(Kitco News) – After holding initial support at $3,000 an ounce, gold’s rally continues unabated, ending the week at another record high.
Gold prices are moving within striking distance of $3,100 an ounce. While momentum indicators show growing overbought conditions, analysts say the market continues to benefit from solid fundamental support. Gold is trading at $3,077.30 an ounce, up 0.68% on the day, and is set to end the week with a nearly 2% gain.
The European Union (EU) has published its first list of strategic projects strengthening the local extraction, processing, and recycling of 14 of the 17 materials it deems critical for its energy transition and security.
The selection of the 47 projects mark a key step in implementing the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), which sets targets for 2030, including extracting 10% of the EU’s annual consumption, processing 40%, and recycling 25% of these essential materials.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Mayor Paul Lefebvre pitches a compelling case to the Toronto corporate crowd to expand nickel processing capacity in the city
Sudbury has a strategic role to play in Canada’s natural resources security and economic sovereignty. Greater Sudbury Mayor Paul Lefebvre delivered that message to an audience of corporate leaders and influencers at the Canadian Club Toronto, March 27, by inviting strategic partners and government funders to come north and invest in critical metals processing capacity in the city.
Lefebvre took part in a panel discussion that Canada is falling short in realizing its full potential due to the lack of investment in mid-stream processing that’s needed to feed the burgeoning battery, energy and defence sectors.
Extracting resources from the Earth always comes with costs. As we race toward a cleaner, greener future, there is a risk of repeating the abuses of mining for coal and other fossil fuels.
As renewable energy gathers steam around the world, the harms of mining its mineral components continue to grow. On the environmental front, for example, there’s the destruction of Indonesian rainforests to mine nickel and the draining of precious South American groundwater reserves to obtain lithium.
There’s also the human toll, which can be seen in forced displacement and child labor exploitation in the cobalt-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as violence toward Indigenous people living on nickel-studded lands in the Philippines. The devastation raises the question: Is the world better off just sticking with the status quo? With these factors, is renewable energy and clean technology any better than fossil fuels?
As civil war rages in Sudan, a surge in gold production is helping finance and arm the warring factions. Most of the mining is done on a small scale by villagers who process the gold using mercury and cyanide, posing serious threats to their health and to the environment.
Amid Sudan’s brutal civil war, where famine threatens millions of displaced people, many have turned to small-scale gold mining, risking their lives by using toxic chemicals to extract the precious metal. But this pursuit of survival comes at a devastating cost to public health and the environment.
Across thousands of communities, mercury and cyanide used in the mining process are poisoning miners and their families, degrading farmland, and seeping into underground water reserves. After floods in 2022 and again last year, toxins even reached the Nile River, endangering the country’s most vital water source.
Could send shockwaves through eastern part of sector and ultimately benefit China
United States President Donald Trump is laying the groundwork for tariffs on copper that could send shockwaves through the eastern part of Canada’s sector and ultimately benefit China. Canada in 2023 produced 2.2 per cent of global mined copper, less than half of what’s produced in the U.S., which accounted for five per cent.
Nonetheless, more than half the copper produced in Canada, mainly from the eastern part of the country, was shipped to the U.S., making up a large portion of the imports there.
https://www.northernminer.com/
British Columbia’s new framework requiring consultation with First Nations before registering mining claims misses the mark for consulting with Indigenous groups, First Nations say. The new consultation Mineral Claims Consultation Framework (MCCF), released last week, outlines processes for consulting with industry and First Nations groups.
But BC Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee criticized the changes, implying they don’t remotely align with the collaborative approach outlined in the province’s Indigenous rights law.
‘Step backward’
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Aaron Burnett is a German-Canadian geopolitics and security analyst based at Berlin’s Democratic Strategy Initiative.
The spectre of a deeper trade relationship between Canada and Europe keeps U.S. President Donald Trump up at night – if his latest social-media rant threatening higher tariffs on both is any clue.
And that means, all the more, that Canada must seek closer ties to Europe. Mr. Trump is a man who defers to strength and bullies the weak. If a Canada-Europe team-up strikes such a raw nerve, then that means it’s the right move.
The world’s oceans harbor a cultural heritage of sunken ships, remains of those lost in the transatlantic slave trade and Indigenous islanders’ spiritual ties to the sea that must be protected, NGOs and native peoples say.
They are pushing at a meeting in Jamaica of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) — an organization established under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea — for such protection to be enshrined in a mining code that is being negotiated to govern the exploitation of sea beds in international waters.
Once-booming uranium stocks have been veering toward bust mode to start 2025. Escalating trade tensions between the US and Canada, one of the world’s key producers of the nuclear fuel, are playing a major part.
Lately, so are talks toward a ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine, which raise the prospect of looser sanctions on Russian production of the radioactive metal and the potential for more supply. The price of uranium is now down more than a third from early 2024, and has slumped roughly 11% this year alone.
When armed rebels seized northern Myanmar’s rare-earths mining belt in October, they dealt a blow to the country’s embattled military junta – and wrested control of a key global resource. By capturing sites that produce roughly half of the world’s heavy rare earths, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) rebels have been able to throttle the supply of minerals used in wind turbines and electric vehicles, sending prices of one key element skyward.
The KIA is seeking leverage against neighbouring China, which supports the junta and has invested heavily in rare earths mining in Myanmar’s Kachin state, according to two people familiar with the matter.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/
Vale’s director of Ontario Operations speaks to a Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce luncheon
Sudbury has another hundred years of good mining left in its ore bodies but it will have to work to remain competitive in a difficult market for nickel, Vale’s director of Ontario Operations says. Gord Gilpin told the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce this week that Indonesia has flooded the world market with nickel, depressing the price of the mineral.
Gilpin made a parallel to the turbulent 1970s and 80s. “They (Indonesia) are the OPEC of nickel. They will set prices. We do expect it to balance out but in the short term, there is a surplus that is why pricing is under pressure.”
Latest U.S. effort to reduce dependence on China for rare earths and critical minerals
Canadian mining insiders say their industry could ultimately benefit if United States President Donald Trump’s fixation on boosting his country’s production of minerals persists. Last Thursday, Trump invoked presidential emergency powers and signed an executive order “to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent” as a matter of national and economic security.
The order cites “our reliance upon hostile foreign powers’ mineral production,” which some say is the U.S.’s latest effort to reduce its dependence on China, which controls large parts of the world’s rare earths and critical minerals supply chains.
Gold was once again the dominant theme of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals within the precious and base metals mining space in 2024, accounting for 70% of the year’s transaction count and total value, says S&P Global.
According to data tracked by S&P, the number of M&A transactions with gold as the primary resource metal more than doubled those in base metals at 43 (versus 19). The total transaction value was also nearly three times higher for gold at $19.31 billion, compared to $7.23 billion for base metals.
One of the highest-profile copper bulls is back predicting new price records, as Donald Trump’s threat of tariffs drains global stocks and creates what he sees as unprecedented opportunities for trading profit.
Kostas Bintas became one of the best-known metals traders during his years building Trafigura Group’s copper book into the world’s largest, before his departure in late 2023. Now spearheading a push into metals at energy trader Mercuria Energy Group Ltd., he is again calling for copper to surge to record highs, up by as much as a third from current levels.
