Gold and Silver – Page 222 – Republic of Mining

Franco-Nevada Mulls Credit as `Hokey’ Streaming Goes Mainstream – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – September 8, 2015)

September 8, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/

For Franco-Nevada Corp., the best time to take on debt is at the bottom of a market. The day may be approaching for the Canadian royalty and streaming company as the commodity rout boosts demand for alternative funding.

“There are so many opportunities out there, we might have to dip into our credit lines,” Chief Executive Officer David Harquail said in an interview last week from his Toronto offices. “The ideal is you lever yourself up at the very bottom of the bear market and hopefully, if you’ve called it right, then you really benefit as the market turns around.”

Streaming companies like Franco-Nevada, Silver Wheaton Corp. and Royal Gold Inc. give miners upfront payments in exchange for the right to buy metals at a discount in the future. Franco-Nevada also does royalty agreements, tying portions of production to land titles.

Plunging metal prices, with copper down 24 percent and gold 11 percent in the past year, combined with surging credit costs and volatile stock markets, have made streaming attractive even for majors such as Barrick Gold Corp. and Freeport-McMoRan Inc., giving the business more credibility.

Mining For Gold Song- by Cowboy Junkies

September 5, 2015

Have a great Labour Day weekend everyone! – Stan Sudol (RepublicOfMining.com)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

The band was formed by three siblings from the Timmins entertainment family.
Another sibling, Cali, rose to fame as an actress on Ryan’s Hope. The Timmins
siblings are descendants of Noah Timmins, a mining prospector who founded
the Ontario [gold mining] city of Timmins. (Wiki)

Cowboy Junkies are a Canadian alternative country/blues/folk rock band. The group was formed in Toronto in 1985 by Margo Timmins (vocalist), Michael Timmins (songwriter, guitarist), Peter Timmins (drummer) and Alan Anton (bassist).[1]

The Junkies first performed publicly at the Beverley Tavern and other clubs in Toronto’s Queen Street West, including The Rivoli. Their 1986 debut album, produced by Canadian producer Peter Moore, was the blues-inspired Whites Off Earth Now!!, recorded using an ambisonic microphone in the family garage.[1]

Legacy of Hard Rock Mining in the West — Death of a River, a Community’s Response – by Michele Swenson (Huffington Post – September 2, 2015)

September 3, 2015

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Michele Swenson is an author and activist.

A century and a half of hard-rock mining with no accountability, without consideration for environmental consequences or downstream neighbors has taken a heavy toll in the West. Metallic, acidic wastewater from mines have a long-term effect on agriculture, ranching, aquatic life, human and wild life, and aquifers.

A 3 million gallon dump of mustard-colored toxic waste from Gold King Mine into the Animas River on August 5 raised the most recent alarm, even as the EPA estimates that the overall discharges from local abandoned mines amount to one Gold King mine disaster every two days. Colorado officials estimate that drainage from 230 abandoned mines in the state result in the failure of 1,645 miles of 105,000 miles (1.6%) of rivers and streams to meet Clean Water Act standards.

Cited as the worst environmental disaster in Colorado history, the Summitville open-pit cyanide heap-leach gold mine sits at an altitude of 11,500 feet in the San Juan Mountains, southeast of the Gold King Mine and 40 miles west of the city of Alamosa, just east of the continental divide. The devastating fallout of this form of mining led one resident to lament that the San Juan Valley had become “the poster child for how not to do mining.”

First Mining Finance sees more acquisition opportunities after three-way deal – by Peter Koven (National Post – September 3, 2015)

September 3, 2015

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

Canadian mining heavyweight Keith Neumeyer is taking advantage of awful market conditions to snap up promising assets left and right.

First Mining Finance Corp., Neumeyer’s “mineral bank,” unveiled a three-way deal this week in which it will buy Gold Canyon Resources Inc. and PC Gold Inc. for a total of about $66 million in stock. This comes less than two months after First Mining acquired Coastal Gold Corp., its first acquisition.

Vancouver-based First Mining only went public in April, but the company sees this as the ideal time to buy junior mining assets on the cheap. Juniors are suffering through their worst bear market since the Bre-X crisis because of sinking commodity prices and a near-total lack of financing options.

“We don’t want the market to turn around soon, because we really want to load up on assets,” Pat Donnelly, First Mining’s president, said in an interview. “And so the longer this bear market continues, the better for us.”

Billionaire’s 20-Year-Old Son May Lead $5 Billion Polyus Bid – by Yuliya Fedorinova (Bloomberg News – September 1, 2015)

September 3, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Suleiman Kerimov’s son, a university student in Moscow, may lead a $5.4 billion bid to take Russia’s largest gold producer Polyus Gold International Ltd. private.

Wandle Holdings Ltd. and its Sacturino Ltd. unit, controlled by the billionaire’s son Said Kerimov, are considering an offer to buy the shares of the gold miner they don’t already own for $2.97 each, Sacturino said in a statement late Wednesday. The family already owns about 40 percent of the company, so a fully subscribed offer would value the deal at $5.4 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Polyus shares rose as much as 6.9 percent and were up 3.7 percent at 196.50 pence ($3) as of 12:24 p.m. in London. The stock has climbed 8.3 percent this year, the third-best performer on the 10-company Bloomberg Europe 500 Metals and Mining Index, which dropped 26 percent over the same period.

Kerimov senior, 49, Russia’s 18th richest man with an estimated fortune of $4.9 billion, is a member of the Federation Council, the nation’s upper chamber of the parliament.

Skeena Resources seeks three-peat in Golden Triangle – by Michael Allan McCrae (Mining.com – September 1, 2015)

September 3, 2015

http://www.mining.com/

Skeena Resources (CVE:SKE) is working the ground where it’s legendary chairman, Ron K. Netolitzky, discovered both the Snip Mine and Eskay Creek.

Walter Coles, Jr., the company’s president and CEO, told MINING.com during an interview that the company is in the midst of an aggressive drilling program on its Spectrum property, located in northwest British Columbia.

Spectrum is a structurally-hosted, high-grade, mesothermal gold deposit located in the prolific Golden Triangle, an area known for many discoveries and mines. Skeena’s corporate goal is to establish a 43-101 compliant, two to three million ounce, high-grade gold resource in multiple, closely spaced, steeply dipping, parallel zones. The Spectrum property includes 13 known gold prospects most of which have received no previous drilling.

Coles lauds his chairman’s experience in the area:

“Ron had some great fortune in the Golden Triangle region of northwest BC.,” says Coles.

Africa’s Deadwood: The Gold Rush Is On in Uganda (Associated Press/New York Times – September 2, 2015)

September 2, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/

MUBENDE, Uganda — The hunt for gold takes the men 100 meters (yards) underground, past contraptions of wood and rope rigged to function like pulleys, past hard rock that they attack day and night with demolition hammers. When they emerge at the end of a shift, the miners carry stone samples that will be examined for the dark veins that suggest presence of gold.

The gold rush is on in a big way in this central Ugandan district of Mubende. So big that tens of thousands of people make their livelihood from it. Makeshift tents of blue tarps dot the green hills that are pockmarked by pools of muddy water where ore is washed, separating the gold. Four mining camps have sprung up in recent years, featuring brothels and restaurants.

Now, Ugandan government officials are considering evicting the miners, saying they are not licensed. The government would evict them under eminent domain, compensate them and then open the area to bidders with development plans.

“These people are scratching across the surface, like rats,” Edwards Kagimba, the director of geological surveys and mines at Uganda’s Ministry of Energy, said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

South Africa’s Gold Mines Face Uncertain Future – by Alexandra Wexler (Wall Street Journal – September 1, 2015)

September 2, 2015

http://www.wsj.com/

South Africa’s gold industry needs radical reshaping to survive beyond the next few decades

WESTONARIA, South Africa—At Sibanye Gold Ltd.’s Kloof mine in the heart of the world’s largest known gold reserve, more than 10,000 workers toil daily at depths of around 2 miles—a striking image of the scale and ambition of an industry that until recently enjoyed booming profits and plentiful production.

But the golden era for South Africa’s producers now appears to be over. Upended by a toxic combination of falling prices, intensifying labor disputes and the surging cost of ever-deeper exploration, the country’s largest producers are flailing. Squeezed by tumbling profits and a lackluster outlook for gold prices, several of South Africa’s biggest gold producers are even dialing back expectations for the lifespan of their operations.

“This is an industry that’s mature, old and in some degree of distress,” said Dawie Mostert, Sibanye’s senior vice president of organizational effectiveness. “We need to make sure that there is sustainability” for the future.

Sibanye’s nearly 50-year-old Kloof mine, deeper at some points than six New York City Freedom Towers stacked end to end, is expected to close in 2033. The company faces increasing headwinds after reporting a 70% drop in net profit in the first half of the year.

Nazi ‘gold train’: Poland to bring in army to help in hunt – by Agence France-Presse (The Guardian – September 2, 2015)

September 2, 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/

Defence ministry says it will send technical equipment to region of lower Silesia to establish whether train exists

Poland will deploy the military to look for an alleged Nazi “gold train” that sparked global fascination after two anonymous treasure hunters claimed they had pinpointed where it is buried.

“The defence minister decided to send technical equipment to search the area in order to determine whether a train actually exists,” a defence ministry spokesman, Jacek Sonta, said on Tuesday.

“The army is acting at the request of the governor of the region concerned.”

On Monday Tomasz Smolarz, the governor of the south-western region of lower Silesia, said it was “impossible to claim that such a find actually exists at the location indicated based on the documents that have been submitted”.

REFILE-Illegal mines a slavery hotspot in Colombia, Peru-experts – by Anastasia Moloney (Reuters U.S. – September 1, 2015)

September 2, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

BOGOTA, Sept 1 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A boom in illegal gold mining in Colombia and Peru is fuelling human trafficking and forced labor in and around mines but there have been few convictions for the crime, researchers say.

In Peru, the world’s fifth biggest gold producer and exporter, sexual exploitation and forced labour in some mining areas is a growing concern, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) says.

“Human trafficking in both illegal mining areas and small-scale mining is an increasing problem in Peru,” said Jeremy MacGillivray, IOM’s project development officer in Peru.

Poor, uneducated and unemployed women and girls are vulnerable to recruiters’ false promises of work as cooks, cleaners and waitresses in mining towns but are often forced into commercial sex work.

“Around mines, small towns sprout up providing services for miners, including restaurants, bars and brothels, where many of the victims of sexual exploitation are.

Three-way Canada gold junior merger falls short – by Frik Els (Mining.com – September 1, 2015)

September 2, 2015

http://www.mining.com/

Shares in Gold Canyon Resources (CVE:GCU) and PC Gold (CVE:PKL) shot up on Tuesday massive trading volumes, after announcing that First Mining Finance Corp. (CVE:FF) will be acquiring all the shares of both explorers.

Vancouver-based Gold Canyon was last trading at $0.175, up 52.2%, drifting lower as the day wore on after the counter doubled at the start of trade on the TSX Venture Exchange. Gold Canyon, which owns gold projects in Canada and a rare earth prospecting licence in Tanzania is now worth $29 million in Toronto. More than 7.7 million shares changed hands (some 30 times usual volumes) making it the most active stock on the venture board.

PC Gold, based in Toronto, jumped 66% by the close affording the Ontario old mine explorer a $5.4 million market valuation after roughly 2 million shares were traded. Both counters ended well below the implied premium offered by First Mining over their 30-day average price which was 204% for Gold Canyon and 255% above PC Gold’s share price.

First Mining Finance shareholders were on the losing end of the deal – the Vancouver company which calls itself a mineral bank gave up a fifth of its value on the TSX-V by the close for a $28.2 million market cap.

Gold Isn’t the Safe Haven Investors Thought It Would Be – by Debarati Roy (Bloomberg News – August 30, 2015)

September 1, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Gold bulls piled into the metal in hopes that the turmoil sweeping financial markets would finally help revive prices. They were wrong.

Instead of a rally, futures in New York fell for four straight sessions even as global equities plunged to a two-year low. Rather than providing a refuge from the meltdown, gold’s volatility rose right along with a measure of equity turbulence, diminishing its appeal as a haven. As stocks started to recover, the metal kept falling because of reports that signaled gains for the U.S. economy.

It’s been a tough two years for investors in gold, which first fell into a bear market in April 2013. More than $52 billion has been wiped from the value of physical bullion funds since then. Money managers last week raised their net-long position to the highest since June just before futures capped the worst slump in a month. Stubbornly low inflation along with the prospect of tighter U.S. monetary policy has kept a lid on the metal, which doesn’t pay interest or offer returns, unlike competing assets.

“A good test for gold was the latest round of volatility, and gold did not do much, since it has become unattractive as a safe haven,” said Atul Lele, who helps oversee $5.1 billion as the chief investment officer at Nassau, Bahamas-based Deltec International Group.

Australian gold output on the rise – by Lawrie Williams (Mineweb.com – August 31, 2015)

August 31, 2015

http://www.mineweb.com/

Surbiton Associates in its latest survey of the Australian gold sector notes rising production during the June quarter.

LONDON – The world’s second largest gold mining nation, Australia, saw gold output rise in the June quarter according to a survey by Melbourne-based consultancy, Surbiton Associates.
Gold production for the period totalled some 72 tonnes (2.31 million ounces), an increase of almost three tonnes or four per cent over the March 2015 quarter. With most Australian miners having June year-ends, Surbiton puts the fiscal year total (to end-June) at 285 tonnes.

In Mineweb’s analysis of global gold output in calendar 2014, derived from figures from London-based consultancy Metals Focus, China was the world’s leading producer that year with annual output of 462 tonnes with Australia second, just ahead of Russia, with a little over 272 tonnes.

So the latest Surbiton figures suggest Australian gold output could well be heading strongly higher in calendar 2015. (See: Gold’s top 20 – mines, miners and countries). China is also believed to be producing more gold this year than last.

What does Carl Icahn want with Freeport-McMoran? – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – August 28, 2015)

August 28, 2015

http://www.mineweb.com/

The activist investor has taken a big slug of the company’s shares.

HALIFAX – It must have been an interesting exercise for a billionaire that has made a name as an activist shareholder to tackle the mining industry now. To make a list of mining targets in a decimated market with resources meaningful enough to raise the spectre of a serious shake-up at one of the world’s largest mining companies.

It’s fair to simply step back and chuckle for a moment. For a whole lot of miners are so creamed, so loss-making for so many, that an activist raider surveying the field of options must be like the bear that stumbles into a honey factory after a hurricane.

Where to start? Who can I lean on? Which shareholders will treat me sweetest? Would Barrick have been on that list? Teck? Anglo American?

Yee Gads. You wonder if some mining heads might have muttered under their breath Thursday afternoon, Thanks be to Freeport. Icahn leaves us alone.

[Timmins gold mining] 56 laid off as Primero’s open pit mined out – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – August 28, 2015)

August 28, 2015

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

BLACK RIVER-MATHESON – The gold mining industry in Northeastern Ontario took another hit this week.

Primero Mining Corporation announced Thursday that 56 workers have been laid off as a result of the closure of the open pit operation at the Black Fox mine, located about 10 kilometres east of Matheson. It was formerly the Brigus Gold property.

Primero’s Black Fox underground mine continues to operate, despite the layoffs in the pit, said mine general manager Dan Gagnon at a news conference in Timmins Thursday morning.

Gagnon, a veteran in mine management, was appointed as the new boss at Primero just three months ago. Gagnon made it clear the underground operation at Black Fox is continuing and provides jobs for roughly 310 employees.

It was this time last week that IAMGOLD revealed that 33 employees were to be laid off from the Côtė Lake gold project, located southwest of Gogama.