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The Investment Bank Tipping Gold to Hit $1,400 – by Swansy Afonso (Bloomberg News – August 14, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Gold prices are set to jump to a four-year high of $1,400 an ounce by the end of the year over mounting tensions between North Korea and the U.S., and surging demand in the world’s biggest consumers, according to the head of precious metals at a Russian investment bank.

Bullion could rise to $1,360 within three months before climbing higher, fueled by global political risks and buying from China and India, said Evgeny Ananiev at VTB Capital JSC, the investment-banking unit of Russia’s second-largest lender VTB Group. “We may see some correction, but I don’t think gold will drop below $1,200 as it’s well supported,” he said in a weekend interview in Goa. The metal traded at $1,281.86 on Monday.

Prices have climbed 12 percent this year, driven by worries over a potential nuclear conflict between the U.S. and North Korea, and subdued inflation in the U.S., which is cooling chances of a further increase in interest rates.

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Timmins gold operations helping to sustain Tahoe – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – August 12, 2017)

http://www.timminspress.com/

TIMMINS – Despite the legal difficulties Tahoe Resources is having at its Escobal silver mine in Guatemala, the company reports strong financial results for the second quarter of 2017, thanks in part to the company’s gold operations. Earnings per share ($0.11) have doubled what they were for the same period last year ($0.05).

Tahoe president and CEO Ron Clayton told shareholders this week the gold side of the company is helping to sustain Tahoe, despite the fact the Escobal mine is shut down because of a dispute with some local residents.

The Escobal operation is the third-largest silver mine in the world. The gold side of Tahoe includes the Timmins West mining complex and the Bell Creek Mine. Tahoe also has gold properties in Peru – those being the Shahuindo Mine and La Arena Mine. Clayton said work at the Timmins operations was going well.

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Vale looking at layoffs in Sudbury – by Staff (Sudbury Star – August 12, 2017)

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

Vale Ltd. employees in Sudbury are bracing for possible layoffs after viewing a company video in recent days they say warned that the Brazil-based mining giant could soon be making cuts. “It seemed like a threat,” said one source, who requested anonymity. “It’s coming right from Brazil.”

Another source, also a Vale employee, told The Star he had also seen a company video in recent days that warned of possible reductions. He said he came away with the impression there would be “significant” job losses.

The sources say they have been given no details of how many jobs will be cut or when, or if layoffs would be permanent or temporary, but that they could affect members of both Local 6500 and Local 2020 of the Steelworkers. Local 6500 represents production workers, while Local 2020 represents office, clerical and technical staff in Sudbury.

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Why gasoline and Diesel will be around for a long time to come – by Norris McDonald (Toronto Star – August 12, 2017)

https://www.thestar.com/

“If more people buy EVs instead of internal-combustion vehicles, how will
governments make up the tax shortfall? Right now, about 40 per cent of what
you pay per litre for fuel at the pump goes to governments.”

I spend a lot of time these days reading, listening and discussing the use of electricity to propel automobiles compared to conventional gasoline and other alternatives, such as hydrogen. It comes with the job. The ground is shifting, and it’s better to be on top of what’s happening than running to catch up.

So, I’ve been reading about how Big Oil will react when everybody starts running out to buy electric cars. And how the end of internal-combustion will be just like the end of film for cameras — it will (seemingly) come out of nowhere and be so sudden that everybody will wake up one day and wonder what happened.

And that some European countries will ban the sale of gasoline and Diesel-powered cars as of such-and-such a date. And the province of Quebec will soon start fining automakers that don’t sell enough EVs.

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Cornish Lithium project secures 1 million pounds for exploration – by Barbara Lewis (Reuters U.S. – August 14, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Aug 14 (Reuters) – British mining company Cornish Lithium has secured 1 million pounds ($1.30 million) to explore for lithium in Cornwall, southwest England, its CEO said, taking the country a step closer to a domestic source of the strategic mineral.

Lithium plays an essential role in electric car batteries, and is produced by evaporation in Latin America, which has been considered the cheapest source. But new technology to extract lithium from brine is helping to make other options more viable.

In January, Cornish Lithium said it had reached a mineral rights agreement with Canada’s Strongbow Exploration. It then said it needed around 5 million pounds to develop its project to extract lithium from underground hot springs and to supply products to the rapidly growing battery market for electric cars and for power storage.

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Maliseet leaders to attend mining ministers conference in St. Andrews – by By Matthew Bingley (CBC News New Brunswick – August 14, 2017)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/

Leaders opposed to proposed Sisson Brook Mine

Indigenous people who are opposed to the Sisson mine project are teaming up with other advocacy groups to try to sway mining ministers at a national conference this week in St. Andrews.

The Energy and Mines Ministers’ Conference will gather mining and energy ministers from every Canadian jurisdiction. The conference is held annually as a means to bolster the industry within the country.

The province is hosting the meeting not long after the controversial Sisson mine received federal environmental approval. Now, a delegation of conservationists, Indigenous leaders, and mining advocates plan on rubbing elbows with those ministers.

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Why electric vehicles are closer than they appear – by David Olive (Toronto Star – August 12, 2017)

https://www.thestar.com/

We are in the early stages of a revolution in automobiles. The widespread adoption of all-electric vehicles and of driverless, or autonomous cars, is much closer on the horizon than it appears.

Until last year, the consensus forecast was for electric vehicles (EVs) to account for about one-third of vehicles on the road by 2040. But breakthroughs in the technology of EVs and the batteries that power them; stepped-up government advocacy of them; and automakers’ bet-the-company commitments to them have sharply altered that forecast. In May, researchers at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast that as much as 90 per cent of vehicle production worldwide will be EVs by 2040.

Yes, that’s 27 years off. But the transition is well underway, and market saturation by EVs could come much sooner. This month, Tesla Inc. is rolling out its first mass-market EV, the Model 3. It’s generally thought in the industry that if the Model 3 succeeds, electrification of all vehicles is a sure thing.

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Environmentalism: A Slippery Slope of Ignorance and Hypocrisy – by Saurabh Malkar (Modern Diplomacy – August 13, 2017)

http://moderndiplomacy.eu/

Perusing through my morning news digest, I came across an article from The Daily Mail featuring a story on the employment of child labor in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

While I can be chillingly apathetic to social plight, especially, when it doesn’t concern my loved ones: something I impute to my upbringing in a third world country; I was deeply moved by this story, which shed light on the horrors of artisanal cobalt mining, employing children, working in dangerous conditions, with no safety measures, and being paid a pittance. The kicker, though, of this story was that much of this cobalt would go into battery packs that would be installed in electric cars marketed to gullible, do-gooders around the world.

But, why would one want to buy cars that take hours to refuel and can only be refueled at specific points, thus, imposing a massive time cost on their usage? These contraptions don’t match in utility to gasoline-powered cars, let alone surpassing them. No wonder governments around the world are trying to get consumers to buy electric cars through purchase subsidies and tax exemptions of all sorts.

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How Tesla’s Elon Musk became the master of fake business – by Lawrence Solomon (Financial Post – August 11, 2017)

http://business.financialpost.com/

“In 2015, Tesla sold 2,738 cars in Denmark; in 2016, after the government
said it would be phasing out subsidies, Tesla sold 176 cars, a drop of
94 per cent.”

The fastest-growing industries over the last two decades have been fake industries, those that thrive despite having few customers willing to buy their products except at fire-sale prices.

The fake industries all have the same angel investors — governments — and the same promoter touting their wares — again governments. These fake industries, the brainchild of subsidy entrepreneurs, also tend to be dazzlers, the better to wow their politician backers and the stock market speculators betting on cash flows of government subsidies.

Today’s fake-industry leader is Tesla, the electric car developed by subsidy entrepreneur Elon Musk, who also heads SolarCity and SpaceX, other government darlings. Musk’s genius is primarily in the subsidy-seeking realm — by 2015, U.S. governments alone had given his companies US$5 billion through direct grants, tax breaks, cut-rate loans, cashable environmental credits, tax credits and rebates to buyers of his products.

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How public opinion is shaping the new reality for mining – by David Herle (Canadian Mining Journal – August 2017)

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

DAVID HERLE is a principal partner and founder of the Gandalf Group, a leading polling and research firm based in Toronto.

The new reality for resource projects is the necessity of what is commonly called “social licence.” What this really means is that the final word on new resource extraction projects does not come from a quiet regulatory process, but rather through the loud and messy world of public opinion. The challenge is that most Canadians have a default position of neutrality to antipathy about resource development. Few people see much upside, and most are acutely aware of potential downsides.

These attitudes are driven by some fundamental trends. The first is urbanization. As Canadians have congregated in large cities, they have become very removed – physically, economically, and emotionally – from the resource industry. There is very little awareness of the role resources play in economic growth, job creation or tax revenues. As a consequence, most city residents think that resource development is done in the interests of somebody other than them.

The second trend is the growing priority attached to environmental protection. Most people attach a great deal of importance to environmental issues – not just climate change but even more importantly, the protection of fresh water and wilderness areas.

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Major Miners’ Battle to Get Into Batteries Steps Up a Notch – by David Stringer (Bloomberg News – August 11, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The world’s biggest miners’ determination to muscle into the burgeoning battery market stepped up a notch with Rio Tinto Group reporting breakthroughs in cracking the technology needed to unlock its giant lithium project in Serbia that could meet 10 percent of global demand.

Tests at a research facility in a converted shipping container in Australia have successfully produced lithium products from samples from the Jadar deposit, the company said Friday. It’s aiming to bring the mine in Serbia into production as soon as 2023 to tap soaring demand for the metal used in batteries for electric vehicles and power storage.

“There has been, through the phases, a number of breakthrough steps,” Simon Trott, Rio’s salt, uranium and borates division managing director, told reporters at the facility in Melbourne. “The key is that we’re producing lithium carbonate that’s to a specification that we are very confident” will meet customer requirements, he said.

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COLUMN-Bullish funds’ return to copper a taste of things to come? – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – August 9, 2017)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Aug 9 (Reuters) – London copper on Wednesday morning touched a high of $6,515 per tonne, a price level last seen in December 2014. This is an extension of the rally that began so dramatically on July 25, when London Metal Exchange (LME) three-month copper punched through $6,200, the top end of a long-standing trading range.

The news trigger for that technical break was a proposal by Chinese authorities to prohibit imports of lower-grade scrap from the end of next year. In the intervening couple of weeks analysts have taken a collective hard look at the implications of such a ban and no-one seems to think it’s a game-changer. Supply chains might change but the scrap itself is not going away. If not in China, it will be processed somewhere else.

None of which particularly matters right now because the money men are in the price driving seat. Money managers have lifted their net long positioning on the LME copper contract by 17,841 contracts since the middle of July to a current 72,563 contracts. That’s equivalent to around 450,000 tonnes of extra buying.

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Mine Blown: What I Saw At The World’s Single Largest Emerald Mine In Zambia, & Beyond -by Varun Rana (MensXP.com – August 2017)

http://www.mensxp.com/

Not many people get to visit a gemstone mine in Africa. So when Gemfields invited me to be part of a press trip to Zambia’s Copperbelt Province—to Kagem, the single largest emerald mine in the world—I jumped at it.

Like India, Zambia was once a British colony, and was known as Northern Rhodesia till it gained independence in 1964. Because of this, almost everybody speaks English, which makes life very easy.

We reached the mining camp on the night of 14th June, and were quickly shown to our rooms. After we had showered, we gathered at the Lake House, the mining camp’s watering hole. As I had been warned, I took care not to step on the sinuous trails of dangerous army of ants that moved like dark mercury across the walkways. One bite from a single ant is said to be excruciatingly painful. Imagine stepping on an entire foraging party!

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Brad Wall Retiring From Politics After Almost A Decade As Saskatchewan Premier – by Lauren Krugel (Huffington Post – August 10, 2017)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

His fierce opposition to Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton’s hostile
takeover bid for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan in 2010 made him a folk hero of
sorts. More recently, he has been an ardent champion of pipeline projects that
would connect Canada’s crude oil to global markets.

REGINA — One of Canada’s most high-profile premiers who rose to national prominence for his down-to-earth style, sharp wit and, more recently, his willingness to lock horns with Ottawa is retiring from politics after a decade in office.

Saskatchewan’s Brad Wall, who is 51, said he made the decision at the end of June after talking it over with his wife Tami. “I think renewal will be good for the province. I think renewal and a different perspective will be good for the government. I think renewal will be good for my party as well,” he said Thursday.

“Whatever I do after this — and I currently have no leads or prospects — this job will be the honour of my working life.” Wall said he will stay on as premier and Swift Current member of the legislature until his successor is chosen in a leadership race.

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Ivan Glasenberg: Glencore still on acquisition trail – by Paul Garvey (The Australian – August 11, 2017)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

Glencore chief executive Ivan Glasenberg has talked up the company’s potential for further acquisitions, amid the latest uncertainty over Yancoal Australia’s $US2.69 billion ($3.4bn) purchase of Rio Tinto’s Coal & Allied business.

Glencore has long harboured interest in the Coal & Allied assets, given the potential synergies with its own coalmines in NSW, but was twice outbid for them by the Chinese-backed Yancoal. The two parties subsequently agreed a separate deal under which Glencore would buy 49 per cent of Coal & Allied’s Hunter Valley operations from Yancoal for $US1.14bn plus a share of royalties.

But Hong Kong-based hedge fund Senrigan Capital Group this week lodged an application with the Takeovers Panel, arguing that the proposed deal would be prejudicial to minority shareholders in ASX-listed Yancoal.

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