International Media Resource Articles – Page 745

RPT-UPDATE 1-Panel says Guinea should strip BSGR, Vale of rights to iron deposit – by Silvia Antonioli, David Rohde and Saliou Samb (Reuters India – March 10, 2014)

March 10, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

LONDON/CONAKRY, March 7 (Reuters) – A technical committee in Guinea has recommended the government strip BSG Resources (BSGR) and its partner Vale of the rights to exploit a giant iron ore deposit because the panel alleges BSGR obtained the concession through corruption, sources close to the matter said.

The latest development in a saga surrounding one of the world’s largest mining deposits casts uncertainty over the future of the sought-after Simandou, a mine that could help one of Africa’s poorest countries to prosper.

It also raises concerns over the position of Brazilian miner Vale, which, according to a source close to the company, has spent more than $1 billion in its Guinean venture and risks seeing its investment and efforts wiped away.

BSGR vigorously denied the allegations of wrongdoing and said it believes the committee’s procedure is part of a predetermined and orchestrated plan to expropriate the company’s mining rights.

Amur Will Use Zeppelins to Ship Ore From Remote Siberia Mine – by Firat Kayakiran (Bloomberg News – March 10, 2014)

March 10, 2014

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Amur Minerals Corp. (AMC), a copper and nickel explorer in Russia’s Far East, plans to fly equipment to its Siberian operation by zeppelin to bypass snow-clogged roads.

Amur will use two airships from Worldwide Aeros Corp. to carry loads of as much as 250 metric tons, the company said today in a statement after signing a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. manufacturer. The aircraft will also be used to transport production from the mine.

Zeppelin manufacturers need mining contracts to revive their business, 77 years after the U.S. Hindenburg airship crash ended most buyer interest for decades. With better designs and a buoyant gas that can’t ignite, makers such as Aeros and Hybrid Air Vehicles Ltd. are hammering out their first sales deals with the mining industry to complement truck and rail transport.

The airships can be used on rough terrain because they take off and land vertically. For Amur, their use will reduce the estimated $140 million expense of building a 320-kilometer (200-mile) road to the nearest rail station, as well as “substantially” cutting freight costs, it said.

Tesla battery plant will need 6 new flake graphite mines – by Simon Moores and Andy Miller (Industrial Minerals – March 7, 2014)

May 13, 2016March 10, 2014

http://www.indmin.com/

$5bn ‘gigafactory’ to spark EV uptake; battery graphite demand could double in 6 years with no growth elsewhere

US automotive giant, Tesla, has revealed plans to build a new $5bn lithium-ion battery (Li-ion battery) ‘gigafactory’ which could potentially increase natural graphite demand by up to 37% by 2020.

The factory, which is forecast to start production by 2017, is expecting to have an output of 35 gWh/year by as early as 2020, which would over double the size of the current market. Its important to stress that the plant is in the planning stage and capacities depend strongly on market demand, but Tesla believes it can be the market leader by producing low cost batteries in the USA.

In IM Data’s calculations, Tesla’s plant – which is set to be based in the south-west USA – will consume at least 28,000 tonnes of spherical graphite every year if operating at capacity. This equates to 93,000 tonnes of flake graphite if produced to today’s standards which sees raw material wastage of up to 70%.

If achieved, battery demand for natural graphite will increase 112% from today’s levels of 83,000 tpa. This is assuming no other growth in regions such as Asia which is today’s primary consuming region.

UPDATE 2-Hedge fund names Cliffs directors, launches proxy battle – by Reuters India (March 7, 2014)

March 7, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Activist investor Casablanca Capital LP on Thursday nominated six directors for election to the board of Cliffs Natural Resources Inc, setting in motion a proxy battle for the iron ore producer that it wants split into two companies.

The New York-based hedge fund said the director slate, named ahead of Cliffs’s annual meeting in May, includes Casablanca Chief Executive Officer Douglas Taylor as well as Lourenco Goncalves, former CEO of Metals USA.

Casablanca, which owns about 5.2 percent of Cliffs, first targeted the Cleveland-based company in January. It wants Cliffs, which was the second-worst performing stock in the S&P 500 Index last year, to spin off its “riskier” international operations from its cash-generating U.S. assets.

Last month, the fund named Goncalves as its preferred candidate for Cliffs’s CEO and said it would nominate a majority slate to the company’s 11-member board.

Greenland building closer US relations, prime minister says – by Philip Stephens (Financial Times – March 6, 2014)

March 7, 2014

http://www.ft.com/home/us

Greenland is building closer ties with the US as the international scramble for mineral and energy resources in the Arctic turns the region into an area of great strategic importance, according to its prime minister.

Aleqa Hammond told the Financial Times that the opening in January of a representative office in Washington was part of her strategy to deepen Greenland’s relations with the US.

Ms Hammond, who last year became Greenland’s first female prime minister, said she was committed to building on the Nuuk government’s direct ties with Washington.

The “pivot” towards the US forms part of wider geostrategic manoeuvring in the Arctic region as melting ice sheets reveal large deposits of oil, gas and minerals.

By US estimates, the Arctic may hold 13 per cent of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30 per cent of its untapped gas as well as untold mineral resources including iron ore, zinc and gold.

Africa’s push to add value to minerals now a riskier gamble – by Silvia Antonioli (Reuters India – March 6, 2014)

March 6, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

LONDON, March 6 (Reuters) – African government efforts to force mining companies to process minerals before export may backfire as they come up against weakening commodity prices and investor demands that firms reduce risky investments.

In the last year alone, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Namibia, South Africa and others have hinted at, announced or put in place measures aimed at adding value to minerals exports, which would boost tax revenue, encourage formation of new businesses and add jobs.

But with falling metal prices and a drastic reduction in the capital available for the mining industry, wary companies are increasingly shying away from investment in countries where the rules of the game can change quickly.

“Investment sentiment in the last year has moved against the mining sector, but the governments tend to have a lagging view of how this is going to affect investment in their countries,” said Mike Elliott, global mining and metals leader at Ernst & Young.

Skurla study’s ‘mining boom’ would be due almost entirely to taconite – by Marshall Helmberger (MinnPost.com – March 6, 2014)

March 6, 2014

http://www.minnpost.com/

The following column was originally published in the Timberjay newspapers of Ely, Tower-Soudan and Cook-Orr. For more than three years, advocates for copper-nickel mining have pointed to the study produced by Jim Skurla, of the Labovitz School of Business at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, as a key justification for moving forward with this new type of mining.

The study, first released in 2009 and updated in 2012, touted huge impacts from planned new mining projects, in terms of jobs and new tax revenue to the state and local areas.

We’ve all heard the numbers from Skurla’s report cited by mining proponents — as many as 5,000 new jobs in what they term the “strategic mining sector” if all the proposed projects move forward as planned. To supporters, such numbers portend an economic renaissance for our region.

While some economists have taken issue with Skurla’s report, I don’t have any reason to believe that his conclusions are in error, at least within the context of economic modeling in general, which is typically about as accurate as your average weather forecast. The bigger concern, in my mind, is that his conclusions are widely misunderstood.

ANALYSIS-Small U.S. uranium miners make contrarian bet by ramping up output – by Rod Nickel (Reuters U.S. – March 5, 2014)

March 5, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

TORONTO – (Reuters) – Sinking prices for uranium in the past three years have caused many of the world’s biggest uranium miners to scale back production plans or defer projects, but two small U.S. producers are bucking the trend by planning to increase output this year and investors have sent their share prices surging as a result.

Uranium prices are hovering near eight-year lows because an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in March 2011, crippling the Fukushima-Daiichi atomic power plant, and leading to the shutdown of nearly all reactors in the country, which previously relied on nuclear sources for 30 percent of its power. The disaster crimped Japanese demand for uranium and fueled fears about a backlash to nuclear power.

Last month, Japan included nuclear power in its draft energy plan, easing doubts about the industry and boosting uranium company shares. The spot uranium price, however, remains weak and companies scaled back production and halted expansion plans that curbed potential output by 20 million to 25 million lbs (9 million to 11.3 million kg), according to Edison Investment Research. That amounts to 16 percent of estimated global production last year.

UPDATE 2-Glencore to snatch more benefits from Xstrata acquisition – by Silvia Antonioli (Reuters U.S. – March 5, 2014)

March 5, 2014

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, March 4 (Reuters) – Commodities trader and mining group Glencore Xstrata Plc has raised its estimate of the savings it expects following last year’s Xstrata acquisition, as it focuses on cost-cutting and targets higher returns for shareholders.

After being hammered by billion of dollars in writedowns as falling metal prices dented their assets’ value, miners have worked to trim costs and tidy their balance sheets.

The group, which completed the record-breaking acquisition of Xstrata in May, was also victim of souring sentiment in the mining sector and in August announced a $7.5 billion impairment on the assets it inherited from the miner.

But the company, whose interests range from a 44 percent stake in the Collahuasi mine in Chile, one of the world’s largest copper mines, to a trading hub in its hometown of Baar, Switzerland, has identified cost and efficiency savings from the acquisition of more than $2.4 billion. That compares with guidance of $2 billion given late last year.

‘Ethical gold’ aims to curb mining’s toll in South America – by Lucas Iberico Lozada (Reuters U.S. – March 4, 2014)

March 4, 2014

http://www.reuters.com/

RELAVE, Peru – (Reuters) – Tucked between two desert ridges in southern Peru, Relave looks like any of the hundreds of ramshackle mining towns that blight the landscape in the world’s sixth-largest gold exporter.

Its name in Spanish means “tailings,” a nod to the heaps of mining waste that the town, a sprawling collection of wooden shacks and simple concrete huts, sits upon.

But Relave is also home to Aurelsa, one of the first small-scale mines in the world to produce gold certified and marketed as “ethical” as part of a scheme aimed at reducing the harmful impact of illegal mining in mineral-rich developing countries.

“When we arrived we didn’t have anything … Now we’re exporting internationally,” said Juan Coronado, the chief executive at Aurelsa who came to Relave in the late 1980s to sift through what was left of an abandoned gold mine after leaving his family farm in the Andean highlands.

He used to collect the abandoned mine’s tailings, mix them with mercury, and sell the amalgam to middlemen in a nearby town.

In Europe, Dirty Coal Makes a Comeback – by Stefan Nicola and Ladka Bauerova (Bloomberg News – February 28, 2014)

February 28, 2014

http://www.businessweek.com/

From the baroque castle where Beethoven premièred his Eroica symphony two centuries ago, Vladimír Buřt gazes down on giant excavators that eat into the ground around the clock, loading brown coal onto conveyor belts that fill waiting railroad cars. “There used to be a lake where we’d go swimming every day,” says Buřt, the deputy mayor of Horní Jiřetín, a 750-year-old village in the Czech Republic that could be destroyed if the coal mine is allowed to expand. “The Communists started this devastation, and this government wants to finish it.”

Horní Jiřetín and other small villages along Europe’s mining belt may soon succumb to the continent’s quest for cheaper electricity. Alarmed that energy prices in Europe are about double what they are in the U.S., governments in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany are green-lighting the expansion of mines that produce lignite, a moist, brown coal used to fuel power plants.

While lignite is plentiful and cheap, it packs less energy and releases more greenhouse gases than hard coal. The dirty coal’s resurgence runs counter to European Union efforts to limit emissions and promote cleaner energy. “It’s absurd,” says Petra Roesch, mayor of Proschim, a 700-year-old German village that could be entirely leveled if authorities in the state of Brandenburg allow the expansion of a lignite mine owned by the Vattenfall power utility. “Germany wants to transition toward renewable energy, and we’re being deprived of our land.”

Minnesota’s Worst Mining Disaster – by Angie Riebe (Mesabi Daily News – February 27, 2014)

February 28, 2014

http://www.grandrapidsmn.com/

Horrific history at Milford Mine

Feb. 5, 1924. A day of history for Minnesota. A day of heartache and heroism for young miner named Frank Hrvatin Jr. It was a day like most others at the Milford Mine, two miles north of Crosby in Crow Wing County.

Miners were laboring underground on the 175-foot and 135-foot levels of the 200-foot-deep manganese mine, owned by George H. Crosby. Frank Jr., and his dad, Frank Sr., were both hard at work that afternoon — the elder Hrvatin performing his duties as a blaster, the son laboring aside his veteran partner, Harry Hosford.

The miners had blasted an underground shaft near the adjacent Foley Lake, and Frank had just dumped ore down a transfer chute, when a sudden gust of wind hit him. It was rather strange, he thought.

But he had little time to consider it further, as rushing water appeared on the level below. “Look at the water, Harry!” Frank shouted to his partner. “Oh, my God! For God’s sake run!” replied Harry. “The whole lake has come in!” Harry’s observations proved correct. The boggy water from Foley Lake roared into the mine, filling it in no time to within 15 feet of the surface.

UPDATE 3-Vale vows spending austerity as metals price outlook improves – by Jeb Blount and Guillermo Parra-Bernal (Reuters U.S. – February 28, 2014)

February 28, 2014

http://www.reuters.com/

RIO DE JANEIRO/SAO PAULO Feb 27 (Reuters) – Vale SA , the world’s largest iron ore producer, will continue reining in costs this year even as the outlook for prices and sales volumes is improving, its chief executive officer said on Thursday.

“We plan to continue with austerity,” Murilo Ferreira, the company’s CEO told investors at a conference call to discuss fourth-quarter earnings.

The company will also continue efforts to sell underperforming units and control investments as it sharpens its business focus on iron ore, responsible for about three-quarters of revenue and nearly all of its profit.

His remarks come as Vale reported a net loss of $6.45 billion in the quarter, its largest since Brazil’s government sold control to investors in 1997 and more than twice the shortfall of the year-earlier period. The loss was due to non-recurring events such as a one-time income tax settlement and the write-off of an abandoned potash project in Argentina.

U.S. Navy eyes greater presence in Arctic – by Andrea Shalal (Reuters India – February 28, 2014)

February 28, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

WASHINGTON – (Reuters) – The U.S. Navy is mapping out how to expand its presence in the Arctic beginning about 2020, given signs that the region’s once permanent ice cover is melting faster than expected, which is likely to trigger more traffic, fishing and resource mining.

“The Arctic is all about operating forward and being ready. We don’t think we’re going to have to do war-fighting up there, but we have to be ready,” said Rear Admiral Jonathan White, the Navy’s top oceanographer and navigator, and director of the Navy’s climate change task force.

“We don’t want to have a demand for the Navy to operate up there, and have to say, ‘Sorry, we can’t go,'” he said.

The Navy this week released an “aggressive” update to its 2009 Arctic plan after a detailed analysis of data from a variety of sources showed that seasonal ice is disappearing faster than had been expected even three years ago.

The document said the Bering Strait was expected to see open water conditions about 160 days a year by 2020, with the deep ocean routes of the Transpolar transit route forecast to be open for up to 45 days annually by 2025.

Vale Rallies as Chinese-Led Iron Ore Demand Boosts Earnings – by Juan Pablo Spinetto (Bloomberg News – February 27, 2014)

February 27, 2014

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Vale SA (VALE), the world’s largest iron-ore producer, rallied the most in three weeks after fourth-quarter earnings before taxes and other items beat estimates on rising prices for the steel-making material.

Vale rose as much as 2.7 percent to 29.81 reais in Sao Paulo today, the most intraday since Feb. 6, before closing at 29.31 reais. The gain pared its loss this year to 10 percent. The benchmark Ibovespa index of Brazilian shares rose 2.2 percent.

The world’s third-largest mining company is increasing cash generation after Asian-led demand pushed up average iron-ore prices 12 percent in the fourth quarter. While iron ore declined this quarter because of rising supplies and monetary constraints in China, it will remain at profitable levels for Vale for a sustained period of time, Executive Director for Ferrous and Strategy Jose Carlos Martins said.

“The price will continue to be very favorable and very profitable for Vale,” Martins told analysts on an earnings conference call today. “There is a very strong resistance in price in the range of local Chinese iron-ore costs.”