No, lithium isn’t going to become “the new oil,” regardless of what the pandering pundits of the popular press say (it’s a raw material, not a fuel, and it’s one of the most abundant elements on Earth). However, there’s no question that demand for the light white stuff is growing quickly, and that much of the current supply comes from outside the US.
Tesla is believed to import much of the lithium it uses from Australia and South America. There are strong economic and environmental reasons to develop more domestic sources.
Fortunately, just a couple hundred miles north of Gigafactory 1, near the Oregon/Nevada border, there’s an area that some are calling Lithium Valley, which could contain a huge and easily exploitable trove of lithium. (This isn’t mere serendipity — one of the reasons Tesla chose Nevada as the site of the Gigafactory was the proximity to potential sources of lithium and other minerals.)
Do you think driving a Tesla or plugging-in to solar power are environmentally-conscious choices? Then you should know it’s almost certain the batteries in those systems traveled around the world two or three times before they were ever installed. That’s not very “green,” is it?
Lithium-ion batteries, found in laptops, mobile phones and many other things we use every day, often have a rather costly carbon footprint. But a tiny town in the American West called Orovada could play a big role in making green energy more green.
Northern Nevada could soon explode into America’s “Lithium Valley,” playing an even more critical role in our country’s future than Silicon Valley did with technology.
(Reuters) – U.S. regulators have moved a step closer toward approving Lithium Americas Corp’s Nevada mine for the white metal, launching a review process that could result in final permits to build by 2021.
The step comes as U.S. politicians have been pushing for increased domestic mining of specialized minerals. Lithium is used to make lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. Albemarle Corp is the only current U.S. producer of lithium.
The U.S. Department of the Interior filed paperwork to ask for public comment over the next year on the Thacker Pass project’s environmental impact statement, according to a post on a government website dated Jan. 21. The post appeared to be filed automatically as the department was closed on Monday for a holiday.
(Reuters) – Barrick Gold Corp (ABX.TO), (GOLD.N) fell short of analysts’ estimates for third-quarter gold production on Thursday, as lower output at its North Mara mine in Tanzania offset gains from its Randgold buy and the Nevada Gold Mines joint venture.
Operations at the Canadian company’s North Mara mine were hit by tax and environmental disputes, and restrictions were lifted in September after Barrick addressed concerns about seepage at the project’s tailings storage facility.
North Mara was operated by Acacia Mining and Barrick took full control of the miner after a British court approved its $1.2 billion takeover.
ELKO, Nev. — After years of discussion, Nevada’s two largest mining companies struck a deal this summer to join forces and combine operations in the world’s largest gold-producing complex.
The joint venture between Barrick Gold Corporation and Newmont Goldcorp Corporation ushers in a new era in Nevada hard rock mining. Barrick owns and operates 61.5 percent of the newly formed Nevada Gold Mines, while Newmont owns 38.5 percent of the company. By sharing assets and access to each other’s facilities, Nevada Gold Mines expects to save close to a half-billion a year.
NGM Executive Managing Director Greg Walker, who started with Barrick in 2002, has seen his share of failed merger discussions over the years. Just this year, Barrick tendered an $18 billion stock offer to acquire Newmont outright.
Barrick Gold Corp. is planning to sell its 50-per-cent share in the Kalgoorlie mine in Australia and has identified two Australian companies as possible buyers.
“There’s a lot of very interested parties in that asset, whether it’s Northern Star or Evolution [Mining]. Those mid-cap Aussie guys are doing extremely well,” Barrick CEO Mark Bristow said in an interview after the release of the company’s second-quarter results on Monday. Neither Northern Star nor Evolution responded to a request for comment.
After Barrick bought Randgold Resources Ltd. for US$6-billion earlier this year, the company said it intended to divest about US$1.5-billion in assets to concentrate on its highest-returning assets, such as its mines in Nevada and its massive Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic, which needs about US$1-billion in capital expenditure over the next few years.
Barrick Gold and Newmont Goldcorp have concluded a transaction establishing Nevada Gold Mines. Canadian mining company Barrick Gold will own 61.5% of the new company, while Newmont takes the remaining 38.5%.
The joint venture (JV) assets in North-eastern Nevada comprise ten underground and 12 open pit mines, two autoclave facilities and two roasting facilities. It also consists of four oxide mills, a flotation plant and five heap leach facilities.
Barrick Gold president and CEO Mark Bristow said: “The establishment of Nevada Gold Mines was designed to combine arguably the industry’s best assets and people in order to deliver the best value to stakeholders.
A partnership between the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno and Newmont Goldcorp is marking its golden anniversary of helping students, the Mackay School, the mining industry and Newmont recruitment all these years.
“Both Newmont and Mackay get something out of the partnership,” said Melissa Harmon, general manager of Newmont’s Twin Creeks Mine in Humboldt County.
Newmont has donated an estimated $8 million to the Mackay School and UNR since 1969, Harmon said. Newmont also was the first mining company to reach the philanthropist level in 2011 for giving $5 million to the university.
The Mackay Muckers had enough female recruits for both men’s and a women’s teams for the first time in five years.
When asked if she could think of a more proper term to describe her female team members other than “badass”, Claire Roberts, Captain of the Lady Muckers – the Mackay Muckers women’s team, thought for a minute before answering. “Kickass? That’s not much better, is it?” Roberts asked.
The “kickass” Lady Muckers competed on Friday, March 22nd in the 41st Annual International Collegiate Mining Competition in Virginia City alongside teams from all over the country and the world.
The teams compete in old-school mining techniques such as single jack hand steel (hammering a steel chisel into concrete by hand), jackleg drilling, hand mucking (shoveling “muck” or dirt into a mine cart and running it down and back a length of track), gold panning, track stand (quickly assembling an un-assembling a rail-cart track), and swede saw (sawing through a 4×4″ block of wood).
Barrick CEO Mark Bristow says investor’s poor reaction to the Newmont-Goldcorp merger created an opportunity and he pounced
One day after announcing a deal to effectively create the world’s third largest gold company, Mark Bristow, chief executive of Barrick Gold Corp., stayed in Elko, Nevada — a dry, rugged city situated near the Carlin Trend, one of the world’s richest gold mining districts — to assemble the team responsible for executing his promises.
For decades, Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp. and its archrival Colorado-based Newmont Mining Corp., the two biggest gold mining companies in the world, have fuelled a large part of their growth through discoveries along the Carlin Trend, and tried numerous times to reach an accord to work together there.
Now, Bristow, 12 weeks into his tenure at the helm of Barrick, is holding up a joint venture agreement with Newmont to share assets in Nevada, which he claims will save both companies US$500 million per year, and billions of dollars over the long run. What’s more the deal was ramrodded through in a matter of days while Bristow proposed a $17.8 billion hostile offer to takeover all of Newmont.
Barrick Gold Corp. and Newmont Mining Corp. have agreed to team up in a joint venture in Nevada that will see Barrick drop its hostile bid for its biggest rival and unite the world’s two biggest gold miners in one of the richest goldfields on the planet.
The accord means Colorado-based Newmont is far more likely to succeed in its efforts to buy Goldcorp Inc. and bypass Barrick as the world’s biggest gold company. Barrick’s pursuit of Newmont had threatened to derail the US$10-billion deal that was announced in January.
The Barrick-Newmont ownership split announced on Monday will be 61.5 per cent in favour of Barrick with the Toronto-based miner also named as the operator. The agreement will see gigantic mines, including Barrick’s Goldstrike and Cortez operations, along with Newmont’s Carlin, unite under one roof.
Barrick and Newmont finally strike a deal, but it won’t move the needle much.
It’s amazing what just talking it out can achieve. After a parade of insults, suspect numbers and pitch decks, Barrick Gold Corp. and Newmont Mining Corp. have agreed to a deal.
It isn’t the deal Barrick originally pushed for; namely, a hostile full takeover of its rival. Instead, they will holster their Excel models and form a partnership in the one asset anyone really cares about: their Nevada mining operations.
On balance, it looks as if Barrick got most of what it wanted. It will run the Nevada joint venture and control three of the five board seats governing it. Ownership of 61.5 percent reflects Barrick’s much bigger resource base in the region (as my colleague David Fickling laid out here), with Newmont giving ground on its earlier proposal of a 55/45 split.
One of the most prominent names in the mining industry is blasting the mere possibility of Barrick Gold Corp., calling its potential hostile takeover bid for Newmont Mining Corp. “stupid.”
“Someone is having fun with the press,” said Pierre Lassonde, chairman of Franco-Nevada Corp. (), in an emailed statement to BNN Bloomberg. “A hostile bid in this environment is stupid. [Barrick’s] stock would get crushed.”
Barrick () confirmed in a short press release Friday morning that it has “reviewed the opportunity” to merge with Newmont () in what the company said would be an all-stock, no premium offer. Barrick added it hasn’t decided how it will proceed.
JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Nevada is like the Witwatersrand of the 1970s, says new Barrick Gold president and CEO Dr Mark Bristow, whose Randgold Resources is now merged into Barrick to form the world’s biggest gold mining company, which is also an extractor of copper, a metal that Bristow sees as “another gold”.
The brand new Goldrush-Fourmile discovery, which extends the footprint within Cortez district in Nevada in the US, is already at 12-million ounces at over 10 g/t.
“I reckon that will go over 20-million ounces and that’s an 8-km-long deposit,” South African-born Bristow tells Mining Weekly Online. And then there is Turquoise Ridge, which is the richest gold mine in the world at 15 g/t.
The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame was conceived by the late Maurice R. Brown, former editor and publisher of The Northern Miner, as a way to recognize and honour the legendary mine finders and builders of a great Canadian industry. The Hall was established in 1988. For more information about the extraordinary individuals who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, please go to their home website: http://mininghalloffame.ca/
The greatest discoveries are transformative, and Brian Meikle is one of only a few modern-era geologists who achieved this pinnacle of success. In the 1960s, he contributed to the discovery and development of the Camflo gold mine in Quebec, and later was part of a talented team that made it a cornerstone of growth for Barrick Gold (formerly American Barrick). In the early 1980s, he recognized the potential of the Mercur gold mine in Utah, which became a key link in the evolution of Barrick.
Meikle’s crowning achievement was the 1986 Goldstrike discovery in Nevada, which grew to approximately 60 million ounces of gold reserves and resources in several deposits. Goldstrike propelled Barrick into the world’s largest gold miner and generated immense wealth that has flowed back to benefit Canadian companies, shareholders and society.
Born in Montreal, Meikle returned to Canada from California as a post-graduate student. He earned an MSc degree (geology) from McGill University in 1955, followed by his PhD in 1959. He was the recipient of McGill’s Logan Gold Medal in 1958, awarded to the graduating student who stands highest in the First Class Honours list in Geology.
http://www.pendaproductions.com/ This video was produced by PENDA Productions, a full service production company specializing in Corporate Communications with a focus on Corporate Responsibility.
In 1962, Meikle joined Camflo Mines and was instrumental in discoveries that made the mine and the company. He spent 22 years with Camfl o in diverse roles, including mine manager and vicepresident of operations. In 1984, Peter Munk acquired Camflo for American Barrick and also gained a dream technical team to help realize his dream of creating a major gold producer.
(LtoR) Lisa MacDonald, Executive Director, Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, presenting the award to Janet Meikle on behalf of Brian Meikle at the Mining Hall of Fame dinner on January 10th. Keith Houghton Photography.
