the commission, told Reuters Monday evening.

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