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Latin America Mining

OPINION: At mining company Sherritt, any executive pay may be too much – by David Milstead (Globe and Mail – September 1,2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

At first blush, there seems not to be much to say about executive compensation at Sherritt International Corp. A million bucks here and there, positive feedback from proxy-advisory services, solid shareholder support for the compensation approach in its “say on pay” vote.

The problem, though, is that if you’re a long-suffering stockholder of the miner of nickel and cobalt, you may wonder why anyone there is getting paid anything at all. At the very least, the pay at Sherritt illustrates the problem with trying to match up “long-term” incentive pay to the truly long-term shareholder experience.

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Brazil Gears Up To Become Fourth Largest Oil Producer – by Matthew Smith (Oil Price.com – June 12, 2023)

https://oilprice.com/

For nearly two decades, South America’s largest economy Brazil has been reaping a tremendous economic windfall from a massive oil boom that kicked off with the first offshore ultra deep-water pre-salt discovery in 2006.

The boom nearly collapsed as corruption, mismanagement and malfeasance saw national oil company Petrobras laden with so much debt it was almost forced to declare bankruptcy. Since then, industry reforms and rationalization coupled with higher oil prices had reinvigorated the massive fossil fuel boom underway in Brazil, although it nearly faltered for a brief moment when left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva assumed power.

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China zooms in on Latin America, Africa in critical minerals race, says report – by Jackson Chen (Northern Miner – August 30, 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Facing more restrictive foreign investment policies in developed markets, China is expected to continue building its influence over key minerals such as lithium and cobalt across the developing world, according to S&P Global.

In a recent report, the U.S. data analytics firm stated that “China’s reach is quietly growing behind minerals critical to a wide range of products that will shape the future,” with firms from upstream to downstream, from miners to battery makers to electric vehicle manufacturers, all jumping into this race.

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Rio Tinto-First Quantum JV to develop massive copper project in Peru – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – August 29, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

Rio Tinto (ASX, LON: RIO) and First Quantum Minerals (TSX: FM) have formed a joint venture that will focus on moving to development the La Granja copper project in Peru, described by the new partners as one of the world’s largest undeveloped deposits of the metal.

After paying $105 million to Rio Tinto, First Quantum now owns a 55% stake in the project and has become its operator. The Canadian miner has committed to further invest up to $546 million into La Granja, part of which will be used to complete a feasibility study over the next two to three years.

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Brazil’s Criminal Groups Hamper Fight Against Illegal Mining in the Amazon – by Nelza Oliveira (Dialogo-Americas – August 23, 2023)

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Brazil’s largest criminal groups, the First Command of the Capital (PCC) and the Red Command (CV), have been working together with illegal miners in the Amazon, hampering government efforts to eradicate mining and contributing to increased violence in Brazil’s Yanomami reservation, the largest indigenous territory in the world and home to approximately 30,000 indigenous people.

The criminals provide heavy machinery and weapons to miners, acting as security guards at certain sites, and helping to transport mined gold out of the Amazon. They also run prostitution and narcotrafficking rings on Yanomami land.

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Ecuador Will Keep Some Oil in the Ground – by Manuela Andreoni and David Gelles (New York Times – August 22, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

59 percent of voters sided with young activists in a referendum.

Ecuador voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to halt oil drilling in one of the most biodiverse places on earth. With almost all ballots counted, 59 percent of voters sided with the young activists who spent a decade fighting for the referendum, as we wrote last week.

It is widely considered to be the first time a country’s citizens voted decisively to leave oil in the ground. In a separate referendum, Ecuadoreans also voted to block mining in a biosphere reserve. “The answer from the Ecuadorean people suggests to us that the people are proposing a different way to live,” Monserrat Vásquez, an anti-mining activist, told reporters after the victory was announced.

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Momentum builds for Piedmont Lithium’s ambitious production plans as portfolio expands in Africa – by Amanda Stutt (Mining.com – August 18, 2023)

https://www.mining.com/

Piedmont Lithium (Nasdaq: PLL; ASX: PLL) this week acquired a 22.5% stake in Atlantic Lithium’s (ASX: A11) flagship Ewoyaa project in Ghana after committing $17 million to fund the project through its definitive feasibility study, adding an Africa asset to its expanding portfolio of operations.

It completed the second stage of the investment agreement signed in 2021. Under the deal, Piedmont can earn a 50% equity interest in Atlantic’s Ghanaian lithium portfolio, headlined by the Ewoyaa project. The first stage involved a $15 million investment into Atlantic, previously IronRidge Resources.

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The history of Real del Monte, Mexico’s little slice of Cornwall – by Diana Cooper-Richet (The Conversation – December 12, 2017)

https://theconversation.com/

Sitting at an altitude of 2,700 metres, Real del Monte is a pretty town in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. But with its architecture, heritage of silver mining and meat pasties, it is also a little slice of Cornwall, a region in the southwest of England.

The silver mines surrounding Real del Monte were the source of more than half the silver produced during the 300 years that Spain rule Mexico (1521–1821). By 1824, however, they were in bad condition, and were bought by a group of English investors.

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[Silver Mining History] Potosí and its Silver: The Beginnings of Globalization – by Kenneth Maxwell (SLD Info – December 13, 2020)

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A decade after the Spanish Conquistadores toppled the Inca Empire (1532-34), an indigenous Andean prospector, Diego Gualpa, in 1545, stumbled onto the richest silver deposit in the world on a high mountain of 4,800 meters (15,750 feet) in the eastern cordillera of the Bolivian Andes.

Here in the shadow of what the Spaniards called the “Cerro Rico” (“Rich Mountain”) at 4,000 meters (13,200 feet) a mining boom town quickly developed. By the end of the sixteenth century, it had become one of the largest and the highest cities in the world, and in 1561, Philip ll of Spain, decreed that it should be known as the “Villa Imperial de Potosí.”

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China Goes after South America’s New Treasure: Lithium PART II – by Sabina Nicholls (Dialogo Americas – August 14, 2023)

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With a triple action of state investment, diplomacy, and geostrategic corruption, China is leading the race for lithium. This situation was discussed in the first part of this report, exposing the tactics of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to conquer the Andean countries rich in this metal.

But what is a gain for China is a loss for Latin America. Experts and analysts are alarmed by the socio-environmental impact of Chinese investments in the exploration and exploitation of lithium and fear a dependence on the Asian country to obtain this mineral, indispensable for the modern world and the energy transition.

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More Than 50 Firms Want In on New Lithium-Mining Model in Chile – by James Attwood (Bloomberg News – August 15, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Mining companies are jostling to negotiate lithium deals under a new government model in Chile, home to the world’s biggest reserves of the metal that’s a key component in electric-vehicle batteries.

To meet the demand, authorities are well advanced in work to identify new extraction areas and are compiling bidding rules for contracts to explore and possibly mine them, Karla Flores, head of InvestChile, said in an interview.

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Ecuador’s Tense Vote Also Threatens to End Mining, Oil Projects – by Stephan Kueffner and James Attwood (Bloomberg News – August 15, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — While investors are focused on Ecuador’s tumultuous presidential election, two other measures on the ballot in the Aug. 20 vote will also shape the country’s financial future.

Ecuadorians are expected to vote in favor of referendums to order the closing of a major oil field and restrict gold and copper mining, potentially leaving the government with a large hole in its budget. The initiatives are taking place alongside a presidential race that was thrown into chaos last week when one of the leading candidates was assassinated while campaigning.

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Codelco Turns to New CEO as Debt Piles Up at Top Copper Producer – by James Attwood and Valentina Fuentes (Bloomberg News – August 14, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Codelco will name its third CEO in a year in the coming weeks as Chile’s state-owned copper company struggles to turn around a slump in output and earnings. With debt at $19 billion and rising, the stakes are getting higher for bondholders.

Production has hit the lowest in a quarter century, costs have surged and ore grades keep on falling, jeopardizing its status as the world’s No. 1 producer. That’s sent debt metrics to the worst in years despite copper prices staying more than 20% above the average of the last decade.

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Gold mining in the Amazon poisoning scores of threatened species – by Gloria Dickie and Jake Spring (Japan Times – August 7, 2023)

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/

LOS AMIGOS BIOLOGICAL STATION, PERU – In a camping tent in the Peruvian jungle, four scientists are crowded around a tiny patient: An Amazonian rodent that could fit in the palm of a human hand.
The researchers placed the small-eared pygmy rice rat into a plastic chamber and piped in anesthetic gas until it rolled over, asleep.

Removing the creature from the chamber, they fitted it with a miniature anesthetic mask and measured its body parts with a ruler before gently pulling hairs from its back with tweezers. The hairs, bundled into a tiny plastic bag, would be carried to a nearby lab at the Los Amigos Biological Station for testing to determine whether the rat is yet another victim of mercury contamination.

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The new commodity superpowers – by Leslie Hook, Harry Dempsey and Ciara Nugent in Buenos Aires (Financial Times – August 7, 2023)

https://www.ft.com/

In the first part of a series, countries that produce the metals central to the energy transition want to rewrite the rules of mineral extraction

The red-brown landscape of Tenke-Fungurume, one of the world’s largest copper and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is covered by tens of thousands of dusty sacks. The bags stacked up by the roadside and piled next to buildings contain a stash of cobalt hydroxide powder equivalent to almost a tenth of the world’s annual consumption — and worth about half a billion dollars.

The haphazard stockpiles of this bright green powder, a key ingredient in electric car batteries, point to how the DRC, the world’s largest producer of cobalt, is starting to flex its muscles when it comes to the metals needed for the energy transition.

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