International Media Resource Articles – Page 576

Chile’s small-scale miners battling to stay afloat amid copper rout – by Anthony Esposito (Reuters U.S. – February 22, 2016)

February 23, 2016

http://www.reuters.com/

INCA DE ORO, CHILE – Like his father before him, Alberto Carrizo has worked in Chile’s copper mines since he was a teenager, supporting his family as prices for the metal boomed in recent decades.

But as copper prices have slid to a more than six-year low, Carrizo and his colleagues laboring away at the countless smaller mines that pock mark the Atacama desert are finding the buckets of ore they spend all day digging from the ground are fetching less and less money.

Some are responding by turning to gold mining, others are finding work in growing industries like renewable energy, while a dwindling few are hanging on, hoping prices will yet recover.

Nevada might get huge investment from Barrick Gold – by Jennifer Robison (Las Vegas Review-Journal – February 23, 2016)

February 23, 2016

http://www.reviewjournal.com/

Nevada’s largest mining company is eyeing plans to invest big in its operations. Barrick Gold Corp. said Monday that it could spend $2.1 billion through 2020 expanding gold mines in Nevada and Peru, with about $1.4 billion of the investments set for the Silver State.

The biggest chunk — $1 billion — would go toward building an underground mine at Goldrush, a new deposit about 4 miles southeast of Barrick’s Cortez Hills operation near Elko. Once it starts producing in 2021, Goldrush could yield 440,000 ounces of gold each year. The deposit has an estimated 8.6 million ounces in gold resources.

Barrick is also evaluating expansion of underground mining at Turquoise Ridge, northeast of Winnemucca. The company would build a third production shaft at the site to nearly double annual gold production from 280,000 ounces to 500,000 ounces.

World Bank lowers nickel price projection, Terrafame sticks to optimistic forecast (Ujtkset News – Feburary 23, 2016)

February 23, 2016

http://yle.fi/uutiset/

The state-owned company Terrafame, which now owns and operates Talvivaara’s mining operations in Sotkamo, eastern Finland, says it’s sticking to optimistic price forecasts for its business and financial planning. The World Bank however, has forecast a 15-percent drop in market prices for nickel, one of the mine’s main outputs.

Shortly after it acquired the mining operation Talvivaara last August, the state-owned company Terrafame said that it would be basing its business plans on “conservative nickel price forecasts” issued by the World Bank.

“Our business plan is based on it [nickel prices] rising to about 16,000 dollars [per ton] by 2020, which it the World Bank’s forecast. If we stick to this framework, then we will be able to achieve a positive cash flow by the end of 2017 into 2018,” Terrafame board chair Lauri Ratia said in mid-August.

‘A CITY LOST IN THE DESERT’: A visit to the Sahara’s uranium capital – by Armin Rosen (Business Insider India – February 23, 2016)

February 23, 2016

http://www.businessinsider.in/

In May 2013, a car bomb detonated near the Somair uranium mine in Arlit, in northern Niger, killing one person. Moments earlier, in Agadez, some 150 miles south, Al Qaeda-affiliated militants waged an assault on Nigerien army positions that killed over 20 people.

That same year, Niger’s two uranium mines produced 4,238 tons of uranium, down from 4,572 the year before – but up from 4,159 tons in 2011. The mines didn’t miss their production targets. Extraction continued as if the bombing had barely even happened.

The Somair mine is one of two uranium sites in Arlit that are largely owned and operated by Areva, a majority state-owned French nuclear-services company.

Zimbabwe orders diamond mines shut, says not nationalising – by MacDonald Dzirutwe (Reuters Africa – February 22, 2016)

February 22, 2016

http://af.reuters.com/

HARARE (Reuters) – Zimbabwe ordered diamond mining firms to stop operations immediately on Monday and leave the Marange fields as their licences have expired but denied the government was seizing the mines.

The diamond fields in the east of Zimbabwe near Mozambique are mined by nine firms. Eight, including two Chinese-run companies, are joint ventures 50 percent owned by the government and the other one is wholly owned by the state.

“The JV companies neglected or failed to renew the special (mining) grants. Some expired as far back as 2010 and others in 2013,” Mines Minister Walter Chidhakwa told reporters and executives from the mines in question.

Iron ore rally lifts Fortescue Metals – by Barry Fitzgerald (The Australian – February 22, 2016)

February 22, 2016

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

The value of chairman Andrew Forrest’s one-third stake in Fortescue Metals has climbed back to more than $2 billion after briefly dipping to as low as $1.5bn a month ago.

While his stake is still down heavily on its $6bn value in 2011, the recent value surge reflects a rally in iron ore prices as measured by the Steel Index to a three-month high of $US47 a tonne, and expectations of good news on a number of fronts in Wednesday’s interim profit report.

Fortescue shares shot 22 per cent higher last week from $1.62 to $1.99 as iron ore prices climbed in response to restocking by Chinese steel mills after the Lunar new year.

Gold Lining On The Commodity-Price Collapse – by Tim Treadgold (Forbes Magazine – February 22, 2016)

February 22, 2016

http://www.forbes.com/

There is a perfect storm blowing through the Australian gold-mining industry, but it’s not doing any damage, because it’s a storm which has triggered soaring share prices and a modern-day gold rush.

A recovery in the U.S. dollar gold price is one factor driving interest in the metal, but it’s not the major force in the Australian gold sector. Two other events have helped some miners more than double their share prices over the past year.

A 30% fall in the value of the Australian dollar against the U.S. dollar has boosted the Australian gold price to an all-time high in the local currency while operating costs and fuel prices have been slashed.

COLUMN-Governments’ bull policies for bear markets hurt commodities – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.K. – February 22, 2016)

February 22, 2016

http://uk.reuters.com/

Feb 22 – One of the problems for embattled resource companies is that the legislative environment in which they exist is often no longer reflective of the reality of the current, or likely future, markets in which they compete.

In other words, government policymakers quite often have laws, taxes and regulations designed for a bull market when a bear market is in place, and vice versa.

While it’s easy to have a shot at politicians, in their defence, it can be the case that by the time they manage to go through the protracted processes of introducing new rules and regulations, the situation they envisaged has been substantially altered.

Indonesia’s minerals sector is a good recent example, but not the only one, of how even policies that were relatively well designed and had reasonable aims can backfire because the market has changed.

Zinc Approaches Bull Market on Supply Shortfalls; Miners Advance (Bloomberg News – February 22, 2016)

February 22, 2016

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Zinc rallied to the highest since October, putting the metal on track to enter a bull market, after production cuts tightened global supplies. Other metals and mining shares climbed.

Zinc soared 21 percent in about six weeks after Glencore Plc and Nyrstar NV last year announced production cuts to cope with a slump in prices. The market will have a deficit of 440,000 metric tons this year, the most in more than a decade, according to Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co.

“The supply-side factor — the dip in output — is the reason for the price rise,” Casper Burgering, a senior economist at ABN Amro Bank NV in Amsterdam, said by phone. “There is really no reason for these low prices and I think that markets have started to realize that.”

Alaskans awaken to issues of mining, salmon and rivers we share with Canada – by Melanie Brown (Alaska Dispatch News – February 21, 2016)

February 22, 2016

http://www.adn.com/

Melanie Brown works with Salmon Beyond Borders to advocate for healthy watersheds in Southeast Alaska.

Although my parents are from Western Alaska, I consider myself lucky to have been born in Sitka. Work opportunities took our family northward, but my life led me back to Southeast Alaska, where I have chosen to raise my children.

It is a rich life with all the rivers, land and sea have to offer. We have friends who are good about sharing what they have and we are happy to reciprocate. We migrate along with the salmon to Bristol Bay every summer to be with our blood relatives and our home-river, but returning to Juneau for winter “fits our skin.” Not long after moving back here however, we learned of a looming threat to Southeast waters.

Africa’s costly missing rail links – by Gavin du Venage (The National – February 20, 2016)

February 22, 2016

http://www.thenational.ae/

CAPE TOWN // Transporters moving goods across Africa put up with a lot: bandits armed with AK-47s, elephants using a fender to ease an itch and thieves who run alongside slow moving vehicles to siphon diesel out of the tank into Coca Cola bottles.

Then there are border posts, police checkpoints and various other forms of bureaucracy that can hold up lorries for days. Often, bribes and spurious fines also need to be paid before cargo can move.

It is hardly surprising that according to the African Development Bank it costs twice as much to transport goods across many countries on the continent than it does anywhere else in the developing world.

[Michigan] Mining’s last stand? Upper Peninsula way of life is threatened – by Ted Roelofs (Crains Detroit Business – February 19, 2016)

February 19, 2016

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/

MARQUETTE COUNTY — At Sherri’s Restaurant in Ishpeming, above the faint clatter of dishes from the kitchen, the conversation of the day in winter skips around from town gossip to snowmobiling to the latest storm to close the local schools. As one might expect in a no-frills Upper Peninsula diner, the food is all-American, the portions ample.

Said owner Sherri Steele of the “farmers’ omelette” on the breakfast menu, a calorie-rich platter of three eggs, green pepper, onion, cheese, potatoes and toast on the side: “It’s huge.”

But as she prepared for the Friday night smelt fish fry she’ll dish up that evening, Steele touched on another topic that looms over this community: What if the mines close?

Cliffs hanging on, but waiting to reopen plants – by John Myers (Duluth News Tribune – Jan 27, 2016)

February 19, 2016

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

Cliffs Natural Resources had a terrible 2015, losing money and slashing production, but the company expects demand for its taconite iron ore to tick up in 2016 and vows to reopen idled operations once sales increase.

Company officials Wednesday said both United Taconite in Eveleth and Forbes and Northshore Mining in Babbitt and Silver Bay will remain closed at least through March but will reopen “sometime this year” as demand from steelmakers for taconite increases.

Hundreds of laid-off workers at each plant are waiting to go back on the job.

“It’s too soon to give you a date, but it will be this year,” Cliffs CEO Lourenco Goncalves told the News Tribune in a telephone interview Wednesday.

South Africa Wants `Black Champion’ to Fill Anglo Mines Void – by Andre Janse Van Vuuren and Michael Cohen (Bloomberg News – February 18, 2016)

February 19, 2016

http://www.bloomberg.com/

As Anglo American Plc scales back its operations in South Africa, the government is coaxing black investors to fill the void in mining left by a conglomerate that once dominated industries from coal mining to paper, banking and sugar.

Mines Minister Mosebenzi Zwane said Anglo American’s announcement on Tuesday that it may exit its 69.7 percent stake in Kumba Iron Ore Ltd. could encourage the emergence of “new black economic empowerment champions.” The minister and his predecessor Ngoako Ramatlhodi have both called for the creation of a leading black-owned mining company.

The push for black citizens to increase their ownership of the mining industry, which once formed the bedrock of the economy, comes as South Africa grapples with addressing racial disparities that have persisted since the end of white minority rule in 1994.

UPDATE 3-Brazil’s Vale posts record iron ore, nickel output even as prices slump – by Jeb Blount (Reuters India – February 18, 2016)

February 19, 2016

http://in.reuters.com/

Feb 18 Brazilian miner Vale SA produced record amounts of iron ore, nickel, copper, cobalt and gold as it battled a slump in global metals prices by boosting output in search of greater market share.

Results, though, were below what some analysts expected even as they helped Vale, the world’s third-largest mining company, meet some of its own output targets.

Fourth-quarter iron ore production rose 2.4 percent year on year to 88.4 million tonnes, its largest ever fourth-quarter total, the company said on Thursday. Output was down 3 percent compared with the third quarter.