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Tailings ponds in northern Ontario considered safe, scientist says (CBC News Sudbury – August 07, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury

David Pearson says what happened in B.C. is unlikely to happen here

A tailings pond breach in central British Columbia this week is raising questions about how mine waste is being taken care of in northern Ontario.

The recent disaster at the Mount Polley Mine released billions of litres of wastewater into river systems. But, according to Laurentian University professor David Pearson, the tailings ponds here in the North often aren’t built at all.

They’re existing lakes or wetland — and that’s what makes them safer. “It’s not like a pond on a parking lot where a break would cause a massive flood,” Pearson said.

Even so, companies that want to mine in Ontario must prove they can rehabilitate a site or pay for a cleanup before they begin production. And the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines makes inspections every few years.

Former Glencore scientist Lisa Leger said Ontario has strict protocols to prevent what happened in B.C. “I was heavily involved in risk management and know that the companies will definitely listen to all the concerns.” But environmental groups like Mining Watch Canada remain skeptical that full-site rehabilitation after such a disaster is ever possible.

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Rodriguez would renew fight for resource revenues – by Ben Leeson (Sudbury Star – August 7, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Some may call it an old idea. John Rodriguez calls it unfinished business.

The former Greater Sudbury mayor, who’s running again in the municipal election in October, said he’ll take up the fight once more to tackle the municipality’s $700-million infrastructure deficit by seeking “a fair share” of resource revenues.

Rodriguez made the announcement in front of the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines in Sudbury on Wednesday.

“It’s a question of justice, of fairness,” Rodriguez said. While the province receives royalties from the ores mined in Greater Sudbury – to the tune of $50 million in 2007, based on figures supplied by Rodriguez – the city does not.

Greater Sudbury does get 7.5 cents per tonne for gravel under the Aggregate Resources Act, while the province gets 13 cents.

“But for ores, we don’t get a penny,” Rodriguez said. “We have these major roads in the city – Lasalle Boulevard, Falconbridge Road, Cote Boulevard, (Municipal) Road 15, (Highway) 69 North — that are used as major routes for transporting ores from the mines to the smelters and refineries, yet we bear the cost of repairing these roads. You can set your clock by it, or your calendar. Every four or five years, we have to resurface the roads, but we don’t receive any royalties to help us offset the cost of repairing these roads.

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UPDATE 2-Brazil’s Vale profit falls; prices undermine record output – by Stephen Eisenhammer (Reuters India – July 31, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Brazilian miner Vale SA posted a sharp decline in profit from the previous quarter as lower iron ore prices undermined record production of the steel-making ingredient.

Vale, the world’s largest producer of iron ore, reported second-quarter net income of $1.43 billion, down 43 percent on the previous quarter and below the average analyst estimate of $1.89 billion in a Reuters survey.

“It was a very challenging environment where the price of our most important product has dropped by 15 percent,” Chief Financial Officer Luciano Siani said in a video accompanying results.

Net income was more than three times higher than the year-ago quarter, when a one-time foreign exchange charge slashed profit to $424 million. Prices for iron ore .IO62-CNI=SI have dropped by nearly 30 percent this year, hitting a 22-month low in June.

Iron ore production rose 12.6 percent to 79.45 million tonnes from a year earlier, as better weather conditions combined with ramp-ups at its two main mine sites in Brazil.

Mega miners Vale and Australia’s Rio Tinto Ltd and BHP Billiton Ltd are ramping up output and slashing costs in an attempt to increase market share.

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COLUMN-Big 3 iron ore miners in volume, price sweet spot – by Clyde Russell (Reuters India – July 28, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, July 28 (Reuters) – One thing has become clear from the latest production reports from the big three iron ore miners: They appear intent on ensuring their dominance by boosting low-cost output.

BHP Billiton mined a record 225 million tonnes of the steelmaking ingredient in the year to end-June, beating its own forecast by 4 percent. BHP said in its latest production report that it expects to increase output further, to 245 million tonnes in the 2014-15 financial year.

Fellow Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto boosted output 23 percent in the second quarter from the same period last year to 75.7 million tonnes. It also is forecasting higher annual output, with the quarterly report released on July 16 pointing to 2014 production of 295 million tonnes, up 11 percent from 266 million in 2013.

The world’s biggest iron ore miner, Brazil’s Vale , also had record output in the second quarter, posting a 12.6 percent gain to 79.45 million tonnes. The company is planning to boost its annual output to 450 million tonnes by 2018 from 306 million last year.

The three global iron ore giants have effectively gambled that they can continue to boost production and grab bigger slices of global demand, given that they can withstand lower prices due to their low-cost mines and economies of scale.

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UPDATE 2-Brazil’s Vale hits iron ore record, base metals output lags – by Stephen Eisenhammer (Reuters U.K. – July 24, 2014)

http://uk.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Brazil’s Vale SA produced record amounts of iron ore in its latest second quarter, rising to the task of battling Australian rivals for market share, but weaker performance at other divisions fanned some concern ahead of results next week.

Iron ore production rose 12.6 percent to 79.45 million tonnes from a year earlier, Vale said on Thursday, as better weather conditions combined with ramp ups at its two main mine sites in Brazil. The Brazilian company is the world’s largest producer of the mineral.

Vale is expected to post an annual decline in second-quarter net income of more than 40 percent when it reports on July 31, according to an average of analyst forecasts compiled by Reuters.

Giants Vale, Rio Tinto Plc and BHP Billiton Plc are all increasing iron ore capacity in a move expected to squeeze higher-cost producers out of the market. But with iron ore prices .IO62-CNI=SI languishing near 22-month lows during the period, analysts had been looking to Vale’s nickel division to pick up some of the slack.

Some of those analysts were subsequently disappointed as nickel production fell 5.2 percent to 61,700 tonnes due to maintenance at the Sudbury mine in Canada. Its VNC project on the French Pacific island of New Caledonia also suspended operations after an acid spill in May.

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Sudbury Basin largely unexplored: geologist – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life – July 16, 2014)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

But Sudbury’s mining outlook positive with new projects on horizon

Despite occupying one of the most mineral-rich areas of the world, large swaths of the Sudbury Basin have remained unexplored.

Dan Farrow, the Sudbury District geologist with the Ontario Geological Survey, said Vale and Glencore hold a large number of patented mineral claims, for tracts of land in the Sudbury Basin only they can explore.

Because both companies have a number of productive mines in the region, they haven’t yet bothered to explore many of those regions. The patented claims – which lease mineral rights to the companies in question – are in an area geologists refer to as the eruptive.

Researchers estimate a meteor made impact more than 2 billion years ago with what is now the Sudbury Basin. The impact left a crater 200 kilometres in diameter, and brought molten magma beneath the Earth’s crust to surface.

The prevailing theory, said Farrow, is that the magma was rich in minerals, such as nickel and copper. When it hardened, it formed the mineral deposits that have defined the Sudbury Basin.

Sudbury’s mining giants Inco and Falconbridge – and later Vale and Glencore, respectively – jumped on rich contact deposits of solid ore. “That’s what Inco and Falconbridge mined for years because it was so easy,” Farrow said.

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Vale Canada – by John O’Hanlon (BE Mining – July 16, 2014)

http://www.bus-ex.com/mining

Nickel in demand

The Vale do Rio Doce in Brazil is doubtless an idyllic place beauty as its name, valley of the peaceful river, implies. However the now more prosaically named Vale is a global company with which readers of Business Excellence are very familiar, most recently in our coverage of Vale’s coal mining operations in Mozambique – and indeed, Wales.

However since its 2006 acquisition of Canadian nickel mining operator Inco Vale has been a major player in Canada, where it now has a dozen mines and operational sites. To give an idea of the scale of the Canadian operations, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brazilian major, its base metals headquarters in Toronto alone employs 850 people at three sites that administer Vale’s countrywide operations and house the company’s technology development department. Base metals in this context covers almost everything apart from gold, silver and platinum, and definitely includes nickel.

Also in Ontario, though about 400 kilometres to the north of Toronto, Sudbury has enough untapped nickel deposits to support mining for decades to come. In total, Vale has six mines, a mill, a smelter and a refinery in Sudbury, making this one of the largest integrated mining operations on the planet, employing approximately 4,000 people. Raw materials from Vale’s Sudbury operations are shipped to The Port Colborne nickel refinery, a vast 360-acre complex on the shore of Lake Erie in southern Ontario. The refinery dates back to the early days of Inco nearly 100 years ago and employs 170 people in processing nickel, electrocobalt and precious metals, exporting finished nickel products throughout the world.

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Coroner looking to call inquests into Sudbury mining deaths – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – June 27, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The regional supervising coroner is looking to set dates for inquests into three deaths in Sudbury mines by early fall.

It will be weeks or even months after the dates are scheduled before the inquests are held, however, based on factors such as courtroom space and the availability of expert witnesses, said Dr. David Eden

Coroner’s investigators are compiling three briefs on the June 8, 2011, deaths of Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, at Vale’s Stobie Mine and the Jan. 29, 2012, death of Stephen Perry, 47, at Vale’s Coleman Mine.

The deaths of Chenier and Fram may be the subject of a single inquest, Eden said. That will be announced when the inquests are scheduled.

Chenier and Fram were killed at the 3,000-foot level of the century-old Stobie Mine when they were overcome by a run of 350 tons of muck. Perry was killed when a 14-ton piece of rock broke from the wall at the 4,215-foot level of the main ore body at Coleman.

The amount of evidence being collected for the three briefs is “substantial,” said Eden.

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A nickel mine and the missing Placentia processing plant – by Trevor Cole (Globe and Mail – June 24, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

It’s amazing how often serendipity plays a role in uncovering a great story. One morning in May of 2000, I’d come back from the cafeteria with a coffee in my hand and I was standing restlessly at my desk at the magazine, where I was a staff writer. I’d finished my work on a previous assignment and it was time to look for the next subject. In the few minutes I’d been gone, a pile of office flotsam had landed on my desk.

It was mostly a collection of press releases and industry publications I’d never bothered to look at. At another time, I might simply have moved the pile on to someone else’s desk. But this time I shuffled through it. And about 10 centimetres down, my eyes landed on an edition of The Charter, a thin, weekly newspaper from the little town of Placentia, Newfoundland.

Who knows what it was doing there; maybe the mailroom had misdirected it. With the mildest sense of curiosity, I began to turn the pages of cheap newsprint, and within a minute, I saw that something was going on in Placentia. Furious letters to the editor, stories quoting tirades by Placentia’s mayor against other town leaders. The anger seemed to have something to do with fallout from the huge nickel discovery six years earlier at Voisey’s Bay, Labrador, some 1,100 kilometres to the north.

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Bill 50 – The Thompson Nickel Belt Sustainability Act – The losing fight – by John Barker (Thompson Citizen – June 18, 2014)

The Thompson Citizen, which was established in June 1960, covers the City of Thompson and Nickel Belt Region of Northern Manitoba. The city has a population of about 13,500 residents while the regional population is more than 40,000.  editor@thompsoncitizen.net

Monday marked three years to the day since Bill 50, The Thompson Nickel Belt Sustainability Act, received royal assent on June 16, 2011. There is only one catch, as the fine print points out. “This Act is not yet in force. It is to come into force on a date to be fixed by proclamation.”

Not wanting anything to have anything to do at first with the Thompson Economic Diversification Working Group (TEDWG), announced jointly a couple of weeks earlier on May 18, 2011 in a news release from the City of Thompson and Vale, the province always saw the legislation primarily as a bargaining chip to get Vale back to the table to reconsider their decision, announced 6½ months earlier on Nov. 17, 2010, that it is was “phasing out of smelting and refining by 2015” in Thompson.

To be fair to the province, even if they had been inclined to proclaim the legislation into law early on, they were under intense pressure from the City of Thompson through behind-the-scenes lobbying and politicking to delay proclamation of The Thompson Nickel Belt Sustainability Act until the TEDWG process was wrapped up and a new municipal tax and funding agreement with Vale Canada Limited for grants-in-lieu of taxes for the city, School District of Mystery Lake and Local Government District (LGD) of Mystery Lake was in place. That didn’t happen until early 2013.

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Vale, stewardship partnership supporting stream rehab – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – June 11, 2014)

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North. 

It’s been 15 years since a small group of volunteers decided to take on the rehabilitation of Sudbury’s Junction Creek. What started as a grassroots effort has resulted in a unique partnership with one of the world’s biggest mining companies.

Vale has been one of the Junction Creek Stewardship Committee’s most reliable and consistent industry partners since its inception in 1999, said Sarah Woods, the committee’s research manager and coordinator. The company has contributed both with financing and labour to rehabilitation efforts.

“We’ve had a (Vale) member on our board for a very long time, so they’ve been helpful not only with the financial and logistical components, but also as a source of information and expertise for the committee, which has been incredibly valuable,” Woods said.

Vale conducts the analysis of monthly water samples taken by the committee, while employees take part in annual creek cleanups.

Though much of what the committee does is hard to measure, fish studies conducted with the Co-operative Freshwater Ecology Unit in 2004 and 2008 show improved fish communities, which results from better water quality, Woods said.

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Non-mining areas key issue in Vale’s contract renegotiation [Indonesia] – by Raras Cahyafitri (Jakarta Post – June 10, 2014)

http://www.thejakartapost.com/

The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry and nickel miner PT Vale Indonesia are still hammering out issues relating to Vale’s contract renegotiation.

The ministry’s director general for minerals and coal, R. Sukhyar, recently said Vale had agreed to return around 83,000 hectares (ha) of its concession area to the government.

However, he said, both parties were still negotiating to accommodate requests by the local administration regarding the utilization of areas that had not been mined or explored. These areas have been left idle.

A meeting attended by several governors and regents of areas where Vale holds concessions was held last week. According to Sukhyar, local administrations were seeking assurance that Vale’s activities would benefit the regions.

“It’s important to know Vale’s future plans. If they conflict with governors and regents’ plans, we have to settle. In the future, if none of the plans are realized, Vale’s operation can be reviewed,” Sukhyar said.

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Vale Proves Too Rich for Barclays on Iron’s 30% Plummet – by Juan Pablo Spinetto and Julia Leite (Bloomberg News – June 9, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

The biggest drop in iron-ore prices in five years is a signal to Barclays Plc and Seaport Group that Vale SA (VALE5)’s outperformance in the bond market is about to end.

The $2.25 billion of bonds due 2022 returned 9 percent in the past six months, exceeding the 7.4 percent average gain for notes from emerging-market mining companies with investment-grade ratings. The Vale bonds yield 4.06 percent, the least relative to similar securities from London-based Rio Tinto Group since September, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Vale, which gets about 95 percent of earnings from its ferrous business, posted a bigger-than-forecast drop in first-quarter profit after selling its ore for 25 percent less than the benchmark global price, which fell to the lowest since September 2012 on May 30. Investors should sell after the bond rally as reduced demand cuts prices for iron ore, according to Michael Roche, an emerging-market strategist at Seaport Group, which this month started recommending clients buy debt from Southern Copper Corp. instead of Vale securities.

“I’m still worried about China, I’m still thinking global growth is very muted, I’m still worried about Europe,” Roche said in a telephone interview from New York. “I am going to take that superior performance over the last six months and take a profit.”

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NEWS RELEASE: Vale Mine Rescuers Tops in Ontario

(L to R) back row: Candice Ballanger-Michaud (CEO Workplace Safety North), Bruce Hall (MRO Sudbury District), Jon Hamilton (#4 Man), Lorne Plouffe (Captain), Will Davies (Vice Captain), Mike Johnson (Briefing Officer), Don Landry (MSA Sales Rep.), Dennis Gosselin (Coach), Denis Prevost (Technician – FNI), John O’Shaughnessy (Manager Stobie Mine), Tim Maloney (MRC – Vale) L to R, front row: Ron Weaver (Coach), Justin Whitmore (#2 Man), Jean-Yves Doiron (#6 Man), Perry Simon (#3 Man), Aime Gagne (#7 Man)
(L to R) back row: Candice Ballanger-Michaud (CEO Workplace Safety North), Bruce Hall (MRO Sudbury District), Jon Hamilton (#4 Man), Lorne Plouffe (Captain), Will Davies (Vice Captain), Mike Johnson (Briefing Officer), Don Landry (MSA Sales Rep.), Dennis Gosselin (Coach), Denis Prevost (Technician – FNI), John O’Shaughnessy (Manager Stobie Mine), Tim Maloney (MRC – Vale)
L to R, front row: Ron Weaver (Coach), Justin Whitmore (#2 Man), Jean-Yves Doiron (#6 Man), Perry Simon (#3 Man), Aime Gagne (#7 Man)


 Mine rescue volunteers from Vale Canada Ltd.’s East Mines were crowned with gold hard hats by Workplace Safety North (WSN) and Ontario Mine Rescue as the overall winners of the 64th annual Provincial Mine Rescue Competition in Timmins, June 5 and 6.

The Vale East Mines team consisted of Captain Lorne Plouffe, Will Davies, Justin Whitmore, Jonathan Hamilton, Fred Pelletier, Aime Gagne, Jean Yves Doiron, Perry Simon and Briefing Officer Mike Johnson. The team, which won the Sudbury District competition in May, also earned the First Aid Award.

Seven competing teams from across Ontario, selected in district competitions, were evaluated on their firefighting skills, first aid response, use of emergency equipment and decision-making ability under stress in a simulated emergency underground at Goldcorp Canada’s Dome Mine.

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Diversity back in vogue for miners as iron ore price tumbles – by STEPHEN EISENHAMMER, SONALI PAUL AND SILVIA ANTONIOLI (Reuters U.K. – June 5, 2014)

http://uk.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – After pouring billions of dollars into producing more iron ore to feed China’s construction boom, the world’s mega miners now face a self-induced price slump and are counting on other commodities to revive their allure to investors.

Base metals copper and nickel, oil and gas, as well as more offbeat commodities such as fertilizer potash, are increasingly important differentiators between the kings of iron – Vale , Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton – and could be welcome sources of growth this year as iron ore languishes near two-year lows.

BHP’s oil and gas portfolio and Vale’s nickel production have attracted positive attention. Glencore Chief Executive Ivan Glasenberg, meanwhile, has spoken of the advantage of smaller exposure to iron ore, saying it provided an “opportunity against our peers.”

Lack of diversity has not been an issue in recent years as Chinese demand for steel to build cities, railways and ports tripled iron ore prices from 2008 to 2011 – a windfall for the “big three” who produce 70 percent of the world’s seaborne iron ore.

But in May the price fell below the $100 mark for only the second time in four years, as production jumps just as Chinese demand growth appears to be slowing. Although many analysts see the price perking up again later this year, the fundamentals are worsening and the trend is downward.

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