International Media Resource Articles – Page 598

Kellingley colliery: The pit that survived Margaret Thatcher prepares for closure – by Dean Kirby (Independent – December 6, 2015)

December 7, 2015

http://www.independent.co.uk/

The North Yorkshire colliery, Britain’s last deep coal mine, will close on 18 December

The miners look almost otherworldly as they burst from the cage that has carried them from deep under ground – their white eyes shining from faces black with coal dust.

The 40 men are shouting and swearing and appear euphoric at being back in the daylight after eight hours working nearly seven miles from the surface in the dark.

But their only welcome, as they march quickly into the lamp room and remove their lanterns and turn into a cavernous changing room to scrub themselves human again, is a grey December fog that has fallen on the world outside like a shroud.

Iron Ore Nearing Rio’s `Fantasy Land’ Shows Depth of Turmoil – by Jesse Riseborough (Bloomberg News – December 7, 2015)

December 7, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

When Rio Tinto Group’s Sam Walsh, head of the world’s second-biggest iron-ore exporter, was asked 10 months ago whether the steelmaking raw material could reach $30 a metric ton, he derided it as impossible.

“That’s fantasy land — it simply can’t happen,” Walsh, 65, said in a February interview with Bloomberg Television. “There are very wild forecasts out there that quite frankly just can’t come to pass, otherwise it’s going to be very lonely for us as the lowest-cost producer in the world.”

The comments by Walsh, who headed Rio’s iron-ore business for nine years and is regarded as a veteran in the industry, shows how the pace and depth of the market’s retreat has caught the world’s biggest mining companies off guard.

Big miners accept reality of low commodity prices. Now what? – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – December 7, 2015)

December 7, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, AUSTRALIA – It may seem like stating the obvious, but top miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have said recently that they expect commodities prices to remain subdued.

While it is important that two of the world’s top three mining companies acknowledge what the rest of the market has believed for some time, what’s more important is how they respond to the realities they now face.

The first reality is that growth has slowed in China by more than the resource companies, and indeed most market analysts, expected when investment decisions on expanding capacity were made about five years ago.

Rio Tinto closes gap on BHP Billiton in biggest miner race – by Matt Chambers (The Australian – December 7, 2015)

December 7, 2015

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

BHP Billiton’s long-held title of world’s biggest miner is under threat from rival Rio Tinto as sliding oil prices, BHP’s South32 spin-off and the tailings dam disaster at BHP’s half-owned Samarco operations in Brazil have ensured the gap in market value between the pair has closed to its narrowest since before the China boom.

At the end of last week, Bloomberg data showed that BHP’s market capitalisation of $92 billion (including Australian and London-listed shares) was just $13bn higher than Rio’s $79bn, with the gap as close as $10bn during the week.

This is the closest the pair have been since 2003 and a sharp tightening since the middle of last year, when BHP was worth about $200bn and Rio was worth $110bn.

Brutal cartels fight over Mexico’s ‘conflict-free’ gold revenues – by FRANK JACK DANIEL, ANAHI RAMA AND LIZBETH DIAZ (Reuters U.S. – December 6, 2015)

December 7, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

CARRIZALILLO, MEXICO – Heroin traffickers linked to the abduction and disappearance of 43 students a year ago are battling over millions of dollars paid by Canadian mining giant Goldcorp to a village in Mexico’s southern gold belt, leading to a wave of murders.

As a signatory to a Conflict-Free Gold Standard drawn up by the World Gold Council industry group, Goldcorp (G.TO) commits to extracting the precious metal in a manner that “does not fuel unlawful armed conflict or contribute to serious human rights abuses.”

But residents of Carrizalillo in the impoverished state of Guerrero say the some $3 million a year in rent paid by Goldcorp for their land, which the mine is built on, is fuelling a bloody feud between two rival cartels.

The renaissance of Rio Tinto has Sam Walsh smiling – by Peter Ker (Sydney Morning Herald – December 5, 2015)

December 4, 2015

http://www.smh.com.au/

For a while there, Sam Walsh could not appear at an industry conference without Glencore boss Ivan Glasenberg using the same event to pick apart his performance as chief executive of Rio Tinto.

There were jibes about Rio flooding the market with iron ore, the suggestions that Rio was not a truly diversified miner, and the personal taunts about the comparatively small number of Rio shares that Walsh owned.

The motive behind the campaign became clear in October 2014, when Rio revealed that it had rebuffed a merger proposal from Glencore.

UPDATE 1-Vale says Valemax ship sale, leaseback could fetch $1.1 bln (Reuters U.S. – December 4, 2015)

December 4, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

Dec 4 Brazil’s Vale SA said on Friday that it plans to sell its 11 remaining Valemax iron ore carriers and lease them back in transactions that could raise $1.1 billion.

Vale has said it has experienced some delay in selling the ships, the key to its attempt to cut transportation costs between its Brazilian mines and Asian customers, as it seeks to get the best freight rates under contracts to lease the ships back from the new owners.

Each more than 360-meter-long (1181-ft-long) ship can carry 380,000 to 400,000 tonnes of ore and are among the biggest vessels afloat.

New Law Paves the Way for Asteroid Mining–But Will It Work? – by Jennifer Hackett (Scientific American – December 4, 2015)

December 4, 2015

http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Mining asteroids may sound like a concept ripped from science fiction, but a new law is aiming to make it a reality. On November 25 Pres. Barack Obama signed the Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, a bill intended to spur private space exploration by limiting governmental regulations until September 2023.

That time frame is meant to allow a learning period for private companies to develop the technology necessary for future goals such as space tourism, commercial spaceflight and space mining.

To that end the bill explicitly allows companies or individuals to claim ownership of any resources and minerals they are able to collect in space—a right that was previously murky under the law.

High in the Andes, A Mine Eats a 400-Year-Old City – by Tony Dajer (National Geographic – December 2, 2015)

December 4, 2015

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/

CERRO DE PASCO, Peru—For a woman intent on moving an entire city, fifty-six-year old Congresswoman Gloria Ramos Prudencio, barely five feet tall, looks unassuming. Her city is Cerro de Pasco, population 70,000. Perched on the treeless Peruvian altiplano at 14,200 feet, it’s one of the highest cities on the planet.

“As a girl, walking past Bellavista, where the Americans lived, I would pester my mother, ‘Why do the gringos get the nice houses?’ ” the soft-spoken Ramos recalls. “In school my teachers called me preguntona”— she of too many questions.

These days, her main question is how to save her hometown from a very big hole.

Reckoning in Appalachia: Why Coal Mining Outlaw Don Blankenship’s Conviction Matters – by Jeff Biggers (Huffington Post – December 3, 2015)

December 4, 2015

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

The landmark conviction of former Massey Energy CEO and coal baron Don Blankenship today on a misdemeanor conspiracy charge to violate mine safety laws is a small, but historic first step in holding mining outlaws accountable for their reckless operations.

For the first time in memory for those of us with friends, family, miners and loved ones living amid the toxic fallout of the coal industry, this conviction may only serve as a tiny reckoning of our nation’s complacency with a continual state of violations, but it could begin a new era of justice and reconciliation in the devastated coal mining communities in Appalachia and around the nation.

Ragtag Activists Push Banks to Dump Coal – by Zeke Faux (Bloomberg News – December 3, 2015)

December 4, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

The anti-coal protest outside Morgan Stanley’s 42-story tower in New York attracted only three people—four if you count the infant one of them happened to be baby-sitting.

The few bankers who walked outside to meet restaurant deliverymen appeared to barely notice as the activists sang, “Go tell it on the mountain. Your bank poisons us.” It was all over in 15 minutes.

The Nov. 19 demonstration hardly seemed like the kind of thing that would lead an investment banking behemoth to stop putting money into fossil fuels. But the movement that sponsored it is getting results.

Namibia: Diamond Beneficiation in Crisis (All Africa.com – December 4, 2015)

December 4, 2015

http://allafrica.com/

The fortunes of the diamond value chain would be better served through a simpler structure as opposed to the extremely complex approach currently used. Such an re-alignment will be the driving force for polished diamond value growth.

The Chief Executive of Forevermark and the De Beers Group, Stephen Lussier alluded to a simplification of the diamond value chain in his speech before the second International Diamond Conference, titled, Omugongo, held last week in Windhoek.

More than 50 international industry experts, academics, business leaders and manufacturers converged on Windhoek for this landmark two-day conference.

Rio, BHP Billiton keep faith in China’s future steel demand – by Matt Chambers (The Australian – December 5, 2015)

December 4, 2015

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

Rio Tinto chief Sam Walsh says depressed iron ore prices face sustained pressure over the next couple of years even as Gina Rinehart’s $10 billion Roy Hill project and an expansion by Brazil’s Vale force more higher-cost producers out of the market.

But Mr Walsh and his counterpart at BHP Billiton, Andrew Mackenzie, both say future Chinese steel demand is being underestimated by many forecasters not factoring in substantial regional exports from the Asian powerhouse.

“As you see the Vale and Roy Hill (iron ore) tonnes come on, that’s going to put on some pressure,” Mr Walsh told The Weekend Australian in Melbourne during the week.

Ghana, China Address Rampant Illegal Mining – by Masahudu Kunateh (All Africa.com – December 3, 2015)

December 4, 2015

http://allafrica.com/

Accra — The influx of illegal Chinese miners in Ghana is providing a stern test to the decades-old cordial relations between the two countries.

By law, small scale mining is solely preserved for Ghanaians. However, some Chinese miners have defied legislation by extracting gold in the remote parts of the West African country.

This has continued despite ongoing engagements between the two governments to address the issue.

Most of the Asian nationals, working without permits, have been accused of extending their operations into some restricted areas much to the devastation of land, crops, and farms.

Billionaire Palmer steps up fight with China’s CITIC amid nickel slump (Reuters India – December 4, 2015)

December 4, 2015

http://in.reuters.com/

SYDNEY/MELBOURNE – Dec 4 Officials in Australia’s Queensland state are prepared to step in to help protect jobs at a nickel refinery if needed, but called on its owner, mining magnate and politician Clive Palmer, to be open about the refinery’s financial position.

Concerns resurfaced this week about the future of the Queensland Nickel refinery when a lawyer acting for Palmer sought an advance A$48 million ($35 million) payment in an unrelated dispute, saying the matter needed to he heard that week.

The case against estranged iron ore partner, China’s CITIC Ltd, over any advanced payment of royalties due on the Sino Iron project will now be heard on Monday.