International Media Resource Articles – Page 698

UPDATE 1-Miner Sherritt says U.S. exports possible if Cuba embargo lifts – by Narottam Medhora (Reuters U.S. – December 17, 2014)

December 18, 2014

http://www.reuters.com/

Dec 17 (Reuters) – The United States move to normalize relations with Cuba could pave the way for Sherritt International Corp to export nickel and cobalt to one of the biggest markets in the world, the miner’s Chief Executive David Pathe told Reuters.

Sherritt shares jumped as much as 36 percent on Wednesday after President Barack Obama moved to thaw a five-decade freeze in relations between the two countries and said he would speak to the U.S. Congress about lifting the U.S. embargo on Cuba.
Toronto-based Sherritt is the largest independent natural resources company in Cuba and operates the Moa nickel mine in the eastern part of the Caribbean island state.

Due to the Cuban origin of its nickel and cobalt, the company is currently unable export to the United States, even though the metals are refined in western Canada.

“If the embargo were to be lifted, we could export some of that nickel and cobalt into the U.S. market, which is obviously one of the biggest markets in the world,” CEO Pathe said in an interview.

“It would also give us access to U.S. suppliers for mining equipment and supplies and services for our oil and gas industries.”

Venezuela restarts nickel output at asset taken over from Anglo – by Silvia Antonioli (Reuters U.K. December 17, 2014)

December 17, 2014

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/

LONDON, Dec (Shanghai: 600875.SS – news) 17 (Reuters) – Venezuela has restarted production from the Loma de Niquel ferronickel asset it took from mining giant Anglo American (LSE: AAL.L – news) in 2012 after cancelling its licenses, data from an industry body showed this week.

Information on Venezuela is patchy but the International Nickel Study Group (INSG) numbers indicated that the country produced 2,700 tonnes of nickel in the first 10 months of this year, after producing nothing in 2013.

Loma de Niquel is Venezuela’s sole nickel producing asset. At full capacity it would produce almost 1 percent of the world’s nickel output.

Diversified miner Anglo had a 91.4 percent stake in Loma de Niquel until 2012, when the Venezuelan government under late president Hugo Chavez cancelled 13 of its concessions and refused to renew three others, forcing the company to abandon its operations in the country.

Nickel production from Venezuela fell from 8,100 tonnes in 2012 to nothing in 2013. In 2011 it had produced over 14,000 tonnes.

The data shows that production resumed at a rate of 200 tonnes per month in January and increased to 300 tonnes per month from April.

Modi Getting His Thatcher Moment Confronting Coal Unions – by Rajesh Kumar Singh and Debjit Chakraborty (Bloomberg News – December 17, 2014)

December 17, 2014

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Is India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi reading up on Margaret Thatcher?

The late former prime minister of the U.K. had one of her defining and controversial confrontations in a protracted fight with striking coal miners in the 1980s. Different time, another country, but Modi has angry unions threatening to stop work at the world’s biggest coal miner, Coal India Ltd. (COAL)

Coal-fired power plants generate 60 percent of India’s electricity, except for when shortages lead to repeated blackouts. Outages shaved $68 billion or almost 4 percent off annual gross domestic product in the year ended March 2013, says the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Last week, Modi made a move toward ending shortages, winning partial passage of a bill that will allow him to end a 40-year government coal monopoly. The plan is to bring in more efficient private companies. The coal unions say that will mean job losses, and that they will fight the legislation.

“Let them open up the sector, there will be strikes all across and large-scale violence,” S.Q. Zama, secretary general at the Indian National Mineworkers Federation, a unit of the opposition’s Congress party-backed Indian National Trade Union Congress, said in a Dec. 5 interview.

Obama tightens environmental noose around resource-rich Alaska – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – December 17, 2014)

December 17, 2014

http://www.mineweb.com/

Will the president’s permanent ban on oil & gas development in Alaska’s Bristol Bay weaken Northern Dynasty’s chances for Pebble project approval?

RENO (MINEWEB) – Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier told Mineweb Tuesday that the decision by President Barack Obana to indefinitely withdraw more than 52,000 square miles of waters off Alaska’s coastline (including Bristol Bay) from oil and gas exploration or drilling “doesn’t apply to us at all”.

In a video release from the White House, Obama called Bristol Bay one of the country’s great natural resources, which is “something too precious for us to be putting out to the highest bidder”.

“It supports about $2 billion in the commercial fishing industry,” he said. “It supplies America with 40% of its wild-caught seafood.” Bristol Bay also hosts one of the world’s largest wild salmon runs and is home to threatened species and the endangered North Pacific Right Whale.

However, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and the incoming chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said, “I think we all recognize that these are some of our state’s richest fishing waters. What I do not understand is why this decision could not be made within the context of the administration’s upcoming plan for offshore leasing—or least announced at the same time.”

Poland’s KGHM has talks with Canadian rival over permit dispute – by Adrian Krajewski and Anna Koper (Reuters India – December 17, 2014)

December 17, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

WARSAW – Dec 17 (Reuters) – Europe’s second largest copper producer KGHM has held talks with Canadian-owned rival Miedzi Copper about two disputed Polish concessions which are the subject of a legal battle, KGHM said on Wednesday.

Miedzi Copper filed a case in a Polish court against the government after two copper permits it had been awarded were withdrawn by the government following a challenge from KGHM, which itself wanted to develop the concessions.

“KGHM management met with Miedzi Copper management,” KGHM spokesman Dariusz Wyborski said. “We’re aiming at a solution that’s best for us, Miedzi Copper and the region.”

He said further geological studies on the concessions would be carried out “to accurately reflect on the possibilities sketched out at the meeting.” He did not elaborate. Miedzi Copper declined to comment.

KGHM, part state owned and the only miner producing copper in Poland, has previously said it challenged the award of the permits to Miedzi copper because it had spent time and money researching the permits, adjacent to areas it is already mining.

The government said the permits were withdrawn because of shortcomings in the way the bidding process was administered.

Editorial How to cut militias off from gold and mineral mines in Congo (Los Angeles Times – December 15, 2014)

December 16, 2014

http://www.latimes.com/

Few parts of the world have been more ravaged by war and violence over the last two decades than the Democratic Republic of Congo. That’s been made possible, in part, by the mines in the eastern part of the country that offer up tin, tungsten and tantalum — the 3Ts, as they’re known — and gold. Over the years, many of the mines have been commandeered or controlled by armed militias and the profits used to fund the continued violence.

But recently, human rights groups have successfully pressured makers of consumer electronics and electronic parts, which rely on the 3Ts, to track the source of their minerals and refuse to buy from suppliers who buy from mines that help fund armed rebels. A provision in the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010, requires publicly traded companies to disclose if they have products containing minerals from Congo and what steps were taken to ascertain whether the ore came from tainted mines.

Together, these changes have dramatically shrunk the market for untraceable 3T conflict minerals, affecting prices and disrupting the supply chain. As a result, about 67% of tin, tantalum and tungsten mines in Congo are no longer in the control of armed militias, according to the Enough Project, a human rights group.

But demilitarizing the gold mines remains a challenge. Only a small fraction of the mined world’s gold comes from Congo — about 1%. But 98% of the artisanally mined gold in Congo is smuggled out of the country and much of that benefits armed groups, according to the United Nations Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Why Has South Africa Plunged Itself Into Darkness — Again? – by David Himbara (Huffington Post – December 15, 2014)

December 16, 2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

David Himbara is an educator, political economist and author.

Doug Kuni, a South African electricity expert, has advised his compatriots to buy candles and those who can afford it, to aquire a generator because “you are going to need it for the next five to ten years.” Kuni may be right. South Africa’s power system, including the utility company that runs it, Eskom, is in a mess. Shockingly, of the country’s installed 45,583 megawatts of electricity only 24,000 are available at present due to a series of old and new crises. There simply is not enough electricity to supply households and industry.

This is not the first time that South Africa has been plunged into darkness — the 2008 power crisis was equally painful.

What is the problem here? The money stops with the country’s leadership.

In the aftermath of the 2008 episode, the then president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, famously acknowledged his government’s failure to invest in energy infrastructure: “When Eskom said to the government: ‘We think we must invest more in terms of electricity generation’…We said not now, later. We were wrong. Eskom was right. We were wrong.”

The extraordinary leadership lapse in judgment becomes more evident when South Africa is compared to other mid-sized economies in terms of power-generation between 1994 and 2010.

Chrome, platinum prices likely to recover – Tharisa – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – December 15, 2014)

December 15, 2014

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The price of chrome concentrate and the basket price of platinum group metals should recover in 2015, which could mean fourth-quarter profit for the JSE-listed Tharisa Minerals should it achieve its number-one priority of steady state production.

Tharisa CEO Phoevos Pouroulis told Mining Weekly Online in an interview on Monday that price recovery plus steady state production growth should see the company emerge from the red and go into the black before this time next year.

The Cyprus-domiciled company’s gross margin on platinum group metals was 24% in the 12 months to September 30 and 10% on chrome concentrates because of the chrome price drop over the last year. “The fact that we’re a low-cost producer is the key differentiator,” Pouroulis commented to Mining Weekly Online.

The company has a 23-year-life openpit from which it coproduces platinum group metals and chrome concentrate, enabling to split mining and overhead costs and put itself into the lowest cost quartile for platinum and chrome concentrate production at steady state levels.

“Generally, we foresee an increase in commodity prices coupled to a weaker exchange rate,” Pouroulis said. Also noted was China’s stocks of chrome concentrates being at their lowest in years, which pointed to the likelihood of restocking in 2015.

Oil, coal and iron ore at financial crisis levels – by Henning Gloystein (Reuters India – December 15, 2014)

December 15, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

SINGAPORE – (Reuters) – Tumbling oil, coal and iron ore prices are now all at levels last seen during or before the financial crisis of 2008/2009, signalling not only the impact of a glut of supplies but deeper weakness in parts of the global economy, analysts say.

The raw materials are among the most sensitive to economic health, with oil and coal the world’s two most important energy sources and iron ore used to make steel.

Brent crude prices have almost halved since June to slightly above $60 a barrel, a level last seen in early 2009 during the financial crisis. In the coal market, the benchmark European futures contracts has dropped below $70 a tonne to levels comparable before the boom and bust of 2007-2009.

Iron ore prices have halved to under $69 a tonne as demand growth in the biggest market, China, wanes. Analysts initially pointed to rising oil and mining output, as well as energy efficiency and alternative sources such as renewables, as the main factors behind the drops.

But with no end to the price slide, it became apparent that a significant cooling of emerging economies as well as ongoing slack in developed markets such as Europe and Japan was also at play, especially after oil producer club OPEC said it would not cut output in support of prices.

“Softer global demand, coupled with unprecedented growth in supply are weighing on global oil indices, with prices falling to levels not seen since the Global Financial Crisis,” National Australia Bank said in a note on Monday.

The Chinese Century – by Joseph E. Stiglitz (Vanity Fair – January 2015)

December 15, 2014

http://www.vanityfair.com/

Without fanfare—indeed, with some misgivings about its new status—China has just overtaken the United States as the world’s largest economy. This is, and should be, a wake-up call—but not the kind most Americans might imagine.

When the history of 2014 is written, it will take note of a large fact that has received little attention: 2014 was the last year in which the United States could claim to be the world’s largest economic power. China enters 2015 in the top position, where it will likely remain for a very long time, if not forever. In doing so, it returns to the position it held through most of human history.

Comparing the gross domestic product of different economies is very difficult. Technical committees come up with estimates, based on the best judgments possible, of what are called “purchasing-power parities,” which enable the comparison of incomes in various countries. These shouldn’t be taken as precise numbers, but they do provide a good basis for assessing the relative size of different economies. Early in 2014, the body that conducts these international assessments—the World Bank’s International Comparison Program—came out with new numbers. (The complexity of the task is such that there have been only three reports in 20 years.)

The latest assessment, released last spring, was more contentious and, in some ways, more momentous than those in previous years. It was more contentious precisely because it was more momentous: the new numbers showed that China would become the world’s largest economy far sooner than anyone had expected—it was on track to do so before the end of 2014.

UN, aid groups overstretched by crisis in Congo’s mining heartland – by Aaron Ross (Reuters Africa – December 14, 2014)

December 15, 2014

http://af.reuters.com/

PWETO, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – Faced with a dearth of United Nations peacekeepers, lack of funding and competition from other global crises, relief agencies are struggling to contain a growing humanitarian disaster in Democratic Republic of Congo’s mining heartland.

More than a decade after the official end of a 1998-2003 war that killed millions of people in Congo, mostly from hunger and disease, donors are keen to switch from emergency aid to longer-term development projects in the vast central African country.

But the deteriorating situation in the copper and cobalt-rich southeastern province of Katanga, which the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) labelled “catastrophic” last month, throws into sharp relief the gaping humanitarian needs.

The number of displaced people in Katanga has leapt to nearly 600,000, from 55,000 three years ago, mostly due to violence by armed groups, including the secessionist movement Bakata Katanga.

The crisis has taken Congo’s humanitarian community by surprise after a decade spent focusing on the eastern border provinces of North and South Kivu, a volatile patchwork of rebel and militia fiefdoms that never fully emerged from the war.

“Suddenly, we turn to a zone where there is a major crisis in the process of developing but where there are not enough humanitarian actors,” Moustapha Soumaré, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator in Congo, told Reuters.

After conquering iron ore, BHP and Rio move to dominate in copper – by James Regan (Yahoo Finance/Reuters – December 14, 2014)

December 15, 2014

http://finance.yahoo.com/

SYDNEY, Dec 15 (Reuters) – Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton are amassing vast copper holdings in a push to capture a greater chunk of the $140 billion world market, apparently aiming to squeeze out high-cost producers just as they did in the global iron ore business.

Separately and in joint ventures, Rio and BHP intend to mine millions of additional tonnes of copper, despite seeing an oversupplied market for the next few years.

“For both companies, this is about wielding the greatest influence possible over the global marketplace,” said Gavin Wendt, senior resources analyst for Sydney-based consultants MineLife.

“Having said that, unlike in the highly concentrated iron ore space where the focus is squarely on one market owned in large part by Rio and BHP – China, copper is sold much more widely, leaving room for smaller producers to stay in the game,” Wendt said.

Several smaller producers contacted by Reuters declined to comment, saying it was too early to gauge the impact of the expansions. There have been no suggestions that BHP and Rio are working in concert to seize overriding control of global copper supply.

A worldwide supply surplus of 300,000 tonnes is forecast in 2015 by Australia’s Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics, equivalent to half a year’s output by South Korea.

Red States, Blue Sates, Dissed States – by Neal Asbury (Money News.com – December 11, 2014)

December 15, 2014

http://www.moneynews.com/

At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, then-Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama famously started his road to the presidency with the speech that included the line: “There are no red states or blue states, just the United States.”

If only that were true. Instead, we have a president who not only shows preference to blue states, but also punishes red states and, most damaging, dismisses many other states. Democrats have followed him in lock step, especially when it comes to energy-producing states.

Democrats have totally retreated from supporting energy-producing states, as evidenced by their decision to throw Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., under the bus by not giving her the votes she wanted to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. She lost the election, and Democrats have essentially lost all their clout in the South.

If you come from a state that produces coal, you are persona non grata in the Obama White House. Coal-producing states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky might as well be located on Mars when it comes to attention from Obama.

But these states and others are paying attention to the snub. Once Democratic strongholds in coal-heavy districts in West Virginia, Kentucky and Illinois are steadily turning their backs on Democrats, and these dissed states, once blue states, are turning to Republicans who support coal. The reason is obvious.

Waning investor confidence, weak commodity prices among factors limiting growth of African mining sector – by Jade Davenport (MiningWeekly.com – December 12, 2014)

December 12, 2014

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

Along with the Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa remains the most underexplored and highly prospective mineralised region on earth. However, despite its ‘open for business’ approach and myriad investment opportunities – in terms of greenfield and brownfield projects across the commodity spectrum – Africa’s mining sector has, over the past several years, experienced limited growth.

This year proved no exception to that general trend, with Standard Bank global head of mining and metals Rajat Kohli describing it as a challenging year for the African mining sector. This is a result of a number of factors, ranging from the uncertain global macroeconomic environment, the loss of confidence in the mining sector, lower commodity prices and, most importantly, Africa’s challenging operating environment and lack of cost competitiveness.

EXTERNAL CHALLENGES

Broadly speaking, external factors beyond the control of African industry stakeholders are limiting the trajectory of mining growth on the continent, says Kohli, elaborating that this year has seen a deepening decline in investment capital for mining projects.

“Equity markets have largely closed up, while debt, though available, has been more selective,” he says.
Kohli adds that the difficulty in securing project capital has been most noticeable in the junior African mining space, with lenders exercising caution. This has prompted users of capital to seek alternative forms of funding.

Iron ore won’t reach $US100 per tonne again, says BHP Billiton – by Philip Wen (The Age – December 12, 2014)

December 12, 2014

http://www.theage.com.au/business

Shanghai: Mining giant BHP Billiton says iron ore prices are unlikely to eclipse $US100 a tonne again, with expectations of steel consumption growth in China slowing further next year.

“I’ve learnt never to say never and there’s always short-term variations, but I think that if you use basic economics … certainly $100 seems high,” BHP’s president of iron ore Jimmy Wilson told reporters in Shanghai on Thursday.

“It’s hard to see that significant bump [in demand] that we’ve seen coming from China happen again.” BHP’s senior management group, including chief executive Andrew Mackenzie, was in Shanghai to celebrate the shipping of its one billionth tonne of iron ore to China.

The first shipment departed from Port Hedland in 1973. “It took nearly 30 years for BHP Billiton to ship 100 million tonnes of iron ore to China and then only 12 more years to reach the one billion tonne milestone,” Mr Mackenzie said.

The milestone was testament to China’s extraordinary rate of development, he said. At current rates the next 1 billion tonnes milestone would take just five years to reach.

But though imports into China have surged, prices have nearly halved, dropping under $US70 a tonne for the first time in five years. The drop comes amid a supply glut brought on by aggressive expansion by major miners Rio Tinto, BHP and Vale – even as Chinese economic growth cools.