International Media Resource Articles – Page 751

Insight: Gold mine stirs hope and anger in shattered Greece – by Deepa Babington and Lefteris Papadimas (Reuters U.S. – January 13, 2014)

January 13, 2014

http://www.reuters.com/

OURANOUPOLI, Greece – (Reuters) – A Canadian quest to mine for gold in the lush forests of northern Greece is testing the government’s resolve to prove Europe’s most ravaged economy is open again for business.

The Skouries mine on Halkidiki peninsula – a landscape of pristine beaches and rolling hills dotted with olive groves – is among the biggest investments in Greece since it sank into a debt crisis four years ago.

But it has set Greece’s desperate need for finance to rebuild the economy against the interests of its vital tourism industry, and aroused anger on the peninsula – site of the famed Mount Athos monasteries – over the environmental cost.

Vancouver-based Eldorado Gold Corp took over the project in 2012, promising to invest $1 billion over the next five years as part of a plan to mine eventually source up to 30 percent of its global gold production in Greece. Yet preliminary work on the mine, which is supposed to open in 2016, has set off months of politicking and protests.

UPDATE 4-Indonesia export ban leaves mining in turmoil, nickel prices rally – by Wilda Asmarini and Michael Taylor (Reuters India – January 13, 2014)

January 13, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

JAKARTA, Jan 13 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s mining sector was left in turmoil on Monday after the government pushed through a controversial ban on exporting unprocessed mineral exports.

Global nickel prices and mining shares rallied in the first trading day after the ban in the world’s top nickel ore exporter. The ban on a range of mineral ores took effect on Sunday, five years after a law was passed to force miners to build processing plants. The government provided a last-minute reprieve for exporters to keep shipping some minerals, although U.S. miner Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold was waiting for confirmation so that it could continue to ship copper.

The policy aims to reduce reliance on raw material exports, but many firms failed to invest in enough smelter capacity to process all of Indonesia’s mining output — meaning that a total ban would have forced extensive shut downs of output and cost the economy billions of dollars.

Late changes approved by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono — to ease any short-term economic pain — should allow copper exports by Freeport and Newmont Mining Corp.

Mining equipment companies try to dig out from downturn – by Rick Barrett (Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel – January 11, 2014)

January 13, 2014

http://www.jsonline.com/

Outlook remains rocky for Joy Global, Caterpillar

If there’s a bottom to the mine shaft for Milwaukee mining equipment companies, which saw business plummet in 2013, they haven’t found it. Joy Global Inc. ended the year with net income down 30%, to $533.7 million, or $4.99 a share, and revenue down 12% to $5 billion.

Caterpillar Inc., which has its mining equipment division based in South Milwaukee, reports fourth-quarter and full-year earnings on Jan. 27. In its most recent quarter, the company said earnings plunged 44%, to $946 million, or $1.45 a share, and that revenue would be down 17% for the year.

Caterpillar shut factories and cut its workforce by some 13,000 people, including hundreds of jobs in Milwaukee and South Milwaukee, where it manufactures some of the world’s biggest mining machines.

Until 2013, rising commodity prices fueled a boom for Caterpillar, based in Peoria, Ill., and Joy Global. Then China’s economy sputtered, undercutting demand for mined materials and the machines used to extract them from the ground.

Jack Lifton refutes WSJ article: ‘How the Great Rare-Earth Metals Crisis Vanished’ – by Jack Lifton (Investor Intel – January 12, 2014)

January 13, 2014

http://investorintel.com/

The WSJ article published on January 8, 2014 How the Great Rare-Earth Metals Crisis Vanished declares that the “rare earth crisis” is over, and as support refers to the conclusions of a “leaked” Pentagon report. It glibly declares, analyses, and dismisses, as a failure, a Chinese plot to maintain control of the production and pricing of the rare earths as having been defeated by the forces of the market and capitalism.

But the real crisis is that western end-users of rare earth enabled components have proved that if you don’t capitalize the security of supply then when the market turns in your favor you are unprepared to take advantage of it. It is in the naked greed of the stock market where the real rare earth crisis was invented, fomented, sucked dry — and forgotten. The stock market flies no national flag and its players care little for apple pie or mom.

Notwithstanding what this author states there is today no nation other than China that has in place a total domestic rare earth supply chain. Thus even if you do produce rare earths outside of China you must send them to China if you want to first refine mining concentrates and then to fabricate rare earth metals and alloys for use, for example, as magnets. In particular none whatsoever today of the “critical” heavy rare earths are produced outside of China.

[Jade miners] Myanmar: Hell hath no fury like Hpakant – by Patrick Winn (Global Post – December 30, 2013)

January 13, 2014

http://www.globalpost.com/

Men seek to escape poverty in the jade mines. Instead, it’s the drug dealers and middlemen who get rich.

KACHIN STATE, Myanmar — An ancient Chinese proverb likens jade to the character of men. As the saying goes, “both are sharpened by bitter tools.” But in the jade mines south of China’s border — a wasteland known as Hpakant in Myanmar — men’s lives are not so much sharpened but shredded to bits.

“Hpakant,” said La Htoi, a 34-year-old jade broker and recovering heroin addict. “That is where Satan slowly called me to hell.”

Even by the standards of Myanmar — infamous for warfare, poverty and oppression — Hpakant is a dark and depraved place. Its once-verdant hills have been ground down into gaping quarries that produce jade of unparalleled quality. By the thousands, men descend into these stadium-sized pits hoping to emerge with an armload of jade, a ticket out of poverty.

But Myanmar’s multi-billion dollar jade industry instead funnels wealth to military-connected elites. Miners’ meager earnings are typically swallowed not only by middlemen but by potent, dirt-cheap heroin, traded with impunity in Hpakant’s bazaars. “You can see heroin sold on the roadside there like vegetables,” La Htoi said.

Indonesia’s ban on raw minerals exports threatens nickel shake-up – by Melanie Burton (Reuters U.S. – January 10, 2014)

January 10, 2014

http://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY – Jan 10 (Reuters) – An Indonesian ban on raw minerals exports is set to hurt Chinese factories making stainless steel – used in everything from kitchenware to cars and buildings – in the biggest potential industry shake-up in more than five years.

The ban, due to come in force on Sunday, may also be a boon for battered nickel miners, dogged by prices that lost 19 percent last year and are sitting stubbornly near four-year lows.

Indonesia looks set to prohibit more than $2 billion worth of annual nickel ore and bauxite shipments as part of a plan to push miners into downstream processing and boost long-term returns from its mineral wealth.

The Southeast Asian country supplies about half the nickel ore used for stainless steel in China, the world’s biggest producer and exporter of the corrosion resistant material.

China mostly produces a lesser quality version, unlike high-end competitors in Japan, Germany and Korea, which is often used in the inside of buildings or internally in cars, where it reinforces framework.

Alcoa unit pleads guilty to Bahrain bribery – by Joe Mankak (USA Today – January 9, 2014)

January 10, 2014

http://www.usatoday.com/

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A subsidiary of Alcoa pleaded guilty Thursday and, along with the parent company, will pay a total of $384 million in penalties for bribing officials in the kingdom of Bahrain through a London-based middleman.

A company official on Thursday entered the plea on behalf of Alcoa World Alumina, which will pay $223 million in fines and criminal penalties for violating the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The law governs the conduct of American businesses abroad.

Parent company Alcoa must guarantee those payments and on Thursday also agreed to a separate $161 million civil penalty for related Securities and Exchange Commission violations. “Alcoa lacked sufficient internal controls to prevent and detect the bribes, which were improperly recorded in Alcoa’s books and records as legitimate commissions or sales to a distributor,” the SEC said in a news release.

The U.S. Justice Department said Alcoa World Alumina earned $446 million in profits by using the middleman to cut a long-term deal to sell raw materials to Aluminum Bahrain BSC, through other affiliated companies, including Alcoa of Australia.

COLUMN-Uncertainty the only certainty with Indonesia mineral export ban – by Clyde Russell (Reuters India – January 9, 2014)

January 9, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

Jan 9 (Reuters) – The key point with any laws or regulations is not that they are on the statute book, it’s whether they are applied and enforced, and this will be the case with Indonesia’s ban on metal ore exports.

As is often the case with Indonesia and government policy, the only certainty is uncertainty and whether the prohibition on exporting unrefined ores goes ahead, and in what form, is far from clear.

In the case that the ban goes ahead as planned from Jan. 12, it seems likely that nickel ore and bauxite, with a value of up to an annual $2 billion will be the hardest hit. Indonesia is the world’s biggest exporter of nickel ore and supplies about two-thirds of top buyer China’s imported bauxite.

But Indonesia’s mining ministry is seeking to pass regulations to ease the ban and phase in the requirements for domestic processing over a longer period of time. The proposal recommends that raw mineral ores can be exported until 2017, after which all would have to undergo domestic processing.

Zimbabwe: Honeymoon Over for Miners – by Martin Kadzere (All Africa.com – January 8, 2014)

January 9, 2014

http://allafrica.com/

GOVERNMENT has invited mining firms to submit, by Saturday next week, proposals for the establishment of beneficiation facilities as the deadline to ban exports of raw platinum concentrates approaches. The Government gave existing platinum miners two years at the beginning of last year to set up a refinery, but there has been no meaningful progress.

The two years end in December this year, and thereafter, exportation of raw platinum concentrate will be banned. Producers of base metals, mainly nickel and chrome, are also expected to make their proposals.

The settler regime banned exports of base metal ores and concentrates and insisted that all chrome, nickel and copper was refined to at least high intermediate levels in the country.

Chrome was normally refined into bars of ferrochrome, while copper was refined to very high levels of purity during that time. The refineries later closed. In the meantime, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa proposed that companies be levied 15 percent on exports of raw platinum with effect from January 1 this year.

1913 tragedy still resonates – by by Bill Lueders (Wisconsin Watch.org – December 17, 2013)

January 9, 2014

http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/

On Dec. 24, 1913, striking mine workers gathered with their families for a Christmas party at Italian Hall in Calumet, Mich. A man wearing a pin for a citizens group aligned with the mining companies entered the crowded second-floor room and shouted “Fire!”

Frightened partygoers rushed to the exit and tumbled down the stairs, on top of fallen others. Seventy-three people, including about 60 children, were killed. The community scrambled to find enough tiny caskets.
No one was ever charged for causing these deaths. A full century later, the event still haunts the Copper Country of the Upper Peninsula.

“I’ve gotten death threats,” relates Steve Lehto, a Michigan attorney who has written extensively on the tragedy. “I’ve been assaulted — literally — at book signings. I’ve had people come up to me and start screaming.”

Lehto understands and even sympathizes with such reactions, which he believes played into the decision to raze Italian Hall in 1984. The community just wants to forget; his duty as a historian is to not let that happen. “This is too important a story,” he says.

Global Gold Rush: The Price of Mining Pursuits On The Water Supply – by Codi Yeager-Kozacek (Circle of Blue – June 15, 2012)

January 9, 2014

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/

Editor’s Note: While this posting is somewhat dated, it is definitely worth a read!

Circle of Blue, founded in 2002 and based in Traverse City, Michigan, is a non-profit affiliate of the Pacific Institute, and the premier news organization in the world covering freshwater issues

Water supplies remain key to the global boom in gold mining, driven by high demand and near-record prices.

Driven by historically high gold prices and increased interest from foreign investors, mining boomtowns are springing up all over the world and wreaking a rising toll on water resources and the environment. Many places where new mines are being opened and old ones expanded, local authorities and residents are reporting mounting evidence of severe water pollution from gold mining, which has intensified due to a nearly 50 percent per year increase in mining exploration budgets over the past two years.

In Romania, billions of Euros and thousands of jobs — a boon for an economically depressed region — are being weighed against the environmental impact of what would be Europe’s largest open-cast gold mine. In South Africa, the world’s fifth-largest gold producer, the government is struggling to deal with pollution from acid mine drainage and hundreds of tailings dams.

Rio Tinto’s Michigan Nickel Mine Introduces Citizen Water Quality Testing Program – by Codi Kozacek (Circle of Blue – January 8, 2014)

January 9, 2014January 8, 2014

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/

Circle of Blue, founded in 2002 and based in Traverse City, Michigan, is a non-profit affiliate of the Pacific Institute, and the premier news organization in the world covering freshwater issues

Scheduled to begin production of nickel and copper next year, the Eagle Mine is the first new hard rock mine to open in northern Michigan’s Copper Country in decades. It’s so new that Chevy pickups need Kevlar tires to prevent blowouts on the sharp edges of stones not yet worn by mine traffic.

Puncture-proof tires, though, are hardly the only distinctions that separate the Eagle Mine from others in Michigan or across the United States. Two years ago, Rio Tinto, the mine’s developer, made an unusual proposition to the nonprofit Superior Watershed Partnership and Land Trust, a local environmental organization.

Upended by a decade of civic protest over opening the Eagle Mine in the ecologically sensitive Yellow Dog Plains, the London-based mining company, which operates all over the world, wanted to try something very different in Michigan’s wild and water-rich Upper Peninsula. It offered to fund the Watershed Partnership to monitor environmental parameters, like water and air quality.

Yesterday’s Top Story – U.S. mining death toll surges with metal/nonmetals losses–MSHA – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – January 7, 2014)

January 8, 2014

http://www.mineweb.com/

Machinery and powered haulage equipment were the most common causes of accidents for both coal and metal/nonmetal operations in 2013, MSHA reported.

RENO (MINEWEB.COM) – Preliminary data released by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration said 42 miners died in work related accidents at U.S. mines last year, up from 36 mining fatalities in 2012.

While mining deaths were at a record low rate for the first nine months of last year, six coal miners and nine metal/nonmetal miners died in mining accidents during the fourth-quarter 2013, a significant increase from the same period of 2012 when four coal miners and two metal/nonmetal miners died.

In 2013 there were 20 coal mining and 22 metal/nonmetal mining fatalities, compared with 20 coal mining deaths and 16 metal/nonmetal mining deals in 2012. Four mining deaths in 2013 involved contractors (two each in coal and metal/nonmetal), the lowest number of contractors deaths since MSHA began maintaining contractor data in 1983.

For metal/nonmetal mining, 17 deaths occurred at surface operations, while five deaths occurred underground in 2013. Fourteen coal mining deaths occurred underground and six were reported at surface operations during the same time period, said MSHA.

UPDATE 3-Indonesia’s mining ministry looks to ease mineral export ban – by Wilda Asmarini and Fergus Jensen (Reuters U.S. – January 8, 2014)

January 8, 2014

http://www.reuters.com/

Jan 8 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s mining ministry sought to ease a controversial mineral export ban before its Sunday deadline, but still looked set to prohibit more than $2 billion worth of annual nickel ore and bauxite shipments.

Indonesian government officials are scrambling to pass regulations to ease a ban on unprocessed mineral ore exports from Jan. 12.

The ban aims to boost Indonesia’s long-term return from its mineral wealth, but officials fear a short-term cut in foreign revenue could widen the current account deficit, which has undermined investor confidence and battered the rupiah.

“The (mining) ministry proposed that miners will be given flexibility to export concentrate or processed minerals until 2017,” Sukhyar, director general of coal and minerals at the ministry, told reporters.

“After 2017, they will only be allowed to export metal or refined mineral,” he said. The mineral ban is one of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s biggest economic policy moves in his nearly 10 years in office.

China approves massive new coal capacity despite pollution fears – by David Stanway (Reuters U.S. – January 7, 2014)

January 8, 2014

http://www.reuters.com/

BEIJING, Jan 8 (Reuters) – China approved the construction of more than 100 million tonnes of new coal production capacity in 2013 – six times more than a year earlier and equal to 10 percent of U.S. annual usage – flying in the face of plans to tackle choking air pollution.

The scale of the increase, which only includes major mines, reflects Beijing’s aim to put 860 million tonnes of new coal production capacity into operation over the five years to 2015, more than the entire annual output of India.

While efforts to curb pollution mean coal’s share of the country’s energy mix is set to dip, the total amount of the cheap and plentiful fuel burned will still rise.

According to data compiled by Reuters, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top planning authority, approved the construction of 15 new large-scale coal mines with 101.3 million tonnes of annual capacity in 2013.

“Given that China’s total energy consumption is still growing along with the economy, then coal production will continue to grow,” said Helen Lau, senior commodities analyst with UOB Kay Hian in Hong Kong.