The History of Erie Mining Company (Hometownfocus.us – May 29, 2015)

http://www.hometownfocus.us/

A project to document the history of the pioneering research, preliminary pilot plant, and construction and operation of the world’s first completely integrated taconite mine.

In early 2014, a team of willing and dedicated former Erie Mining Company/ LTV Mining employees began meeting monthly at the Hoyt Lakes City Hall. The team set as its purpose to document the initial development of Minnesota’s taconite Industry by preparing a history of the pioneering research, construction and operation of Erie Mining Company and the establishment of the town site of Hoyt Lakes.

Partnering with the St. Louis County Historical Society, the group established a goal of publishing a quality book, containing both the technical and pictorial history of the mine, plant site, railroad, power plant and harbor, town sites of Hoyt Lakes, Taconite Harbor, and Murphy City as well as the personal stories and experiences of the employees, contractors, vendors, and “town folk” who built and operated one of the world’s largest and most innovative green field mining operations, and one of our nation’s largest private capital enterprises of the past century.

The group contacted local historians, the Minnesota Historical Society and others, who confirmed that there are no comprehensive, historically accurate books documenting the history of the Erie Mining Company, or for that matter, any of Minnesota’s taconite mining and processing operations.

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China Dotes on South American Infrastructure – by Tim Maverick (Wall Street Daily – May 28, 2015)

http://www.wallstreetdaily.com/

In April, I told readers about the billions of dollars China was pumping into the New Silk Road, connecting Pakistan to China. But China isn’t stopping there. It seems the economic powerhouse has also set its sights on South America.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang just completed an extensive nine-day tour of Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Colombia. These four countries account for 57% of China’s quickly increasing trade with South America.

In January, Li promised $250 billion in investment into South America over the next decade. As of the end of 2014, China had already invested nearly $100 billion into its favorite countries.

On his current tour, Li is lavishing billions more on a number of deals, most of which center around infrastructure, such as rail.

You see, China is unflinching in its quest for power and security. Meaning the Chinese want to ensure speedy delivery of the precious commodities produced in South America.

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S. Africa Plans $124 Million Payout for Lung-Diseased Miners – by Kevin Crowley (Bloomberg News – May 29, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

South Africa plans 1.5 billion rand ($124 million) of payouts from a compensation fund for miners suffering from lung diseases that affect about 700,000 people, Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said.

Companies including AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., the world’s third-biggest miner of the metal, are participating in the project rolled out by the Department of Health to unblock a backlog of 500,000 claims. Compensation will apply to sufferers of tuberculosis, silicosis, and other illnesses, Motsoaledi said. Workers from other countries are also eligible to apply, he said.

“Our goal is to compensate current and ex-mineworkers who have submitted valid and compensable claims,” he told reporters in Carletonville, a gold-mining town 86 kilometers (53 miles) west of Johannesburg. “I’m here to pay back the money.”

Silicosis, a lung disease caused by inhaling dust from mines, causes scar tissue in the lungs, increasing vulnerability to tuberculosis that can kill more than half of sufferers if not properly treated. South Africa is source of about a third of all gold yet produced globally and the continent’s biggest coal producer.

Separately, lawyers representing sufferers of silicosis say companies including AngloGold and Harmony Gold Mining Co. are to blame for workers catching the disease because they operated without adequate ventilation for the past 60 years.

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Japan push into Africa resources sputters, helps China – by Yuka Obayashi (Reuters U.S. – May 29, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

TOKYO, May 29 (Reuters) – A Japanese government drive to secure access to resources in Africa has sputtered as some companies shy away from investing due to slumping commodity prices and worries over political stability, helping China as it races to import raw materials from the continent.

Around two years ago, Japan said it would provide about $2 billion mainly to back African commodity projects by its firms as part of a move to secure supplies of materials such as coking coal and copper it needs to churn out steel and electronic components.

But worries over the stability of the investment environment in some African nations, along with falling commodity prices, have sapped momentum from that push, Japanese firms said at a mining conference on Thursday and Friday.

A lack of infrastructure and concerns over resource nationalism were also cited as reasons.

“To invest in mine development, it is necessary to see an improvement in Africa’s investment environment so it is politically, sociologically and economically stable,” Shigeru Oi, president of JX Nippon Mining & Metals Corp, Japan’s top copper refiner, said in a speech.

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UPDATE 2-Australia iron ore magnate Rinehart weakened by court ruling – by Jane Wardell and James Regan (Reuters U.S. – May 28, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY, May 28 (Reuters) – Australian iron ore magnate Gina Rinehart’s eldest daughter won control of the $3 billion dollar family trust on Thursday in a judgment critical of Rinehart’s former control of the fund and attempts to block the long-running legal dispute.

The Supreme Court of New South Wales judgment loosens Rinehart’s legendary grip on her business empire, with almost 25 percent of Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd held by the trust.

Rinehart owns the remainder of the family firm, which in turn owns 70 percent of Roy Hill, a Pilbara-based iron ore mine due to start shipments later this year.

South Korea’s POSCO, Japan’s Marubeni Corp and Taiwan’s China Steel Corp also have stakes in the mine, which will be Australia’s fourth-largest when it reaches full production.

Three of Rinehart’s four children – eldest Bianca Rinehart, Hope Welker and John Hancock – sued for control of the trust in 2011.

They alleged their mother acted with “gross dishonesty” as trustee, when she pushed out its vesting date until 2068, meaning all four children would not get their shares until they were in their 80s and 90s.

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Many Mines Put Up for Sale, but Buyers Are Scarce – by Scott Patterson and John W. Miller (Wall Street Journal – May 28, 2015)

http://www.wsj.com/

Drought of deals reflects low commodity prices, low quality of assets on the block

Miners across the world want to sell off their mines, but they have a problem: Almost no one wants to buy them.

Some veteran bankers in the mining industry say they are seeing the longest drought of deals in their careers. The rut is caused by a commodity price rout with little sign of recovery, low-quality assets on the block and a focus on shareholder returns—not acquisitions—from industry giants like BHP Billiton PLC and Rio Tinto PLC.

Deal volumes in 2014 fell 23% to 544 from the previous year, the lowest amount since 2003 and the fourth straight year of declines, according to Ernst & Young. Deals during the past decade peaked in 2010, when 1,123 were completed amid a China-fueled boom in prices. In the first quarter of 2015, the value of mergers and acquisitions in the mining industry globally fell 18% to $5.9 billion, from $7.2 billion a year ago, Ernst & Young said.

The paucity of mining deals, amid a broadly roaring M&A market, comes as prices for commodities such as iron ore, aluminum and copper are trading at near six-year lows. Other metals like nickel and zinc are being weighed down by lackluster demand.

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Gina Rinehart loses control of $5b family trust – by Louise Hall (Sydney Morning Herald – May 28, 2015)

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

John Hancock, the estranged son of Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart, has won an epic legal battle over control of the family’s multibillion-dollar family trust, with his sister and ally Bianca Rinehart appointed trustee.

On Thursday, NSW Supreme Court Justice Paul Brereton appointed Bianca, 38, trustee of the Hope Margaret Hancock Trust, which was set up by her late grandfather Lang Hancock and is thought to be worth about $5 billion.

Justice Brereton also ordered Mrs Rinehart to hand up documents and accounts relating to the trust that John and Bianca had claimed were withheld from them for many years.

The decision follows a bitter and public three-and-a-half-year war that saw Mrs Rinehart and her youngest daughter, Ginia, 28, pitted against her eldest two children, John, 39 and Bianca. Hope Welker, 29, who initially launched the legal action against her mother, settled in 2013 for $45 million because of the “high degree of distress” the litigation was causing her.

Justice Brereton said: “Mrs. Rinehart has demonstrated that she is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to retain control, directly or indirectly, of the Trust, and that she is capable of exerting enormous pressure and great influence to do so”.

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COLUMN-“Cautious optimism” abounds in Asia commodities – by Clyde Russell (Reuters Africa – May 28, 2015)

http://af.reuters.com/

SINGAPORE, May 28 (Reuters) – There appears to be an outbreak of “cautious optimism” in the Asian commodities sector.

It was easy to lose track of the number of times the phrase popped up in presentations and conversations at four major commodities conferences in the region in the past two weeks.

However, defining what people meant by being cautiously optimistic was somewhat more challenging, although the common thread was a view that the worst is over for commodity prices, and the sector is once again worth looking at from an investment perspective.

Of course, it’s easy to dismiss participants at the SGX Iron Ore Forum and the Asia Mining Congress in Singapore, the Asia Oil & Gas Conference in Kuala Lumpur and the LME Week Asia in Hong Kong as talking their books, or at least to their hopes.

But what will be key is how the expectations of better times ahead translates into action. From a pricing perspective, there was widespread acknowledgement that the likelihood of strong rallies was very low, rather what producers, traders, buyers and investors are forecasting is a gradual grind higher as rising demand eats away the supply overhang created by over-investment in mines.

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Could SA’s gold mining industry be gone by 2020? – by Patrick Cairns (Mineweb.com – May 27, 2015)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Peter Major on how management has lost control of their mines.

The South African mining industry is in trouble. That is not in question. The only debatable point is exactly how much trouble it is in.

The industry on which this country’s modern economy was built has been stuttering since the global financial crisis. What investors and anyone else with an interest in mining’s role in the economy wants to know, is where this is headed.

Are we nearing a point where we will start to see a turnaround? Or is there a chance that things will simply continue to deteriorate?

Speaking at the JSE’s Power Hour in Cape Town, Peter Major, mining specialist at Cadiz Corporate Solutions, warned that one must be wary of thinking that things will always revert to an historically established mean. The mining environment in South Africa has changed so much over the last few decades that “the old rules no longer apply”.

“South Africa is the world’s richest country in terms of mineral resources,” said Major. “We have more resources than Russia and the US combined. This was the greatest mining country in the world for 100 years, but it’s not anymore.”

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Industry Warns Copper Boom at Risk – by John Quigley (Bloomberg News – May 26, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Peru tightened security and closed schools in the country’s south as unions began a 48-hour protest as part of the biggest wave of mining opposition in three years.

A contingent of riot police guarded the main square of Arequipa, the biggest southern city, and shop windows were partially shuttered, Radio Programas reported. Police and army officers patrolled the Tambo Valley, the site of Southern Copper Corp.’s Tia Maria copper project.

Peru’s goal of becoming a copper powerhouse is being threatened by violent protests against Tia Maria in the past two months, according to Carlos Galvez, president of Peru’s National Society of Mining, Petroleum and Energy. The upheaval could reduce mining investment to “very close to zero” by 2018, down from a record $9.7 billion in 2013, unless the government defends new projects, he said in an interview in Lima Tuesday.

Peru, the world’s third-biggest copper producer, is poised to increase output of the metal 73 percent in the next three years on new capacity from Freeport-McMoRan Inc. and MMG Ltd. Investment needed to sustain the expansion is on hold because of protests by local groups opposed to mining, Galvez said.

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Inside the war on coal – by Michael Grunwald (Politco.com – May 2015)

http://www.politico.com/

How Mike Bloomberg, red-state businesses, and a lot of Midwestern lawyers are changing American energy faster than you think.

The war on coal is not just political rhetoric, or a paranoid fantasy concocted by rapacious polluters. It’s real and it’s relentless. Over the past five years, it has killed a coal-fired power plant every 10 days. It has quietly transformed the U.S. electric grid and the global climate debate.

The industry and its supporters use “war on coal” as shorthand for a ferocious assault by a hostile White House, but the real war on coal is not primarily an Obama war, or even a Washington war. It’s a guerrilla war. The front lines are not at the Environmental Protection Agency or the Supreme Court.

If you want to see how the fossil fuel that once powered most of the country is being battered by enemy forces, you have to watch state and local hearings where utility commissions and other obscure governing bodies debate individual coal plants. You probably won’t find much drama. You’ll definitely find lawyers from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, the boots on the ground in the war on coal.

Beyond Coal is the most extensive, expensive and effective campaign in the Club’s 123-year history, and maybe the history of the environmental movement.

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Turn Out the Lights: Australia Calls Commodity Spending Boom End – by David Stringer (Bloomberg News – May 27, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Australia, an engine room of the decade-long global commodity boom, is forecasting a staggering 90 percent plunge in spending on projects, calling time on its biggest resources bonanza since the 1850s gold rush.

After a collapse in prices from oil to iron ore, the value of Australia’s approved and financed mining and energy projects is forecast fall to about A$15 billion ($12 billion) in 2017, from A$226 billion at the end of April.

Planned iron ore projects worth at least A$10 billion have been canceled since October, according to the Department of Industry and Science. Billionaire Gina Rinehart’s Roy Hill — due to ship later this year — is Australia’s last remaining mining project being developed worth A$5 billion or more.

“The value of committed projects is about to start declining substantially,” Mark Cully, the department’s chief economist, said Wednesday in a statement. “It is clear that this will not be offset by new investments coming through the pipeline.”

Waning demand growth in key markets including China, the biggest commodities consumer, and programs by miners to cut capital expenditure mean there’s a lack of projects toward the end of this decade, the department said in a report.

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The 1959 Copper Strike: Local Event has National Ramifications – by John Hernandez (Copper Area.com – May 26, 2015)

http://www.copperarea.com/pages/

The Voice of the Copper Corridor. [Arizona]

In 1959, Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the last year of his presidency. The dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba as communist revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro took control of the island nation 90 miles from the United States. Alaska and Hawaii would become states. A little known actor, Clint Eastwood appeared on a new television series, Rawhide. Teenagers were saddened by “The Day the Music Died” when Buddy Holley, Richie Valens and the “Big Bopper” J.P. Richardson were killed in a plane crash in Iowa.

In the prospering mining town of San Manuel the contracts with the unions and the San Manuel Copper Corporation were set to expire June 30. Competing unions, the United Steelworkers of America and the International Union of Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers, were still battling each other to represent the workers.

Early in the year, smelter workers petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and asked that their union, the United Steelworkers of America, be recognized as the bargaining agent for San Manuel rather than Mine Mill. Mine Mill had defeated the Steelworkers in the 1956 elections. The election was challenged by the Steelworkers but their protest was denied by the NLRB.

Another unit of San Manuel Copper Corporation, the heavy equipment operators, joined with the smelter workers and asked that elections be held to determine which union would be the collective bargaining agent for the workers.

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Blood on the Mountain: New Film Chronicles Coal’s War on Appalachia – by Jeff Biggers (Huffington Post – May 26, 2015)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/green/

One of the most telling moments in the new documentary film Blood on the Mountain draws from 2008 footage of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship calmly mumbling his replies to numerous questions on mine safety at a hearing. When asked if he knew how many coal miners had died in Massey mines in the eight years since Massey became a publicly traded company, the notorious “dark lord” of the coal industry shook his head and said no.

Filmmakers Mari-Lynn Evans and Jordan Freeman allow for a gut-wrenching moment of silence, having methodically chronicled the industry’s treadmill of violation-ridden disasters, and then provide the answer: 52 deaths under Blankenship as CEO of Massey Energy.

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China cash lining up for Fortescue Metals Group – by Matthew Stevens, Amanda Saunders and Julie-anne Sprague (Australian Financial Review – May 25, 2015)

http://www.afr.com/

Chinese-linked companies have applied to the Foreign Investment Review Board seeking permission for an investment involving Fortescue Metals Group.

Australia’s third-largest iron ore producer has held discussions with China’s largest steel producer, Baosteel, and China’s largest conglomerate, CITIC, about a recapitalision to shore up its balance sheet.

It is unclear if the applications to FIRB are from CITIC or Baosteel but sources said there is interest in Fortescue from one or more companies which are Chinese or part-Chinese owned.

There are no moves to take over Fortescue. Instead, the companies are interested in buying a stake or increasing an existing stake, sources said. A deal could involve the partial selldown by the company’s founder, chairman and biggest shareholder, Andrew Forrest.

Fortescue and Baosteel already work closely. In June 2012 the two companies merged their magnetite iron ore assets in the Pilbara into a venture called FMG Iron Ore Bridge, which is 88 per cent controlled by the Perth company and 12 per cent owned by the Chinese steel giant.

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