Republic of Mining

New Caledonian miners seek to ramp up nickel ore exports to China – by Melanie Burton , Cecile Lefort and Gus Trompiz (Reuters U.S. – December 24, 2016)

December 14, 2016

http://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE, SYDNEY, PARIS – New Caledonia’s nickel ore miners have applied to increase shipments to China after an environmental crackdown on Philippine mine supply this year has caused prices to spike, four sources familiar with the matter said this week.

Two miners, Societe Metallurgique Le Nickel (SLN), owned by France’s Eramet, and Societe des Mines de la Tontouta (SMT) have applied for permits to export more ore to China in 2017, the sources said.

China is demanding new sources of nickel ore to feed its vast stainless steel industry after the Philippines, the world’s biggest ore exporter, halted production at some mines for environmental violations. China’s steel industry has boosted production this year to meet construction demand amid a domestic property boom.

Holloway Mine in Matheson suspending operations – by Joe O’Grady (Kirkland Lake Northern News – December 13, 2016)

December 14, 2016

http://www.timminspress.com/

BLACK RIVER-MATHESON – While a significant amount of mining activity continues in the Matheson area, the Holloway Mine will no longer be part of it, at least for now. Owner Kirkland Lake Gold has announced the 10-year-old mine is transitioning to care and maintenance, which means operations will cease, but the site will be maintained for possible future re-opening.

The company, in a release, says the majority of the employees at Holloway Mine will be reassigned to nearby Kirkland Lake operations. By doing this, the company says it will effectively be replacing external contractors. As well, Kirkland Lake Gold will continue to conduct surface exploration drilling programs in 2017, which will progressively step further west of the Holloway shaft, an area that is historically under explored.

Further to the west of the Holloway Mine Kirkland Lake Gold is drilling the Lightval and drilling is planned for the Harker West target, as the company explores for another Lightning Zone style mineralization area.

Copper Supply From Top Mine Threatened as Export Ban Looms (Bloomberg News – December 14, 2016)

December 14, 2016

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Exports from the world’s second-largest copper mine in Indonesia are under threat as a government ban on overseas concentrate shipments is scheduled to come into force from the middle of January.

While ministers are rushing to revise the regulations so miners that have committed to build smelters can continue to export ore concentrates, an intermediate product used to make copper, there’s no guarantee that the deadline will be met. The rules as they stand now only permit shipments of refined metal after Jan. 11.

Richard Adkerson, chief executive officer of Freeport-McMoRan Inc., the world’s biggest publicly traded copper miner and owner of the massive Grasberg mine in Papua province, says he’s confident the issue will be resolved.

Glencore digging deep to stay in Sudbury: VP – by Darren MacDonald (Sudbury Northern Life – December 13, 2016)

December 14, 2016

https://www.sudbury.com/

With Nickel Rim expected to close in 2021, company is working on developing deeper mines

Glencore is working hard to develop new deposits in Sudbury ahead of 2021, when current deposits will largely be exhausted, city councillors were told Tuesday. That was the word from Peter Xavier, vice-president of the company’s Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations, who updated the city on the state of their work in the city.

Glencore is the current owner of the mines, which date back to the late 1920s when it was owned by Falconbridge Ltd. Their largest deposit is the Nickel Rim South Mine, a deposit discovered in 2001 and brought into production in 2010.

“It’s the financial base of our operation,” Xavier said, adding they have done work in attempts to extend its life. “Unfortunately, those efforts haven’t proved to be successful.”

If the hydro file finally knocks the Ontario Liberals back to earth, it will be nothing less than fitting – by Chris Selley (National Post – December 14, 2016)

December 14, 2016

http://news.nationalpost.com/

More than 1,400 Ontario households may soon get an unexpected gift: the miracle of alternating current electricity, with which to heat their homes and roast their geese and snuggle up on the couch and watch The Muppet Christmas Carol.

It’s Hydro One’s “Winter Relief Program,” under which customers who’ve been cut off for not paying their bills will be reconnected, free of charge, “for the remainder of the winter.” They will be offered “what payment arrangements they can afford” for amounts in arrears and, presumably, for the considerable costs they’ll rack up over the winter.

“This program is about doing the right thing for our customers who are experiencing hardship,” Ferio Pugliese of Hydro One said in a statement. The move follows a Global News report about “Carol,” whose family of six lived for half a year on generators, flashlights and bathwater her husband hauled home in garbage cans from his full-time blue-collar job.

NEWS RELEASE: Harte Gold Closes $25 Million Financing

December 14, 2016

Toronto – December 14, 2016 – HARTE GOLD CORP. (“Harte Gold”) (TSX: HRT / OTC: HRTFF / Frankfurt: H40) is pleased to announce the closing of the $25 million financing previously announced in its news release dated November 24, 2016. The financing will facilitate the acceleration of exploration and development work at Harte Gold’s 100% owned Sugar Zone property located in White River, Ontario.

The financing consists of a $15 million bought deal offering of 38,461,538 flow-through common shares priced at $0.39 per flow-through common share (the “Flow-Through Offering”) with Cantor Fitzgerald Canada Corporation and a concurrent $10 million private placement financing of 33,333,333 common shares priced at $0.30 per common share (the “Private Placement”) with Appian Natural Resources Fund (“Appian”) through its wholly owned subsidiary, for aggregate gross proceeds of $25 million at a blended average price of $0.35 per common share. On closing, Appian will hold a 16.8% interest in Harte Gold.

Finder’s fees payable under the private placements consist of a cash payment equal to 3% of cash raised and broker warrants equal to 3% of the number of flow-through common shares and common shares issued pursuant to the private placements.

Nippon Steel agrees with Glencore, Teck on 43 percent rise in first quarter coking coal – by Yuka Obayashi (Reuters U.S. – December 13, 2016)

December 13, 2016

http://www.reuters.com/

TOKYO – Japan’s biggest steelmaker Nippon Steel said on Tuesday it has agreed with Glencore Plc and Teck Resources Ltd on a coking coal price for first quarter of 2017 supplies that is 43 percent higher than the previous quarter.

The companies agreed on a price of $285 a ton for supplies of Australia’s premium hard coking coal for the January-March quarter next year, a Nippon Steel spokeswoman said, without giving any details.

If other international steelmakers follow this price, it would be the highest industry quarterly benchmark since the fourth quarter of 2011.

Arizona Mining comes out swinging – by Staff (Mining Journal – December 13, 2016)

December 13, 2016

http://www.mining-journal.com/

Vancouver-based Arizona Mining has strongly refuted claims made in global mining blog that compared some of its deposits to the “Bre-X” scandal. An article in the Global Mining Observer on the weekend drew a comparison to Bre-X, the company involved in a major gold mining scandal in the mid-1990s, the Financial Post reported.

Arizona says the Observer’s article, which is no longer available online, was misleading. “First, the article appeared to infer that the Taylor deposit was a re-named version of the Central Deposit,” Arizona said in a statement.

“There are, in fact, two distinct deposits at the Hermosa project – the Taylor zinc-lead-silver sulphide deposit and the Central deposit, which is a manganese-silver oxide deposit.”

Designing a Safer Battery for Smartphones (That Won’t Catch Fire) – by John Markoff (New York Times – December 11, 2016)

December 13, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/

SAN FRANCISCO — Mike Zimmerman likes to shock his guests by using a hammer to drive a nail through a solid polymer lithium metal battery. Nothing happens — and that’s a good thing.

Mr. Zimmerman’s battery is a new spin on lithium-ion batteries, which are widely used in products from smartphones to cars. Today’s lithium-ion batteries, as anyone who has followed Samsung’s recent problems with flammable smartphones may know, can be ticking time bombs. The liquids in them can burst into flames if there is a short circuit of some sort. And driving a nail into one of them is definitely not recommended.

With that in mind, Mr. Zimmerman’s demonstration commands attention. His Woburn, Mass., start-up, Ionic Materials, is at the cutting edge of an effort to design safer batteries. The company is working on “solid” lithium polymer batteries that greatly reduce their combustible nature.

Editorial: Mountaintop mining ban will protect Upper Cumberland (Knoxville News Sentinel – December 13, 2016)

December 13, 2016

http://www.knoxnews.com/

In a victory for those who love Tennessee’s mountains, the U.S. Department of the Interior last week banned mountaintop coal mining from more than 500 miles of ridgetops in the Upper Cumberland region. The decision, six years in the making, places a 1,200-foot buffer – 600 feet on both sides of the ridgetops – from surface mining. In all, the ruling covers nearly 75,000 acres of state-managed land.

The land that will be declared off-limits to mountaintop mining is in Scott, Morgan, Anderson and Campbell counties and falls within the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area and the Emory River Tract Conservation Easement.

The state petitioned the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement for the declaration in 2010, three months before then-Gov. Phil Bredesen left office. In its petition, the state said mountaintop coal mining would be incompatible with existing local and state plans and would result in significant damage to cultural, scientific, aesthetic values or natural systems.

High-grading: Timmins’ worst-kept secret? – by Frank Giorno (Timmins Today – November 25, 2016)

December 13, 2016

https://www.timminstoday.com/

Author Kevin Vincent launches his new book — a dramatic telling of the 1986 Aquarius Gold Robbery

Kevin Vincent, Timmins author and chronicler of the city’s second largest industry, gold high-grading, launched his second volume of stories dealing with the thefts of gold from the city’s gold mines, this volume dealing with the brazen Aquarius Gold mine theft of 1986.

The launch of Bootleg Gold Vol.2 was held at the Timmins Public Library Tembec room, last night, to a packed room of guests that included Timmins Mayor Steve Black, and Gregory Reynolds, former editor of the Timmins Daily Press and someone who also has many stories on the topic.

Vincent has been working for 30 years at collecting and telling the stories of more than 100 years of high-grading or gold thefts from Timmins gold mines since the very early days of the Porcupine gold rush and the founding of Timmins in 1912.

Bill Gates and investors worth $170 billion are launching a fund to fight climate change through energy innovation – by Kevin J. Delaney (Quartz.com – December 11, 2016)

December 13, 2016

http://qz.com/

Bill Gates is leading a more than $1 billion fund focused on fighting climate change by investing in clean energy innovation. The Microsoft co-founder and his all-star line-up of fellow investors plan to announce tomorrow the Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund, which will begin making investments next year.

The BEV fund, which has a 20-year duration, aims to invest in the commercialization of new technologies that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in areas including electricity generation and storage, transportation, industrial processes, agriculture, and energy-system efficiency.

“Anything that leads to cheap, clean, reliable energy we’re open-minded to,” says Gates, who is serving as chairman of BEV and anticipates being actively involved.

Arrested Development: Down, down, down? Ring of Fire still a burning question – by Sunny Freeman (Financial Post – December 13, 2016)

December 14, 2016December 13, 2016

http://business.financialpost.com/

The nine chiefs of the Matawa First Nations closest to Ontario’s Ring of Fire gathered around a conference table in July 2013 at what seemed like a historic crossroads to debate the merits of development in a region that had never before experienced it.

Promises of jobs, revenue sharing and infrastructure improvements, some said, could bring prosperity to the struggling communities. On the other hand, development could come too rapidly and at too high a cost to their land and traditional way of life. They needn’t have worried. Three years later, development of the 5,000-square-kilometre area of the James Bay Lowlands is still stuck in neutral.

The Ring of Fire is a deposit of minerals — including nickel, copper, gold, zinc and the extremely rare chromite — some 540 kilometres north of Thunder Bay that is said to be worth up to $60 billion. Dubbed “Canada’s next oilsands,” it could be the biggest resource development Ontario has seen in more than a century.

Mining giant Agnico Eagle buys into Yukon’s White Gold district – by Dave Croft (CBC News North – December 12, 2016)

December 13, 2016

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

Agnico Eagle buys shares in thousands of mining claims, says people behind project are ‘top-notch’

Yukon prospector Shawn Ryan says a deal has been struck to bring another major gold mining company into the White Gold district, south of Dawson City. Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. has bought a stake in thousands of mining claims originally owned by Ryan. A statement from the company says it bought 19.93 per cent of the shares of the soon-to-be-named White Gold Corporation, for $14.52 million.

Ryan said an associate of his formed the new Vancouver based company, which then bought all of his claims in the district — 12,300 of them, spread over 21 properties. Ryan said he received $3.5 million and 7 million shares in the new company.

Together they then offered a package deal to major mining companies that included a stake in the shares and a three-year exploration program conducted by Ground Truth Exploration (a company jointly owned by Ryan’s wife, Cathy Wood, and long-time associates Isaac Fage and Tao Henderson).

Nunavut mine compromise not good enough, says wildlife group – by Steve Ducharme (Nunatsiaq News – December 12, 2016)

December 13, 2016

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/

“Baffinland has done well to consult with communities… but there is more work to be done”

The World Wildlife Fund-Canada says contradictory statements made by Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. on possible winter extensions to its marine shipping season for the Mary River mine should lead to a full environmental review from the Nunavut Impact Review Board.

“Baffinland Iron Mines Corp.’s new plan to extend its Arctic shipping period to Dec. 31 and its expectation to ship during winter months ‘when necessary’ should not be permitted without a full review and public hearings,” WWF Canada said in a Dec. 8 news release.

In November, Baffinland revised its “Phase II” plans for the Mary River mine, dropping a proposal to ship ore by ice breakers through the winter months, replacing it with a railroad that follows roughly the same path as the current tote road used to transports or by truck from the mine to Milne Inlet.