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In Ghana, clashes over small-scale mining have become a litmus test for China – by Andrew Green (Devex.com – August 8, 2017)

https://www.devex.com/

ACCRA, Ghana — Gloria Hiadzi, the executive secretary of the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association, was present at one of the regular, informal gathering of Ghanaian media bigwigs in April, when the discussion turned to galamsey — the local term for small-scale miners who dig for gold and other minerals. The editors and publishers began to share stories of the devastation they had seen in their trips around Ghana caused by the mining.

Stories of the environmental impact of the mining regularly appear in the media, Hiadzi said, but the publishers recognized that their coverage usually faded pretty quickly.“In trying to find a way to get a solution, to get government involved, to get their eyes open, to whip up the enthusiasm of locals and everything, we felt it would be best to make it a national issue,” she said. “To launch a proper campaign.”

That campaign quickly leapt from radio spots and print stories to the streets of Accra, Ghana’s capital, where there are now regular anti-galamsey demonstrations and marches. A byproduct of the effort, though, has been heightened anti-Chinese sentiment.

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Billionaire Who Made Killing on Cobalt Bets on Battery Fund – by Mark Burton and Javier Blas (Bloomberg News – August 8, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

An investment firm founded by Russian billionaire Vladimir Iorich is following its winning bet on cobalt this year by creating a $150 million fund to buy into metals used in electric cars.

Pala New Energy Metals will invest in cobalt, lithium, vanadium, rare earths, nickel and tin. Pala Investments Ltd. started the fund with its own money and cash from other investors. The firm previously snapped up cobalt, anticipating surging demand from automakers that more than doubled prices in the past year.

“We have been focused on the evolution of the battery chemistries and this has allowed us to invest early in different components of the battery,” Stephen Gill, managing partner at Zug, Switzerland-based Pala Investments, said in an interview. “We hope to continue to be ahead of the curve as technologies evolve.”

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Re-Awakening of the Golden Triangle – by Jeff Desjardins (Visual Capital – April 6, 2017)

 

Many years ago, a remote and mountainous region in northwestern British Columbia gained considerable notoriety as an emerging mineral district. With a rich mining history, one of the world’s largest silver mines (Eskay Creek, discovered in 1988), and million ounce gold deposits – this area of incredible wealth became known as “The Golden Triangle”.

However, despite its obvious potential, the vast majority of land in this highly prospective region has been left mostly untouched by humans. A combination of factors, including low gold prices and a lack of infrastructure, has led to the area laying dormant for decades.

Today, things are changing dramatically. The Golden Triangle is a new hotbed for mineral discovery, and over 130 million ounces of gold, 800 million ounces of silver, and 40 billion lbs of copper have been found. The amazing part is that this is only scratching the surface of the region’s ultimate potential.

Skeena Resources and IDM Mining have generously helped us to put together the story on the re-awakening of the famed Golden Triangle.

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The Yukon: Where Mineral Potential is Coming of Age – by Jeff Desjardine (Visual Capitalist – August 8, 2017)

In a remote corner of Canada’s north lies the Yukon – a territory that is renowned for both its legendary mineral potential and its storied mining history.

But while the Yukon only produced 2.2% of Canada’s gold in 2016, the territory’s considerable potential may finally be getting realized in a big way. In the last few years, globally significant discoveries have been made, and now mining giants such as Barrick, Goldcorp, and Agnico Eagle are making their move into the Yukon to get in on the action.

A COMING OF AGE STORY

Today’s infographic comes from Strikepoint Gold, and it showcases some of the reasons on why the most important chapter in the Yukon’s mining story may just be beginning.

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A Canadian company wants to help artisanal miners produce “clean gold” – by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud (Mining.com – August 8, 2017)

http://www.mining.com/

SEF Canada, a Vancouver-based firm that specializes in corporate social responsibility, recently launched a project called “Clean Gold Community Solutions” and it is taking its first steps in Ecuador.

“This is our newest economic development strategy built around artisanal mining communities,” said Suzette McFaul, SEF’s Managing Director. “Acknowledging that artisanal miners are entrepreneurs, we have a solution to assist them to become sustainable businesses. This includes business knowledge, access to funding and technology to process gold.”

Following a series of meetings with local leaders to understand their needs and how they see the future of their community, McFaul and her team are about to sign an agreement to help them update an existing gold processing plant in northern Ecuador to make it safer and more profitable.

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Brainwashed movie peer reviewers give Gore’s sequel two righteous thumbs up! – by Peter Foster (Financial Post – August 9, 2017)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Among the egregious whoppers in Al Gore’s Oscar-winning 2006 movie An Inconvenient Truth was the claim that there were exactly zero scientific papers questioning projected catastrophic man-made global warming.

Therefore, Gore continued, the amount of media coverage given to skepticism was entirely disproportionate. In fact, the mainstream media had already mostly wrapped itself in the mantle of the climate crusade, but for Gore even one scintilla of skepticism was one scintilla too many.

Well, the word is in from liberal peer movie reviewers about Gore’s follow-up, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, and it’s two righteous thumbs up! While they admit it’s a bit of a snoozer, there is not a trace of doubt that An Inconvenient Truth — a masterpiece of alarmist agitprop inflicted on an entire generation of schoolchildren — was bang on, and that weather is getting worse. Meanwhile the transition to a low-carbon economy is proceeding apace, whatever roadblocks thrown by the likes of that Neanderthal denier Donald Trump.

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Merafe’s profit surges despite drop in sales – by Allan Seccombe (Business Day – August 8, 2017)

Merafe Resources, the junior partner in a chrome joint venture with Glencore, reported a hefty inventory build-up as production exceeded sales, while global demand for the stainless steel ingredient slowed and the market stayed under pressure.

The joint venture is one of the world’s leading sources of ferrochrome and chrome ore, and it operates in SA. Merafe said revenue attributable to the company increased 7% to R2.58bn for the six months to end June compared with that of the same period a year earlier. Profit increased to R486m from R57m, allowing the company to declare a 3c per share dividend. Net debt fell by half to R208m.

Stronger prices in the first half of the year offset a 28% drop in sales to 157,000 tonnes for Merafe’s account, while a stronger rand against the dollar eroded the revenue line.

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RPT-COLUMN-Port stocks the growing elephant in the room for iron ore prices – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – August 7, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Chinese steel and iron ore prices continue to rise in lock-step. In Shanghai today the most active steel rebar contract went limit-up, surging 7 percent to 4,013 yuan per ($597) per tonne, its highest level since April 2013. Where Shanghai steel leads, Dalian iron ore follows.

The most-traded contract on the Dalian Commodity Exchange jumped as much as 7.3 percent to 587.50 yuan per tonne at one stage, its highest level since March 21. And where Dalian leads, the rest of the iron ore world follows. On the Singapore Exchange the cash contract has just punched up through the $77-per tonne level, also for the first time since March.

There is much speculative froth in this mix. Market open interest on both Shanghai steel and Dalian iron ore hit record highs last month and is still at historically elevated levels. However, this is not just irrational exuberance.

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Aluminum Leaps Past $2,000 a Ton After China Deepens Capacity Cuts – by Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – August 8, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Aluminum cemented its spot as the best commodity this year as prices jumped to over $2,000 a metric ton for the first time since 2014.

Prices have rallied as China ramps up efforts to curtail illegal or polluting capacity. The metal added 2.2 percent to $2,008 as of 3:58 p.m. in London, bringing gains for the year to about 19 percent, the biggest rally among 22 raw materials on the Bloomberg Commodity Index.

“It does feel like China’s supply-side reform is deepening, and aluminum is definitely one of our favorite metals,” Xiao Fu, head of global commodities strategy at BOCI Global Commodities U.K., said by phone.

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BHP turns to electric car batteries to recharge its nickel business – by James Regan (Reuters U.S. – August 9, 2017)

http://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY (Reuters) – The rise of electric vehicles is driving the world’s biggest mining house, BHP, to switch gears and invest heavily in its long-suffering nickel business.

Eduard Haegel, division chief of BHP Nickel West, said the company planned to spend more than $43 million building a nickel processing plant near Perth, Australia as part of a broader plan to reposition the business around batteries.

Haegel told the “Diggers and Dealers” conference in Australia he expected demand for batteries used to power electric cars to account for about 90 percent of Nickel West’s output within five or six years, replacing traditional markets, such as stainless steel makers.

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UPDATE 2-Lonmin to sell surplus platinum capacity to raise cash – by Sanjeeban Sarkar and Barbara Lewis (Reuters Africa – August 7, 2017)

https://af.reuters.com/

Aug 7 (Reuters) – Platinum miner Lonmin Plc said on Monday it would cut costs and sell some assets, including processing capacity of up to 500,000 ounces per year, as it battles to overcome a weak market and to preserve jobs.

Shares in the South African miner rose 1.7 percent by 1020 GMT in response to Monday’s announcement, although some analysts said it would be important to see what terms Lonmin is able to agree with potential buyers. So far this year, its shares have fallen more than 35 percent.

Platinum miners in South Africa face an array of obstacles, including very deep, narrow seams, political instability and a stubbornly low platinum price of around $950 an ounce.

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Trump Moves to Increase Subsidy for Coal Mining on Federal Lands – by Eric Levitz (New York Magazine – August 7, 2017)

http://nymag.com/

Donald Trump appears to set regulatory policy on a kind of reverse-utilitarian calculus, working diligently to do the greatest good for the smallest number. With the help of the congressional GOP, the president has made it easier for coal companies to dump mining waste in streams; given financial advisers the right to scam their clients; and made companies that routinely abuse their workers eligible for federal contracts again.

But with its latest deregulatory endeavor, the Trump administration has taken this governing philosophy to new heights: The White House appears to have found a way to put the profit margins of select coal companies ahead of not merely environmental conservation, climate sustainability, and federal taxpayers, but also coal miners in Appalachia.

Early in his tenure, Trump reversed the Obama administration’s moratorium on leasing federal lands to coal companies, and canceled its proposed study on the environmental impacts of the coal industry. But Trump’s Interior Department doesn’t merely want the public to blindly absorb the environmental costs of fossil-fuel extraction on public lands — it also wants us to subsidize the financial costs of such activity.

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[Mining and Hockey] Stirring Passions in Hockey Hotbed: Michigan Tech Huskies Are Off to a Milestone Start – by Jeff Z. Klein (New York Times – December 17, 2017)

https://www.nytimes.com/

HOUGHTON, Mich. — Hockey rules this remote part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where it is played by everyone from children to those in their 70s and 80s. All through the long winter it is always game on — in modern arenas, outside (into the wee hours of the night) and in two of the oldest hockey rinks in the world.

Professional hockey was born here in Copper Country in 1902, 15 years before the N.H.L. was formed. Even before that, the game was king in Houghton, Hancock, Calumet and nearby towns when they were at the center of a mining boom.

The mining is gone, the woods dotted with abandoned buildings and ghost towns. Only about 44,000 live in the area now, but the love affair with hockey endures. And the Michigan Tech Huskies are winning again, at last.

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Lithium processors prepare to meet demand in era of electric car – by Pratima Desai and Zandi Shabalala (Reuters U.K. – August 7, 2017)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Producers of processed lithium – an essential element for batteries used in electric cars – are agreeing long-term contracts with their customers to fund the investments needed to address a looming shortfall.

Demand for battery-grade lithium compounds is expected to skyrocket in the next decades in tandem with soaring demand for electric cars as governments and individual consumers try to reduce their carbon footprint.

Although there’s plenty of lithium around, the problem is ensuring there is enough capacity to process it. Battery makers and other end-users such as car manufacturers will need to sign multi-year deals that encourage large producers to invest more, and faster, industry sources say. Some of that is already happening.

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New Caledonia’s nickel sector shaken up (Radio New Zealand – August 8, 2017)

http://www.radionz.co.nz/

Unions in New Caledonia fear that the Vale nickel plant could close within half a year and trigger the biggest wave of job losses the territory has ever seen. “That’s 5,000 employees and that means 10,000 people who need to be fed”, a unionist Pascal Pujapujane told New Caledonia’s television station after the latest briefing by the Vale leadership.

What sent the alarm bells ringing was the announcement by Vale’s new CEO Fabio Schvartsman in Brazil last month that it was reviewing its loss-making operation in New Caledonia. The timeline for a decision is not clear but reports suggest the Vale board may move as soon as this month.

Returning from Brazil, the head of Vale New Caledonia Daryush Khoshneviss met union representatives who had different interpretations of the message from headquarters. Vale runs a global network of mines and mining-related businesses which make it the world’s top iron producer.

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