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Top 50 mining companies reshuffle as Chinese, lithium firms climb rankings – by Frik Els (Mining.com – July 5, 2017)

http://www.mining.com/

After a banner 2016, the recovery in the mining sector slowed dramatically this year and in some instances fortunes reversed.

At the half-year mark, the world’s 50 largest listed firms are worth a collective $768 billion, adding nearly $12 billion in market capitalization to year-to-end June. The top 10 make up more than half the sector’s worth.

The vast majority of those gains were achieved last year – over the past 12 months the top 50 have added nearly $100 billion in combined value. A handful of gold companies are in the red so far this year, notably China’s Shandong Gold, Canada’s Goldcorp and Russia’s Polyus Gold, the world’s eighth largest gold miner.

Some of last year’s high flyers have also come back down to earth including Australia’s Fortescue Metals Group which have been declining alongside the iron ore price and Canada’s Teck Resources, hurt by a coking coal price that’s fallen back to earth.

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Northern Ontario rail advocates must do their homework – by Greg Gormick (Northern Ontario Business – July 4, 2017)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Many Northern Ontarians believe improved and expanded rail service is a solution for several of the region’s transportation challenges. Having worked for more than 30 years inside the rail industry and as a policy advisor to various politicians, I applaud those who intelligently promote a greater reliance on rail. However, if they are to succeed and not burn themselves out in frustration, I have two pieces of advice.

First, ensure your vision is not a fantasy. I have watched numerous advocates futilely promote concepts that weren’t thoroughly researched and vetted before they faced the glare of public scrutiny. Most of these proposals were rooted in the past and only demonstrated that their promoters didn’t realize that time runs in only one direction.

The world has changed and other modes of transportation have risen up to usurp rail’s original crown, which was based on trains being all things to all people. They no longer can be.

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Elon Musk Won’t Save Big Mining – by David Fickling and Elaine He (Bloomberg News – July 6, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The world’s biggest mining companies have more or less recovered from the commodity boom and bust of the past decade. At the same time, they’ve been left with an existential crisis: What minerals are going to drive their growth in the decades to come?

Aluminum was white-hot in 2007 when Rio Tinto Group paid $38 billion for Alcan Inc., but it’s since been sunk by a wave of Chinese oversupply. Coal and iron ore helped drive the Bloomberg Commodity Index to its most recent peak in 2011, but have fallen on harder times due to fears of climate-related demand weakness and a plateau in steel production. Even copper faces surpluses through to 2020, according to Bloomberg Intelligence’s supply model, which would tend to weigh on prices.

Thank goodness, then, for Saint Elon Musk. Demand for battery materials to feed the nascent electric-vehicle and electricity-storage industries has made a group of hitherto obscure minerals — principally cobalt, lithium and graphite — the next big thing in the mining industry.

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Global miners’ investments in junior players hits highest level in a decade – by Sunny Freeman (Financial Post – July 6, 2017)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Gold miners have invested around $290 million in exploration companies during the first six months of the year, the highest level recorded in the past decade and double the value invested in the previous two years combined, according to a CIBC World Markets Inc. report released Wednesday.

“Nearly one-half of equity raised by junior gold stocks on the TSX in 2017 has been through direct investments. No previous year has exceeded 20 per cent,” the report’s authors noted.

The dramatic ramp-up in investment from senior gold producers comes as they search for new sources of growth to head off a potential production decline after sitting on the sidelines during one of the most brutal commodity cycles in history.

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Psst…wanna buy some cobalt? Just don’t tell the auto guys! – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – July 5, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON – Wanna buy into one of the hottest commodities in town? No, it’s not lithium. That’s so much last year’s thing. We’re talking about cobalt. And this one’s really hot. On the London Metal Exchange (LME) the price for three-month cobalt has leapt from $32,750 per tonne at the start of January to a current $58,500.

This stellar near 80-percent price surge mirrors what happened to lithium prices a year or so ago. The linkage is both metals’ evolution from niche applications to mainstream usage in the batteries that are now powering the green technology revolution.

If a minimum $58,500 bet is a bit too much for you, some bright hedge fund guys have come up with a cheaper option. For just nine Canadian dollars you can now buy a share in Cobalt 27 Capital Corp, which made its C$200 million ($150.7 million) debut on Canada’s Venture Exchange last month.

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BHP’s New Chairman Expected to Drive a ‘Radical Shift’ – by Jasmine Ng (Bloomberg News – July 5, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

BHP Billiton Ltd.’s new chairman is about to shake things up at the world’s largest mining company, according to Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd., which says that Ken MacKenzie will probably undertake a full-scale review of assets and strategy, and may demerge the petroleum business.

“Despite management’s reluctance to change at this stage, we believe that BHP is about to experience a radical shift in strategy, driven by the arrival, effective Sept. 1, of the new chairman,” analysts including Paul Gait said in a note.

MacKenzie used to run a packaging business, and his “detachment from the mining sector makes him, we believe, inevitably far more objective on the best direction BHP should take from now on.” BHP has been the target of an activist investor campaign in recent months spearheaded by Elliott Management Corp., which has rounded on management decisions that the fund claims have destroyed about $40 billion in value.

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Mount Isa Super Basin hosts the world’s largest zinc deposits – by Tony Raggatt (Townsville Bulletin – July 4, 2017)

http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/

THE country north of Mount Isa has the potential to deliver the world’s next big zinc mine with huge benefits for Townsville in jobs and manufacturing, according to a Western Australia explorer.

Pursuit Minerals Ltd, currently listed on the Australian sharemarket under the name Burrabulla Corporation, has successfully raised $6 million to begin a two-year search in the Mount Isa Super Basin.

The area hosts the largest concentration of zinc deposits on the planet and is in the same area of the now depleted Century zinc mine mothballed last year.

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RPT-COLUMN-As Indonesian nickel ore flows again to China, famine turns to feast – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – July 4, 2017)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, July 4 The flow of Indonesian nickel ore to China has resumed after a three-and-a-half year break. There have been a few false alarms since the Indonesian government banned all exports of unprocessed minerals, including nickel, at the start of 2014.

China’s trade figures have shown the occasional import of what has been classified as nickel ore but which was in all probability iron ore with high nickel content. But May’s 264,000 tonnes seem the real deal. Not only was it the largest monthly total in three years but it tallies with plans by Indonesia’s Aneka Tambang (Antam) to make its first 150,000-tonne shipment at the start of the month.

It’s still a fraction of what Indonesia used to send every month to China before 2014. The export ban remains in place but with a growing number of exemptions for companies that have committed to building processing plants.

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Goldcorp makes headway with plan to give Dome mine a new life – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – July 4, 2017)

http://www.mining.com/

Canada’s Goldcorp (TSX:G) (NYSE:GG), the world’s number four bullion miner in terms of output, is moving forward with its Century project, which aims to extend the life its century-old Dome mine in Ontario.

The Dome mine received a death sentence in January 2016, when Goldcorp announced it was closing the operation in the summer due to weak bullion prices that nearly half the company’s share price over the previous year.

A few months later, however, the company literally stroke gold as it found indicated mineral resource of 4.5 million ounces and a gold inferred mineral resource of 0.9 million ounces (for a total of 5.4 million ounces) at what is now being called the Dome Century Project.

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MAC lauds initiative to improve transportation infrastructure in Northern Canada – by Megan Van Wyngaardt (MiningWeekly.com – July 5, 2017)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) has welcomed the launch of the federal government’s Trade and Transportation Corridors Initiative (TTCI), which will include an allocation of up to $400-million in dedicated funding for transportation infrastructure in Northern Canada.

The acute lack of infrastructure in Canada’s remote and northern regions is inhibiting further sustainable mineral development owing to the high costs of exploring, building and operating in these regions.

A recent study co-authored by the MAC had found that it cost about two- to two-and-a-half times more to build a gold or base metals mine in northern Canada than in the south, as a result of the lack of infrastructure.

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Conservationists call on new B.C. gov’t to act on Tulsequah Chief mine cleanup – by Derrick Penner (Vancouver Sun – July 4, 2017)

http://vancouversun.com/

Conservation and indigenous groups in Alaska are pushing B.C.’s new government to act on cleaning up the dormant Tulsequah Chief mine site near the border in Alaska’s southeastern panhandle.

The mine site has sat dormant since September 2016, when owner Chieftain Metals Corp. was pushed into receivership. But rather than allow the mine to be sold out of bankruptcy, the Alaskan groups are asking B.C. to just clean it up and shut it down.

Chieftain is now the second company that has fallen into bankruptcy trying to resurrect the Tulsequah Chief since it was shut down in 1957 by its original owner, and Chris Zimmer of the Alaska group Rivers Without Borders doesn’t want another replay of the scenario without a serious cleanup of acid-rock drainage that has poured out of the mine and into the Taku River for decades.

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Vale says loss-making New Caledonia nickel operations under review (Reuters U.S. – July 3, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

Brazil’s Vale is reassessing its loss-making New Caledonian nickel operations as part of a wider review of low performing assets after new Chief Executive Fabio Schvartsman took charge last month, a spokesman said.

“Under the leadership of our new CEO, Vale is reviewing all assets and operations, with low-performing assets an area of particular focus. Vale New Caledonia is part of that review,” spokesman Cory McPhee told Reuters by email.

“The nickel price today is languishing at around $9,000 a tonne with no indication of recovery in the near-term. This has forced us to reassess all areas of the nickel business, including our operations in New Caledonia, which continue to lose money at these prices.”

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North Eastern Ontario urban mayors aim to put up united front – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – July 4, 2017)

http://www.timminspress.com/

TIMMINS – Mayors from Northern Ontario’s larger urban municipalities met in Timmins last week to discuss common concerns and plan strategies to get more funding from upper levels of government.

Key issues, according to Timmins Mayor Steve Black, included the need for more FedNor funding, a bigger commitment to Northern rail networks, more money for the opioid drug crisis and the need to restructure district social services administration board’s responsibilities.

Black said the first concern was discussion over the budget promise by federal Liberals to add $25-million to FedNor’s $41-million budget over a period of five years. “They have increased the FedNor budget but it’s not significant and substantial enough an increase to put us on equal ground with the other development agencies across Canada,” said Black.

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Symbols will not meet Trudeau’s goal of Indigenous reconciliation – by Tim Harper (Toronto Star – July 5, 2017)

https://www.thestar.com/

When Indigenous activists symbolically reoccupied traditional Algonquin land by erecting a teepee on Parliament Hill last week, Justin Trudeau paid a visit and spoke with them for about 40 minutes.

When Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence began a six-week hunger strike on Victoria Island in the shadow of Parliament Hill in late 2012, the prime minister of the day, Stephen Harper, never met with her and was loathe to utter her name.

Weeks after his cabinet was sworn in, the Trudeau government announced a national inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women. “Inaction” on a national tragedy “ends today,” said Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett. Harper, of course, rejected the idea, telling the CBC in a year-end interview in 2014, he saw no point in spending millions of dollars “to get the same report for the 41st or 42nd time.”

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Inside the startup that wants to mine asteroids and transform space travel forever – by Kathryn Nave (Wired U.K. – July 4, 2017)

http://www.wired.co.uk/

On May 25, 2008, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite transmitted a grainy image back to Earth. It showed two white dots – the Phoenix Mars lander and its parachute – descending against the backdrop of the planet’s vast Heimdal impact crater. Chris Lewicki, the Phoenix mission’s manager, hadn’t seen the lander since its launch on August 3, 2007, on board the Delta II rocket that carried it into space. The Phoenix landed 20km from the huge crater, kick-starting its search for microbial-friendly habitats on Mars.

For Nasa, this was the beginning of another successful mission, but to Lewicki, things began to feel repetitive. He had first become obsessed with space at the age of 11, when he saw images of Nasa’s Voyager mission, the space probe that captured images of the Solar System’s outer planets. He studied Aerospace Engineering at the University of Arizona and, in 1999, joined Nasa, where he rose through the ranks. In 2003, at the age of 29, he oversaw the landing of the Spirit and the Opportunity Mars Rovers.

Those missions were the fulfilment of his childhood dream. Now, with the Phoenix – his third mission to Mars – he began to feel restless. “A lot of my friends were working on the next big robot project, Curiosity,” he says. “But that felt like the easy thing to do.” So he started casting around for a new job.

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