International Media Resource Articles – Page 728

Opinion: Are [Australian] mine camps like concentration camps? – by Ben Hagemann (Australian Mining – May 23, 2014)

May 23, 2014

http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/home

The moment anyone drops a clanger in parliament, the media are all over it like gulls on a hot chip, but nothing fires them up more than a comment that might possibly be about Nazis.

Queensland MP Jo-Ann Miller is under fire for comparing FIFO camps to concentration camps, and as any high-school politics student could tell you, that wasn’t a very bright thing to do.

Obviously Australian mining camps are nothing like Nazi death camps. They are also nothing like English concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer war. They are not even like the American concentration camps that were packed to the gills with Japanese descendants after World War II.

She didn’t say “Nazi concentration camps”, so let’s not blow this out of proportion to score political points. To me, a former FIFO worker, I know that mining camps are frequently likened to concentration camps by those who live in them. It’s a way of expressing your dissatisfaction with the conditions.

You’re kept away from your family, your friends, and your favourite past-times for weeks on end. You have to eat food that isn’t like what you cook at home, and although it will comprise a range of different dishes every night, it’s usually of quite average quality and starts to look like the same, homogenous slop every night after the first swing on site.

Empty Buses Show Defiance in S. Africa’s Platinum Strike – by Kevin Crowley (Bloomberg News – May 23, 2014)

May 23, 2014

http://www.bloomberg.com/

An empty bus that’s supposed to be taking Lonmin Plc (LMI) employees back to work rolled along the dusty main road in Marikana in the heart of South Africa’s platinum belt, where miners have been on strike for four months.

“You can see for yourself,” said Jandri van Rensburg, a 25-year-old platinum miner who was drinking beer outside Survivors Pub in the settlement on a sunny Friday afternoon. “Don’t believe what the mines are saying — people don’t want to go back to work.”

The bus, green with about 30 seats and a Lonmin sign on the side, was one of three empty shuttles that a reporter from Bloomberg News saw on May 16 heading toward Lonmin (LON)’s Wonderkop mine, close to where 34 wage protesters were killed by police in 2012. Mediation talks between the companies and worker representatives in Johannesburg, set down for three days, have been extended into the weekend.

Van Rensburg’s defiance reflects anger and masks fear in the Rustenburg area of the North West province, where as many as 1.6 million people have been affected by the strike at operations owned by Lonmin, Anglo American Platinum Ltd. (AMS) and Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. (IMP) Five people have been murdered this month, including four miners, while thousands of starving families rely on food aid.

A Ten-Step Program for Understanding Emerging Markets – by Jim O’Neill (Bloomberg News – May 20, 2014)

May 23, 2014

http://www.bloombergview.com/

In a recent round of conferences about the so-called emerging-market economies, I often found myself at odds with other analysts and had to keep making the same points repeatedly. To save time in the future, here they are:

1. The emerging economies are more different from one another than they are alike. China is bigger than Germany, France and Italy combined, even in current dollar terms. On the basis of new purchasing-power-parity estimates, China might already be as big as the US, South Korea is as rich as Portugal and not far behind Spain: it has plenty in common with those “advanced economies” and nothing in common with the “emerging markets” of Africa.

2. The mood of the markets is sometimes good for a laugh, but not much else. At one of the conferences, I was assigned this question: “Is this emerging-market crisis going to be as bad as 1998?” This was in March. For the year to date, with the important exceptions of the Chinese and Russian markets, virtually all emerging-market equity indexes are showing stronger gains than the US, many of them at doubledigit rates.

3. Let’s stop supposing that the advanced economies can have a good recovery while the rest fall back —let alone fall as far as they did in 1998. In differing degrees, the US, Europe and Japan all need to export their way to a full recovery from their post-2008 doldrums.

Platinum Shortage Widens With Palladium on Tight Supplies – by Nicholas Larkin (Bloomberg News – May 20, 2014)

May 22, 2014

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Supply shortages for platinum and palladium will be the largest in more than three decades this year on stronger demand from car companies and restricted supplies, Johnson Matthey Plc said.

Platinum consumption will beat supply by 1.22 million ounces, compared with 940,000 ounces in 2013, London-based Johnson Matthey said in its platinum-group metals report. Palladium’s deficit will expand to 1.61 million ounces, from 371,000 ounces last year. They would be the biggest shortfalls ever, based on data going back to 1975 for platinum and 1980 for palladium on the company’s website.

Platinum has gained this year as more than 70,000 workers went on strike from January in South Africa, the largest producer of the metal and second-biggest for palladium. Demand from automakers, which use the metals in pollution-control devices, helped keep the materials in shortages since 2012. Palladium reached the highest since 2011 this month, partly as western nations threatened top producer Russia with sanctions.

“Supply-side issues are common to both platinum and palladium,” Peter Duncan, general manager, market research at Johnson Matthey, said yesterday.

Miners Enter The Fray In Eastern Ukraine – by Claire Bigg (Radio Free Europe – May 20, 2014)

May 22, 2014

http://www.rferl.org/

The shrill wails of sirens resounded throughout Ukraine’s eastern rust belt on May 20, a rallying call for miners and steelworkers to unite against separatists seeking to take over their region.

Industrial workers have remained largely on the sidelines of the smoldering conflict in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian militants have been occupying key government buildings in a dozen cities.

But with separatists increasingly disrupting business, industrial bosses and trade unions are urging workers to rise against the insurgency. Coal and steel magnate Rinat Akhmetov, who has an estimated 300,000 employees on his payroll, this week called on his employees to stage peaceful protests at their workplaces.

“The rally will start tomorrow at noon with a siren ringing at all industrial businesses of the Donbass in support of peace and against bloodshed,” he said in a televised address late on May 19, adding that sirens would ring daily at noon “until peace is established.”

In his sharpest condemnation of the separatists so far, Akhmetov said people were “tired of living in fear and terror” and warned that the violent tactics used by separatists would spell disaster for the economy and lead to “genocide” of eastern Ukraine.

Workers flee to safe houses on South Africa’s strike-hit platinum belt – by Ed Stoddard and Nomatter Ndebele (Reuters India – May 22, 2014)

May 22, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

RUSTENBURG, South Africa, May 22 (Reuters) – The chanting began around midnight, a chilling message through the cold of the early South African winter to those who had dared to cross the picket lines at platinum producer Lonmin.

“The rats must come out of their holes. We are going to kill this NUM,” the crowd chanted as it approached the home of ‘Mary’, a member of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) who had kept working at Lonmin when the rival Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) was on strike.

Her real name cannot be revealed because she fears for her life. “I heard singing in the distance. I thought I was actually dreaming, but it was getting nearer and nearer,” said Mary, who spoke to Reuters at an undisclosed location.

The events she related unfolded outside her home near Lonmin’s Marikana mine on May 14, which the London-listed company had declared a “return to work day” in the hope of persuading enough people to end the crippling AMCU strike.

The 17-week stoppage, which has also hit Anglo American Platinum and Impala Platinum, did not end that night; AMCU members blocked roads, extending the longest and costliest industrial action in South African mining history.

COLUMN – Modi the new hope for gold, but may disappoint – by Clyde Russell (Reuters India – May 21, 2014)

May 21, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia – (Reuters) – Gold bulls tend to flit from one thing to the next in their search for a reason for the precious metal to rally, with the latest hope being Narendra Modi’s election victory in India.

The reasoning appears solid enough. Modi’s pro-business Bharatiya Janata Party is likely to roll back some of the tough measures taken by the former government to curtail gold imports as part of efforts to lower India’s current account deficit.

Gold is India’s second-biggest import by value behind crude oil and the former government progressively raised the import duty to 10 percent and imposed a rule that 20 percent of gold shipped in must be re-exported as jewellery.

These measures, which gold bulls had largely dismissed as irrelevant to Indian demand, served to crunch imports, which started dropping sharply from the third quarter of last year.

Indian demand fell 26 percent to 190.3 tonnes in the first quarter of 2014 from the same period a year earlier, according to data from the World Gold Council (WGC).

This followed falls of 16 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013 and 32 percent in the third quarter of last year, declines which saw India surrender its status as the world’s top gold consumer to China.

British Columbia mining boom concerns unite tribes across borders – by Ed Schoenfeld (CoastAlaska News – May 19, 2014)

May 21, 2014

http://www.ktoo.org/

Tribal leaders from Alaska and Canada say it’s time to work together to oppose mines affecting both sides of the border. It’s part of the growing scrutiny of projects near transboundary rivers.

Parts of Southeast Alaska are only a couple dozen miles from British Columbia. Historically, tribal groups from both sides have met, traded and married.

“Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian people who live in Alaska all have tribes, clans and relatives on the other side,” says Richard Peterson, president of Southeast’s Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. He says over the years, many of those connections have been lost. Now, he says, they’re coming back.

“I’m really excited that we could remove these invisible barriers, this invisible line that they call the border, that somehow successfully separates us so well. We’re doing away with that line,” he says. Peterson spoke at a recent program in Juneau about traditional life and changes coming to parts of northwestern British Columbia.

Big miners to blame for iron ore fall, says Glencore Xstrata chief Ivan Glasenberg – by Amanda Saunders (Sydney Morning Herald – May 21, 2014)

May 21, 2014

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

Glencore Xstrata chief Ivan Glasenberg has criticised iron ore miners for putting pressure on prices for the commodity through aggressive brownfields expansions.

Speaking before the latest reading of iron ore spot prices in China showed the price had fallen a further 1 per cent overnight to $US97.50, Mr Glasenberg said Glencore had an advantage over its competitors because it did not produce iron ore.

“We are not big players in iron ore market … prices are coming off because we see massive expansions coming there from our major competitors,” Mr Glasenberg told shareholders at the company’s second annual meeting, on the shores of Lake Zug, in Switzerland, on Tuesday night.

“A large amount of them have these brownfields expansions, they continue to expand … and put more supply into the market. “So we are not heavily exposed to iron ore, except on the trading side, and therefore we believe we have an opportunity against our peers there.” Mr Glasenberg has historically not been shy about pointing out shortcomings among his pure-play mining competitors.

Modi exploring breakup of Coal India, opening up sector – sources – by Krishna N. Das (Reuters India – May 21, 2014)

May 21, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

NEW DELHI – (Reuters) – Prime Minister-elect Narendra Modi is exploring breaking up state behemoth Coal India Ltd(COAL.NS) and opening up the sector to foreign investment to boost output and cut imports, said two sources with knowledge of the matter.

Red tape, strikes, protests against land acquisition and delays in obtaining environmental approvals have kept coal output far below demand, making India the world’s No.3 importer even though it sits on the fifth-largest reserves.

Modi wants to fix the coal sector quickly to ensure unbroken electricity supply across the country, as in his home state of Gujarat where manufacturing has flourished. Coal generates more than half of India’s power and is the cheapest form of energy.

Any reform will begin with Coal India, as it accounts for 80 percent of India’s total coal output, said a source at Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The world’s largest coal mining company has failed to meet its output targets for years.

“The story is about Coal India, whose productivity as we all know has been poor,” said the source, a member of the BJP’s economic policy team.

INTERVIEW: Balmoral CEO on high-grade nickel hit – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – May 21, 2014)

May 21, 2014

http://www.mineweb.com/

Balmoral Resources CEO Darin Wagner describes plans to explore a newly discovered semi-massive sulphide zone on its Grasset project in Quebec.

HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) – Much remains to be seen about the potential of Balmoral Resources’ Grasset nickel-copper-PGE project in Quebec on the Detour gold trend. But its latest intercept certainly catches the eye with 45 metres @ 1.79 percent nickel, plus some copper and platinum group elements, in a new zone of mineralization that is little tested.

The question now becomes if there’s more of that to be had in the new zone. To get a sense of the project and its prospects we spoke with Darin Wagner, Balmoral Resources President and CEO, a few hours after it released the latest Grasset assays.

KIP KEEN: Tell me about the intercept and its implications.

DARIN WAGNER: In the intercept this morning basically there’s 77 metres of mineralization there. But the core of it is 45 metres at 1.79% nickel long with copper and PGE credits. That is contained in a specific horizon, which we’re referring to as Horizon 3, and it’s actually net-textured. So semi-massive sulphides that are well disseminated through the core and have a beautiful internal consistency to it.

Iron ore prices teeter – by Matt Chambers (The Australian – May 20, 2014)

May 20, 2014

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

IRON ore prices last night fell below $US100 a tonne for the first time in nearly two years, hit by uncertainty around China’s steel output and stronger than expected Australian supply that earlier sent mining stocks sliding.

The only other time iron ore prices have previously slipped below $US100 this decade, briefly in 2012, spot-market buying of the nation’s biggest export dried up to the extent that prices rapidly fell another 13 per cent.

Benchmark Chinese iron ore prices fell $US2.20 to $US98.50 late last night, their lowest since September 2012 and in line with indications of weak buying demand shown in Chinese and Singaporean futures yesterday.

Benchmark prices had slipped 2 per cent to $US100.70 in China on Friday night. The fall follows Treasury forecasts in last week’s federal budget showing the price would fall below $US90 a tonne within two years.

This is in line with downgraded forecasts as Australian miners unexpectedly ramp up boom-time expansion projects on or ahead of time, and as the outlook for Chinese demand growth looks less certain.

Modi needs to reform electricity to power India recovery – by Clyde Russell (Reuters India – May 19, 2014)

May 20, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON Australia – (Reuters) – Narendra Modi’s crushing election win has given rise to hopes for an economic revival in India, but much will depend on whether he can replicate the electricity success of his home state.

India’s financial markets have been buoyed by Modi’s victory, betting that the Hindu nationalist politician can work the same economic wonders for the whole country that he did while running the western state of Gujarat for 13 years.

The alliance led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 336 of the 543 seats in India’s lower house of parliament when election results were announced last week, giving India a majority government for the first time in a quarter of a century.

While Modi’s authority will be bolstered by the massive win and his legislative programme will be easier to implement given he doesn’t need to negotiate with coalition partners, the scale of the challenge facing him is enormous.

India is structurally short of electricity, and it’s hard to see how the economy can be ramped up significantly, especially in power-hungry sectors such as manufacturing, without the provision of reliable power at prices high enough to ensure sustainable supply, but not so high as to choke growth.

UPDATE 2-Platinum firm Lonmin says “bleeding” from S.Africa strike – by Ed Stoddard and Silvia Antonioli (Reuters India – May 19, 2014)

May 20, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

JOHANNESBURG/LONDON, May 19 (Reuters) – South African platinum miner Lonmin has lost a third of its annual production due to an industry strike over wages which its chief executive described as a “bleeding” that might lead to the company’s death if not stopped in time.

South Africa’s longest and costliest mining strike turned violent this month, with four miners killed as more employees tried to report for work at the world’s top platinum producers.

Lonmin had anticipated a mass return of its employees to work last week, but striking members of the main Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) prevented many other workers from going back to the mines.

The strike has also hit the South African operations of Anglo American Platinum and Impala Platinum, taking out 40 percent of global production of the precious metal used for emissions-capping catalytic converters in automobiles.

“The strike has now entered its 17th week and we have now lost a third of our production for the whole year,” Lonmin chief executive Ben Magara said on Monday during a briefing with journalists in Johannesburg.

UPDATE 4-Turkey keeps three suspects in custody in mine disaster probe – by Humeyra Pamuk (Reuters India – May 19, 2014)

May 20, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

SOMA, Turkey, May 18 (Reuters) – A Turkish court ordered three suspects to be kept in custody on Sunday on a provisional charge of “causing multiple deaths” in last week’s mine disaster, as the last of the 301 victims were buried.

Of the remaining 22 people detained earlier, six suspects have been released but could face prosecution later. Questioning of the other 16 people was continuing. The detentions came five days after a fire sent deadly carbon monoxide coursing through the mine in the western Turkish town of Soma, causing the county’s worst ever industrial accident.

The disaster has sparked protests across Turkey, directed at mine owners accused of ignoring safety for profit, and at Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government, seen as too close to industry bosses and insensitive in its response.

An initial report on the possible causes of the accident indicated the fire may have been triggered by coal heating up after it came into contact with the air, Prosecutor Bekir Sahiner told reporters outside the Soma courthouse, rejecting initial reports that a transformer explosion was responsible.