Republic of Mining

25 years ago today… moment they killed King Coal – by David Behrens(Yorkshire Post – October 13, 2017)

October 13, 2017

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/

Ackton Hall, Wheldale, Ledston Luck… the roll-call of names reads like a list of old, abandoned railway stations. They were among the 28 pits in Yorkshire that had already been swept away when, 25 years ago today, the government passed what was to be a death sentence on the rest.

It fell to Michael Heseltine, president of the Board of Trade in John Major’s Cabinet, to swing the axe. Some 31 out of 50 remaining deep mines would close, he announced. 31,000 jobs would go at a stroke.

It was the biggest redundancy ever announced in Britain. After years of decline, the news was not a surprise but it was a shock. “Politically there was no appetite for coal. Not after the strikes,” said Shaun McLaughlin, who heard the news, with the rest of his shift, at Stillingfleet pit in Selby.

Grasberg mine’s riches still a distant glitter for Papuan communities – by Hans Nicholas Jong (Mongabay – October 13, 2017)

October 13, 2017

https://news.mongabay.com/

High hopes that the world’s biggest gold mine will finally bring meaningful benefit to the community for which it has for decades been a source of contention have been deflated as negotiations hit a wall.

Freeport McMoRan Inc. (FCX) and the Indonesian government are currently hashing out the details of a long-term agreement for an extension of the company’s contract to operate the giant Grasberg gold and copper mine in Papua province, due to expire in 2021.

Freeport announced in August that it had agreed to divest a 51 percent stake in its Indonesian subsidiary, PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI), in which it currently holds a 90.64 percent stake, following sustained pressure by the government to reform a mining sector long seen as not doing enough to benefit local communities or contribute to the national economy.

Zinc price spike sparks flurry of miner listings – by Nicole Mordant (Reuters India – October 13, 2017)

October 13, 2017

https://in.reuters.com/

VANCOUVER, Oct 13 (Reuters) – A doubling in zinc prices since late 2015 and strong outlook for the commodity has fueled a flurry of zinc miner listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange as companies cash in on investor demand for producers of the metal.

Brazil-based Nexa Resources, a top five global zinc producer, is seeking to raise up to $651 million in an initial public offering in Toronto and New York in what would be the world’s biggest zinc-focused IPO since China’s Western Mining Co Ltd in 2007, according to Thomson Reuters data.

At least three other zinc miners, including Titan Mining and Dublin-based Group Eleven Resources Corp, are planning listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange or the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V) market for small start-ups, according to company filings.

Sudbury part of mining ‘supercluster’ proposal – by Staff (Sudbury Star – October 12, 2017)

October 13, 2017

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

A group that includes Sudbury’s Centre of Excellence in Mining Innovation has made the shortlist of groups that could receive funding under the Ottawa’s $950-million “supercluster” program.

The federal government has whittled down its list of finalists from more than 50 proposals to nine, according to a list supplied to the Financial Post by the ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development. The supercluster program is part of a sizeable spending push by the Trudeau Liberals to spur Canadian innovation.

Ottawa opened up its bidding process last May, and received proposals from more than 1,000 private companies, business associations and research institutions.

Canada’s Catalonia? Careful Ottawa, western alienation is beginning to rear its head again – by Jack Mintz (Financial Post – October 13, 2017)

October 13, 2017

http://business.financialpost.com/

There is a growing sense in western Canada that the federal government’s professed support for resource provinces is hollow

It was not at all helpful that the less-than-affable Montreal mayor, Denis Coderre, declared it a “victory for Canada” when TransCanada withdrew its licence application for Energy East, a pipeline project that actually would have provided market-diversification benefits to the national economy.

It would be no different than if the mayor of, say, Winnipeg — home to a Boeing plant — declared it a Canadian victory after the U.S. Commerce Department slapped on two import duties on Quebec’s heavily subsidized Bombardier planes.

At a regulatory crossroads: It’s time to fix federally induced problems, says the Mining Association of Canada – by Greg Klein (Resource Clips = October 4, 2017)

October 13, 2017

http://resourceclips.com/

The fundamentals behind the last supercycle remain in place, insists Pierre Gratton. Yet the Mining Association of Canada president/CEO warns that the country has lost ground as a global industry leader.

While the current upswing continues, the transition to a cleaner, lower-carbon future will call for even more mineable commodities. Whether Canada participates to its fullest potential, however, depends largely on policies directed by Ottawa.

Addressing a 230-strong Greater Vancouver Board of Trade audience on September 27, Gratton noted that by 2015 Canada lost its first-place spot for exploration investment. The usurper was Australia, which proved itself “much more strategic and successful over the past decade.”

High-speed Internet, low-grade water – Editorial (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – October 12, 2017)

October 12, 2017

http://www.chroniclejournal.com/

TOP-OF-THE-LINE Internet service, taken for granted in many other parts of Canada, is coming to the Far North of Ontario. Not all of Northern Ontario is so lucky. The federal and Ontario governments will spend $67 million to install 880 kilometres of fibre-optic cable to five remote First Nation communities surrounding the Ring of Fire mineral zone.

Once mining exploration leads to the major developments to produce chromite and a host of other minerals, reliable high-speed Internet will be seen as the essential service that it is. Nearby First Nations will enjoy enormous improvements in their own ability to grow and develop and participate in the economic boom – once they find a way to negotiate ways into it. The province has forced the issue with plans for an all-season road. Three First Nations are on board; the rest remain undecided.

Ironically, parts of the North’s biggest city, Thunder Bay, and a large swath of the region surrounding it, do not enjoy the same level of Internet reliability. There are customers of TBaytel, the city-owned telecommunications company, that still do not have access to consistent high-speed Internet connections.

COLUMN-Iron ore price slump brings risk of downside overshoot – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – October 11, 2017)

October 12, 2017

https://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Oct 12 (Reuters) – With spot Asian iron ore having fallen back below $60 a tonne, the price of the steelmaking ingredient appears to be heading toward a level more in line with supply and demand fundamentals.

However, as usual the risk when a rally reverses as quickly as the current decline in iron ore is that prices overshoot to the downside. The Asian spot price .IO62-CNO=MB fell to $59.65 a tonne on Wednesday, the lowest level in 3-1/2 months and a drop of 25 percent since the recent peak of $79.65 in late August.

Iron ore is now well below the $78.87 it fetched at the end of 2016, and it is proving to be a volatile year, with two strong rallies being followed by sharp reversals.

The Supply Chain Can’t Handle Skyrocketing Demand for Lithium-Ion Batteries – by Louise Matsakis (Motherboard/Vice – October 11, 2017)

October 12, 2017

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/

Less than 1 percent of cars worldwide run electric, but they’re increasingly gobbling up Earth’s lithium-ion battery supply. Almost half of these batteries are used in the automotive industry, according to a new a analysis published Wednesday in Joule, the sister journal to Cell that addresses sustainable energy.

The study argues that the world needs to start preparing for an influx of demand for these batteries, which are used in smartphones, electric cars, and off-grid systems, like Tesla’s Powerwall.

“Even before [the lithium-ion battery industry] went into these large sectors like automotive and grid it was growing at like a 20 percent growth rate,” Gerbrand Ceder, one of the study’s authors and a professor of materials science & engineering at the University of California, Berkeley told me over the phone.

In Northern Minnesota, Two Economies Square Off: Mining vs. Wilderness – by Reid Forgrave (New York Times – October 12, 2017)

October 12, 2017

https://www.nytimes.com/

Proposed mines near the Boundary Waters have become the latest front in the fight over who gets to profit from America’s natural resources.

Minnesota is home to some of the world’s most ancient rocks, as old as 3.5 billion years. Earth has been around for only 4.5 billion years. About 2.7 billion years ago, basalt lava flowed underwater near what’s now the state’s border with Canada; the lava hardened, and the creep of geologic time turned it into a bedrock of greenstone and granite.

On top of it, a layer of sedimentary rock rich in iron ore formed nearly two million years ago, when the region was ocean floor. Then a billion years ago, Earth’s crust cracked open, producing a 50-mile-wide fissure stretching from Lake Superior to Kansas. For the next 100 million years, lava bubbled up into what geologists call the Midcontinent Rift, forming a mineral deposit filled with copper and nickel.

Settlers first made their way to the area in 1865 in a fruitless search for gold. What they did find was iron ore, and lots of it. Rails were laid for iron-ore transport, and the town of Ely was founded a few years later, in 1888.

I helped plan Energy East, and I know the government’s excuses are bunk – by Dennis McConaghy (Financial Post – October 12, 2017)

October 12, 2017

http://business.financialpost.com/

Dennis McConaghy was formerly the executive vice-president of pipeline strategy and development at TransCanada Pipelines.

I was a senior officer of TransCanada Pipelines when the Energy East project was conceived and developed commercially, up to the mid-summer of 2014 when I retired (I continue to be a shareholder but obviously I am no longer a company insider).

Two things are clear to me. One: the termination of the Energy East project is a major economic loss for Canada, removing an important option for providing market access for growing production from Canada’s oil sands resource, including direct access to eastern Canadian crude oil markets.

Two: The Trudeau government should be stepping up to accept some real culpability for contributing to TransCanada’s decision to abandon the project, instead of resorting to various sophistries and distortions. The real lessons to be learned from the Energy East termination cannot be ignored if this country is to ever have a regulatory and public-policy regime conducive for private capital to take on the risks of major hydrocarbon infrastructure.

A time for change: New leadership and new technology inspired a digital revolution at Lac des Iles – by Eavan Moore (CIM Magazine – October 02, 2017)

October 12, 2017

http://magazine.cim.org/en/

In the last two years, North American Palladium’s (NAP) Lac des Iles mine, located 106 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay, Ontario, has made a complete technological turnaround – beginning with its first fibre-optic installation in 2015 up to the launch of real-time mine management in 2017.

Advanced as part of a broader improvement program, the rapid succession of new technologies found acceptance because it came with careful attention to the needs of the mine’s workforce. Management at Lac des Iles hopes that investing in these technologies will improve its production efficiency and set an example among Canadian mines.

“Our mine site’s really been on a constant change since 2013, when we went from a ramp access mine to a shaft access mine,” said general manager Bryan Wilson.

South Africa should consider agromining – US professor – by Martin Creamer(MiningWeekly.com – October 11, 2017)

October 12, 2017

http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South Africans, who have been mining for metals for more than a century, were this week urged to farm for metals.

South African-born Stephen Haggerty, a distinguished research professor of Florida International University in the US who spoke to Mining Weekly Online while in Johannesburg, outlined the work that Australians are doing in agromining and prodded South Africa to do the same. (Also watch attached Creamer Media video).

Agromining involves the use of plants to absorb valuable metals from soils that have high metal concentrations, and then to harvest, dry and incinerate the biomas to deliver metal ore.

COLUMN-Trump tries to save coal, but probably in vain – by John Kemp (Reuters U.S. – October 11, 2017)

October 12, 2017

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) – For political reasons, the Trump administration has become obsessed by saving old and inefficient coal-fired power plants rather than preparing the electricity industry to face the challenges of the future.

Senior officials appear to have an almost romantic attachment to the hard physical labour of the coal mines and saving existing coal-fired power plants, most of which are now more than 40 years old and wearing out.

At the Department of Energy, Secretary Rick Perry has proposed a grid resiliency rule which would increase payments to coal-fired power producers that can promise secure on-site fuel supplies. And Environmental Protection Administration chief Scott Pruitt has announced his intention to repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan to try to keep coal-fired power plants running longer.

Future of mining in Canada on CLEER path if ‘supercluster’ approved – by Angela Gemmill (CBC News Sudbury – October 12, 2017)

October 12, 2017

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

Project from CEMI, CMIC one of 9 vying for millions from Innovation, Science and Economic Development

A proposal with roots in Sudbury could see hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money to help improve the mining industry. Earlier this year, the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) in Sudbury and the Canada Mining Innovation Council (CMIC) formed a partnership.

They teamed up to submit a clean resources proposal to the Federal Innovation Supercluster Initiative. A ‘supercluster’ is a consortium of stakeholders, including companies, post secondary institutions and not-for-profit organizations.

The federal government has $950-million to distribute towards the creation of five superclusters. Minister of innovation, sciences and economic development, Navdeep Bains will announced the five successful applicants next March.