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In Pakistan’s coal rush, some women drivers break cultural barriers – by Syed Raza Hassan (Reuters U.S. – September 29, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

ISLAMKOT, Pakistan (Reuters) – As Pakistan bets on cheap coal in the Thar desert to resolve its energy crisis, a select group of women is eyeing a road out of poverty by snapping up truck-driving jobs that once only went to men.

Such work is seen as life-changing in this dusty southern region bordering India, where sand dunes cover estimated coal reserves of 175 billion tonnes and yellow dumper trucks swarm like bees around Pakistan’s largest open-pit mine.

The imposing 60-tonne trucks initially daunted Gulaban, 25, a housewife and mother of three from Thar’s Hindu community inside the staunchly conservative and mainly-Muslim nation of 208 million people. “At the beginning I was a bit nervous but now it’s normal to drive this dumper,” said Gulaban, clad in a pink saree, a traditional cloth worn by Hindu women across South Asia.

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Closing Time: Last hoist for Thompson’s Birchtree Mine – by John Barker (Soundings John Barker – September 30, 2017)

https://soundingsjohnbarker.wordpress.com/

On the surface, it was an unseasonably warm and brilliant orange early autumn day. Underground, it was closing time. Not last call, but rather the hard rock mining on-the-job equivalent: last hoist.

This day has almost come for Birchtree Mine in Thompson, Manitoba before. In fact, the day did come for Birchtree for most of a decade in the 1980s, as the mine was on “care and maintenance” because of unfavourable market conditions from December 1977 through 1989.

And on Oct. 18, 2012, Vale had announced care and maintenance was being considered for Birchtree Mine in 10 months time in August 2013. After finding $100 million in cost savings at its Manitoba Operations, bringing its cost per metric tonne for finished nickel to under US$10,000, Birchtree Mine would receive on May 6, 2013 a reprieve that lasted almost 4½ years. Until now.

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Vale eliminates its Ontario boss – by Staff (Sudbury Star – September 30, 2017)

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

Stuart Harshaw is out as head of Vale’s Ontario operations and the position has been eliminated. The company has blamed harsh market conditions for its decision.

“We have had a change in leadership in our Ontario operations,” Vale said in a media statement. “In the current challenging market we are evaluating all aspects of our business and that review includes examining and evolving how our business is structured. At this time, the role of director, Ontario operations has been eliminated.”

Harshaw was head of Ontario operations from January 2016. Before that, he served as VP of marketing and sales for base metals at Vale’s Singapore operations. The company said it is trying to streamline processes.

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Coal’s ‘good times’ expected to extend a couple of years longer – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – September 30, 2017)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Following “decade of misery” for the steel markets, the “good times” are now, though how long it will last is debatable, according to H&W Worldwide Consulting principal Dr Neil Bristow.

Addressing delegates at the Vancouver-based Coal Association of Canada’s annual conference, on Thursday, Bristow noted that, assuming “business as usual” continues, the global steel industry could see a sustained period of prosperity.

“Twenty-eighteen looks positive and trends suggest 2019 could see more of the same. There is more uncertainty in 2019, but a continuation of benign policy settings and a lack of disjointed policy changes could lead to an extension of further ‘good times’,” he said.

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[J.P. Bickell and McIntyre Mine] Literary hockey history at Timmins Museum – by Emma Meldrum (Timmins Daily Press – October 2, 2017)

http://www.timminspress.com/

J.P. Bickell was the CEO of McIntyre Mine which produced slightly over 10 million ounces of gold from 1912 – 1988. Gold mines that produce over 10 million ounces of gold are very rare, even today. – Stan Sudol

TIMMINS – In a darkened room, men mill about the bar while a reggae band plays. On Friday evening, the Timmins Museum: National Exhibition Centre’s permanent gallery space hosted Books, Bands, Beer and Beards. The evening started off with Jason Wilson & the Perennials’ version of the classic Hockey Night in Canada theme song – the hockey theme only grew from there.

Graham MacLaughlan and Kevin Shea, who wrote “J.P. Bickell: The Life, the Leafs, and the Legacy” along with Wilson, spoke at length about the man’s contributions to the sport and to this city.

When asked by host Andrew Autio about what surprised them while they researched the book, Shea highlighted the depth of Bickell’s philanthropy. “He was behind so many things that still exist to this day and flourished because of his money in the early days,” said Shea. “It doesn’t really resonate until you really start to research the book.

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Cobalt’s Chemistry Experiment – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – September 28, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

All batteries are not created equal. The 53 kilowatt-hour pack on a 2008 Tesla Inc. Roadster contains an estimated 38 kilograms of cobalt, a key element that some analysts fear may be running out. The same-sized battery on a 2017 Tesla would have about one-eighth of that, or 4.8 kilograms.

That’s the best reason to be wary of predictions that cobalt is heading toward permanently higher prices north of $100,000 a metric ton. The complex chemistry on which rechargeable batteries depends offers myriad opportunities to economize on any material that gets too costly.

Cobalt is a crucial ingredient for manufacturing most lithium-ion cathodes — the “positive” ends of the cell, equivalent to the nipple atop a conventional AAA battery. Demand for such cathodes is set to soar as the world’s vehicle fleet shifts from petroleum to electrical drive-trains, and as utilities build farms of rechargeable batteries to stabilize renewables-intensive power grids.

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Chief Isaac and the mass media – by Dorota Kupis (Yukon News – September 28, 2017)

The Yukon’s earliest newspapers frequently treated the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in poorly

The Klondike Gold Rush altered the lives of several Yukon First Nations. The most affected were the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, living near Dawson City. The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in came in contact with white people years before the gold rush. The first traders (Jack McQuesten, Frank Bonfield) arrived in their territories as early as 1874. Other than traders, early newcomers were missionaries and miners.

After gold was discovered on Rabbit Creek in 1896, enormous waves of white newcomers came to the Yukon. By 1898, about 40,000 people settled in Dawson City, the center of the Klondike Gold Rush, and the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in living in this area became a minority in their traditional territories.

The Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, who relocated to the little community of Moosehide, three kilometers downriver from the new town, had to adapt their lives to interact with the residents of Dawson City and miners working on the adjacent creeks.

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Zimbabwe diamond output levels plummet (African Independent – September 29, 2017)

https://www.africanindy.com/

Zimbabwe’s diamond output from its major mines in the eastern part of the country has fallen to shocking levels from 12million carats a year during the peak to just less than a 1million carats a year amid reports that the government-owned Zimbabwe Consolidated Mining Development Company ZMDC is struggling to meet targets after taking over from private players early this year.

In addition to failure by the company to meet targets, it has also emerged that the diamond alluvial deposits were now exhausted, with the company now exploring ways to start underground mining of the product to boost production.

The government took over the production of the precious stones from private players after accusing private companies of pillaging resources and consequently remitting too little to treasury. Despite having secured mining equipment from Belarus, the ZMDC, the sole miner of diamonds at Marange diamond fields, is struggling to increase production to desired results.

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Peak Lithium? Not So Fast – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – September 28, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Does the world have enough lithium? It depends who you ask.A 2008 study by French researcher William Tahil found there were just 3.9 million metric tons of recoverable deposits globally in mineral ores and Andean salt lakes.

That’s little enough that the world would risk running out as demand for lithium-ion car batteries and utility-scale storage ramps up over the coming decades.

A survey the following year by consultants Gerry Clarke and Peter Harben, though, concluded there was about 10 times that amount. Depending on the other parameters applied, those numbers suggest deposits could provide lithium for anything from a further 100 million cars — about 10 percent of the global auto fleet — to 10 billion or more.

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Platinum’s Lesson for Lithium-Ion Batteries – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – September 26, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Half a century ago, the commodities industry was in a flap about whether new, less-polluting automotive technologies would cause the world to run out of rare metals.

It wasn’t about electric batteries, but catalytic converters. Introduced in the mid-1970s in the U.S. to remove carbon monoxide and toxic hydrocarbons from car exhausts, their most important ingredients were some of the rarest elements on earth: platinum and palladium.

The so-called platinum group metals occur in large quantities in only four places. Then and now, about 90 percent of output comes from what were then apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union. With technology moving toward widespread adoption of catalytic converters in the late 1960s, metallurgists began to worry supply would simply be insufficient.

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More opposition to Berkeley’s uranium mine in Spain – by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud (Mining.com – September 28, 2017)

http://www.mining.com/

Nuclear energy experts from a variety of countries expressed their support this week to the actions carried out by Stop Uranio, a social platform that opposes Berkeley Minera España’s plans to open a mine in the Spanish town of Retortillo.

Greenpeace anti-nuclear campaigner, Raquel Montón, said that Spain doesn’t need nuclear plants or mines because the country is on a promising path towards developing sustainable sources of clean energy.

According to EFE news agency, Greenpeace and other organizations such as WWF, worry about the impacts nuclear debris might have on both the environment and the local population.

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World’s largest coal miner looking to buy metal mines abroad – by Sudarshan Varadhan (Reuters U.S. – September 29, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Coal India Ltd, the world’s largest coal miner, has held internal talks to discuss buying metal mines abroad amid faltering revenues and rising employee costs, potentially signaling a strategy shift to cut reliance on the fossil fuel.

The state-run company plans to form two units: one to manage its local mining of iron ore, bauxite and manganese, and another to expand into copper and nickel mining overseas, two company officials involved in the planning told Reuters.

“The plans of Coal India to enter into metal mining business both in India and abroad are in a very nascent stage, and of strategic and confidential nature,” the company said.

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Monchegorsk has now the world’s largest nickel refining facility – by Thomas Nilsen (Barents Observer – September 28, 2017)

https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/

Kola GMK has boosted its nickel output by 50% after refining was moved from Norilsk in Siberia.

«A large-scale upgrade is now at full swing,» says Igor Lisitskiy, Deputy CEO for Reconstruction at Kola Mining Metallurgical Combine (Kola GMK) in a press-release.

According to Lisitskiy, the factory in Monchegorsk has become the world’s largest nickel refining facility. «Monchegorsk site produces up 165,000 tons of nickel per year,» he says.

Last winter, the old nickel refining plant in Norilsk on the Taymyr Peninsula was closed down and production moved to the Kola Peninsula. The factory in Monchegorsk now receives nickel matter from both the smelter in Nikel near Russia’s border to Norway and from the Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant in Norilsk.

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COLUMN-What China’s imports tell us about the copper market – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – September 28, 2017)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Sept 28 (Reuters) – The metals market used to treat China’s copper trade figures as a mirror on the world’s industrial growth engine. The more copper, particularly refined copper, China imported, the healthier the outlook for manufacturing activity and demand for all industrial metals.

That’s no longer the case. The copper mirror has been distorted over the years by stocking cycles, the complex flow of metal through China’s bonded warehouse zones, and an increase in the country’s own refining capacity.

There is still plenty of interesting information in the monthly copper trade data. It’s just that it tells us more about the state of the copper market than about the state of China.

CONCENTRATES IMPORTS SLOW BUT STILL GROWING

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