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Latin America Mining

The Illegal Airstrips Bringing Toxic Mining to Brazil’s Indigenous Land – by Manuela Andreoni, Blacki Migliozzi, Pablo Robles and Denise Lu (New York Times – August 2, 2022)

https://www.nytimes.com/

BOA VISTA, Brazil — From 2,500 feet in the air, the dirt airstrip is just a crack in a seemingly endless ocean of rainforest, surrounded by muddy mining pits that bleed toxic chemicals into a riverbed.

The airstrip is owned by the Brazilian government — the only way for health care officials to reach the Indigenous people in the nearby village. But illegal miners have seized it, using small planes to ferry equipment and fuel into areas where roads don’t exist. And when a plane the miners don’t recognize approaches, they spread fuel canisters along the airstrip to make landing impossible.

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New Lithium Mining Technology Could Give Argentina a Sustainable Gold Rush – by Ciara Nugent (Time Magazine – July 26, 2022)

https://time.com/

The Vasquez brothers aren’t used to visitors. Their farm lies in the Puna, a vast plateau region in the Andes Mountains, some 12,500 ft above sea level and a full day’s drive to the nearest city.

The terrain, in the Argentine province of Catamarca, is rough and largely empty; fluffy, big-eyed llamas wander a miles-wide plain between mountains. Only sparse shrubs pepper the ground, glowing yellow-green Technicolor under the close sun. But one day in 2016, a tall man in his 50s, speaking heavily Australian-accented Spanish, pulled up to the Vasquezes’ remote farmhouse.

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Illegal Brazil gold tied to Italian refiner and Big Tech customers (Mining.com/Reuters – July 25, 2022)

https://www.mining.com/

Brazilian police allege an Italian refiner purchased gold from a trader sourcing it illegally in the Amazon rainforest region, according to police documents, and corporate disclosures show that refiner has supplied the precious metal to four of the world’s largest tech companies.

Public filings by Amazon.com, Apple, Microsoft and Google-parent Alphabet name the private Italian firm Chimet as a source of some gold used in their products. Tech companies often use small amounts of the metal in circuit boards for consumer electronics.

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Nutrien to acquire Brazilian fertilizer company Casa do Adubo in continued push into Latin America – Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – July 20, 2022)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Nutrien Ltd. is buying Brazilian retail fertilizer company Casa do Adubo S.A. as it forges ahead on an expansion into Latin America despite a difficult global economic environment.

Saskatoon-based Nutrien, the world’s biggest fertilizer company, did not disclose financial terms for the deal, but said it would add roughly US$400-million in sales and expand its reach in Brazil to 13 states from five.

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US losing ground to China, Russia in South American lithium rush – by Rafael Bernal (The Hill – July 19, 2022)

https://thehill.com/

U.S. companies are hitting speedbumps in the race to win contracts to extract lithium in the Americas, particularly as the Chinese and Russian governments throw their weight around to land such agreements.

While the most easily exploitable currently known lithium deposits are in Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, the United States has so far not been able to capitalize on its influence in the Western Hemisphere to support its companies.

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Nationalize LATAM’s Lithium to Become Global Power: Evo Morales – by Fernando Mares (Mexico Business – July 13, 2022)

https://mexicobusiness.news/

Former President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, urged lithium-producing countries to take advantage of what he calls the decline of the US as a superpower to nationalize the lithium industry. By doing so, the Latin American region could play a major role in the world’s economics.

“The west does not want us to add value to our natural resources. If we industrialize the peoples’ lithium in the hand of the state, we could be global powers, at least in this environment,” Morales said at a conference at the El Rosario University in Argentina.

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Anglo American’s Quellaveco yields first copper concentrate – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – July 12, 2022)

https://www.mining.com/

Anglo American (LON: AAL) said on Tuesday it had begun producing copper concentrate as its $5.5 billion Quellaveco mine in Peru, which is expected to churn out between 100,000 and 150,000 tonnes this year.

The company, which has a 60% stake in the mine, earlier this year forecast the copper project to produce 100,000 to 150,000 tonnes this year, boosting the company’s overall copper production for 2022 to between 680,000 and 760,000 tonnes.

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China’s Ganfeng Lithium buys lithium mines in Argentina – by Harry Dempsey (Financial Times – July 11, 2022)

https://www.ft.com/

Purchase of Lithea comes as global competition for metals needed to power electric vehicles hots up

Ganfeng Lithium has agreed to buy Argentina-focused mining group Lithea for up to $962mn, as China steps up its battle for the metals needed to power electric vehicles.

The deal will give Shenzhen-listed Ganfeng rights to Pozuelos and Paston Grandes, two salt lake brines in Argentina that can produce lithium carbonate, a key material for batteries used in electric vehicles.

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BHP loses appeal to multibillion lawsuit over Samarco disaster – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – July 8, 2022)

https://www.mining.com/

BHP (ASX: BHP) said on Friday it had lost an appeal in a London court seeking to block an over £5 billion ($6bn-plus) lawsuit by 200,000 Brazilians over a deadly dam failure in Brazil seven years ago.

The group claim, one of the largest in British legal history, alleged that BHP, the world’s largest miner by market value, ignored safety warnings as the dam’s capacity was repeatedly increased by raising its height – and disregarded cracks that pointed to early signs of rupture.

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Political changes boost risk for miners in Latin America – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – July 7, 2022)

https://www.mining.com/

A rising demand to participate in the revenues from natural resources, tougher environmental protection rules and law changes are increasing risks for mining and energy companies across Latin America, even in countries once considered safe investment destinations, a new study shows.

According to the 2022 Latin America Mining Risk Index, published by consultancy Americas Market Intelligence (AMI), once investors’ darling Chile, is now the riskiest country in the region.

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Swiss gold refiners pledge to avoid Brazilian Amazon gold – by Dominique Soguel (Swiss Info – June 30, 2022)

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/

In a rare statement, Swiss refiners also said they would take the “necessary technical and humanly possible measures in order not to take, import or refine illegal gold including the one from Brazil by tracing and identifying this gold.” They also urged the Brazilian government of Jair Bolsonaro to do more to protect the indigenous population and the environment.

Gold mining by irregular artisanal miners contributes to the deforestation of the Amazon, leaves the soil poisoned with mercury and encroaches on traditional indigenous lands. Brazilian export data and academic studies suggest much of that gold goes to or through Switzerland, a key player in the global gold trade.

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Chile at risk of missing lithium boom amid political, policy instability – by Marta Lillo (SP Global – June 16, 2022)

https://www.spglobal.com/

Chile may miss out on the lithium price boom if it cannot set policy to allow development of its vast reserves. With lithium prices soaring through most of 2021 and 2022, major miners have been eyeing Chile as a potential new source of the white metal.

But Chile has been flailing for half a decade to create a legal framework to sell concessions to developers to extract its 19.9 million tonnes of lithium reserves, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data, and the country has only issued a handful of permits.

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Barrick facing new allegations of contamination near Veladero mine in Argentina – by Gabriel Friedland (Financial Post – June 13, 2022)

https://financialpost.com/

Toronto-headquartered Barrick Gold Corp. is once again facing accusations that its high-altitude Veladero mine in Argentina is releasing toxins into the local water supply — after similar incidents years ago spurred the country to pass legislation and forced the mine to temporarily close.

Located in the Argentinian Andes, Veladero is operated by Barrick but it is jointly owned on a 50-50 basis with China’s Shandong Gold. The mine has faced criticism related to toxic spills in water dating back to at least 2015.

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In Bolivia’s Amazon, wildcat gold mining boom stokes tension over environment – by Sergio Limachi (Reuters – June 10, 2022)

https://www.reuters.com/

BENI RIVER, Bolivia, June 10 (Reuters) – In Bolivia’s Amazon tensions are rising over a boom in wildcat gold mining that is driving a surge in imports of mercury used to extract the precious metal and is sparking conflict between small-scale prospectors and local indigenous groups.

The landlocked South American nation has seen gold production spike in the last five years, with an important amount of that coming from artisanal miners, officials say. That has risen with the global gold price elevated in recent years.

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Teck Resources donates thousands of hectares of land for conservation – by Jeffrey Jones (Globe and Mail – June 6, 2022)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Teck Resources Ltd. is donating 14,000 hectares of land in Canada and Chile for conservation as part of a plan to preserve or rehabilitate three times as much area as it disturbs by 2030.

Teck, a Vancouver-based copper, zinc and coal miner, said the effort includes donations of tracts of land in eastern British Columbia to the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC). It is also partnering with Chile’s Ollagüe Quechua Indigenous community to protect wetlands near the company’s Quebrada Blanca operations, close to the Bolivian border. The donations will be equivalent to 40 per cent of the company’s mining footprint.

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