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Economist Saul Eslake says the mining boom may be the last ever – by Peter Ker (Sydney Morning Herald – November 11, 2015)

http://www.smh.com.au/

The final commodities boom in “human history” may have just finished, according to prominent economist Saul Eslake.

In a gloomy opening to the International Mining and Resources Conference in Melbourne on Tuesday, Mr Eslake said the downturn in mineral commodity prices had probably not reached its nadir, and there was little prospect of the recent China boom being repeated in the future.

While the mining industry often touts the future growth potential from urbanisation and development in nations like Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan and African giants like Nigeria, Mr Eslake said those nations could not match the population impact of China’s recent rise.

“The countries that are still to develop are much smaller than China and India are, they are not, in most cases, starting from as far back on the development curve as China was in 1979 or India was in 1991, and most of them are much more self sufficient in commodities than China or India ever were,” he said.

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Lonmin stock discount signals trouble in South African platinum industry – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – November 10, 2015)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

JOHANNESBURG — For the world’s third-biggest platinum producer, it was a stunning admission of its precarious condition. Desperately needing money to stave off collapse, Lonmin PLC announced on Monday that it will issue its latest stock offering at a 94-per-cent discount.

The huge discount, allowing Lonmin to raise the $407-million (U.S.) that it needs to survive, is the latest sign of a major shakeout in South Africa’s troubled platinum sector. But two Canadian platinum companies are still pushing ahead with their South African investments, convinced they can find profits with lower-cost projects.

The platinum industry has been stumbling from crisis to crisis for the past several years. Global platinum prices have dropped by more than 50 per cent since 2011. The industry has been plagued by rising costs and labour unrest in its South African heartland, including a heavily damaging five-month strike in 2014 and the notorious police shooting of 34 protesters at Lonmin’s Marikana mine in 2012.

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Algoma granted creditor protection again amid plunging steel prices – by Greg Keenan and Ian McGugan (Globe and Mail – November 10, 2015)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Essar Steel Algoma Inc., the economic backbone of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., for more than a century, will make its third trip through creditor protection amid a collapse in steel prices and a battle with a critical supplier.

The steel maker, which was founded in 1901 to make rails for the growing railway industry, was granted protection Monday under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, saying it does not have enough money to make $25-million in debt payments due next week or special payments on pension funds with a combined deficit topping $500-million.

“The urgency of the need for immediate cash is unquestioned,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Frank Newbould said in granting the company creditor protection.

The filing underlines the battered state of much of the steel sector in Canada and North America. Essar Algoma joins U.S. Steel Canada Inc., which was granted CCAA protection in September, 2014 – the second trip for the former Stelco Inc. through a court-supervised restructuring.

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NEWS RELEASE: Harte Gold – Sugar Zone Deposit Bulk Sample Update

Harte Gold from Harte Gold on Vimeo.

http://www.hartegold.com/

Toronto – November 10, 2015 – HARTE GOLD CORP. (“Harte Gold”) (TSX: HRT / Frankfurt (FSE: H4O) announced today that the first blast to cut the Portal was been completed on October 30, 2015 and underground ramp development is currently underway. Harte Gold also announced that Roger J. Emdin, P.Eng., has joined the Harte Gold team as Vice President, Projects.

Bulk Sample Project

With the commencement of underground ramp development and site development to support operations through winter 2016, near completion, Technica Mining Inc. (“Technica”) has transitioned to two-shift 24-7 operations. Click here for site pictures and video from the recent site visit.

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Grave mistake’ to be complacent on energy security, International Energy Agency warns – by Yadullah Hussain (National Post – November 10, 2015)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

A prolonged period of lower oil prices would benefit consumers, but would trigger energy-security concerns by increasing reliance on a small number of low-cost producers “or risk a sharp rebound in price if investment falls short,” the International Energy Agency warned Tuesday.

A surge in renewable energy deployment and a period of low oil prices is giving the world a false sense of energy security, the Paris-based agency warned in its benchmark annual World Energy Outlook.

“It would be a grave mistake to index our attention to energy security to changes in the oil price,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol, said in a statement. “Now is not the time to relax. Quite the opposite: a period of low oil prices is the moment to reinforce our capacity to deal with future energy security threats.”

The global oil industry needs to invest US$630 billion “just to compensate for declining production at existing fields and to keep future output flat at today’s levels” the energy watchdog said.

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Rush to speed Brazil mine permit may be behind dam disaster – by Anthony Boadle and Alonso Soto (Reuters U.S. – November 9, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

BRASILIA – Mining companies often complain endless red tape makes it hard to do business in Brazil but prosecutors and environmentalists say burst dams at an iron ore mine that triggered massive flooding last week point to gaping lapses in regulation.

The floodwaters and mudflow killed at least two people and another 25 are still listed as missing in a disaster that came two years after a study requested by a prosecutor warned the dams in the mineral-rich state of Minas Gerais could collapse.

“It was evident this dam was risky,” Carlos Eduardo Pinto, a state prosecutor who probes the mining industry, told Reuters, referring to the first dam that gave way, leading to the rupture of another.

Pinto is investigating whether a tailings pond, a reservoir for water with mine waste held by the dam, was too full.  The dams burst on Thursday at a mine operated by Samarco, a joint venture between BHP Billiton Ltd , the world’s largest mining company, and Vale SA, the biggest iron ore miner.

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China Burns Much More Coal Than Reported, Complicating Climate Talks – by Chris Buckley (New York Times – November 3 2015)

http://www.nytimes.com/

BEIJING — China, the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases from coal, has been burning up to 17 percent more coal a year than the government previously disclosed, according to newly released data. The finding could complicate the already difficult efforts to limit global warming.

Even for a country of China’s size, the scale of the correction is immense. The sharp upward revision in official figures means that China has released much more carbon dioxide — almost a billion more tons a year according to initial calculations — than previously estimated.

The increase alone is greater than the whole German economy emits annually from fossil fuels.

Officials from around the world will have to come to grips with the new figures when they gather in Paris this month to negotiate an international framework for curtailing greenhouse-gas pollution.

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India’s coal-fueled economy taking a toll on environment and rural villagers – by Shashank Bengali (Los Angeles Times – October 15, 2015)

http://www.latimes.com/

A giant power plant set atop what was once a virgin forest churns with coal from a nearby mine, a roaring example of India’s aspirations to best China’s economic growth and light the homes of its poorest people.

Yet the privately run Sasan power project — backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government funding — has also generated land disputes, health and environmental concerns and financial hardship for villagers who say it has delivered little of what was promised.

As India tries to bring electricity to 300 million people who lack it, it is defying international calls for reducing climate-changing fuel emissions and instead heavily expanding investments in coal, often with huge costs for rural people living in the path of the inexpensive fossil fuel.

In the village of Amlohri two miles west of the Sasan plant, a mountain of rocky mining waste dumped by Reliance Power, the plant developer, surrounds a cluster of mud-and-brick dwellings, their tin roofs reflecting a blinding sun.

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Canadian Mining Companies Better Beware, the Liberals Are Coming for Them – by Justin Ling (Vice Magazine – November 6, 2015)

https://news.vice.com/

A regime change in Ottawa means that the government of Canada will be breathing down the necks of its mining companies operating in the the global south, a Liberal MP confirmed to VICE News.

John McKay, who has sat in the House of Commons since 1997, has repeatedly tried to push the previous Conservative government to set up penalties for mining companies who have breached human rights, environmental standards, or labor practises.

But his efforts to update the law, by way of bill C-300, were foiled — once in 2009, and again in 2011.

While McKay says the new government hasn’t discussed the bill yet, he’s optimistic the legislation will be returning in due course. “That, I hope, would be a government initiative,” McKay says.

C-300 would have created a system to allow citizens of foreign “developing” nations to file complaints against Canadian mining companies, directly to either the minister of foreign affairs, or international trade.

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Edward Burtynsky’s Mesmerizing Images of Copper Mines – by Jon Mooallen (New York Times – October 22, 2015)

http://www.nytimes.com/

Trying to comprehend the scale of open-pit extraction with aerial photographs.

The scale of an open-pit copper mine feels impossible; it is a Bible-grade phenomenon made by machines. Vehicles called bucket-wheel excavators, nearly five times the size of the largest dinosaurs, rip up the surface and gradually descend, piling 200,000 cubic meters or more of rock behind them every day.

Once the copper is extracted, waste products and unrecoverable metals stream out as tailings, snaking tributaries that turn psychedelic-looking as they oxidize in open air for the first time in millions of years. Each excavator, meanwhile, turns the land it is standing on into a ledge and leaves a succession of these steps, or ‘‘benches,’’ behind it as it goes.

The Chino Mine, for example, in Grant County, N.M., has been excavated persistently for more than a century and now stretches almost two miles across and 1,350 feet down. It’s a chasm, a void, a deep and disordered amphitheater built around an abyss. It gets four out of five stars on TripAdvisor.

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The love triangle that raged while Chilean miner fought for survival – by Isabel Vincent (New York Post – November 8, 2015)

http://nypost.com/

It was the dirty laundry that did him in.

Yonni Barrios was one of the 33 men who found themselves trapped at the bottom of a century-old mine in Chile. They were worried about air. They were worried about food. They were worried about survival.

Barrios was worried that his wife and mistress would kill each other.

“After 17 days, the miners were found alive and well, and we started to send provisions down to them through a tiny borehole,” Jean Romagnol, one of the doctors involved in the rescue operation, told the BBC. “They would send up their dirty laundry to be washed. The problem was they sent the washing to Yonni’s wife . . . but she refused to do it or to hand it over to his girlfriend.”

The situation got so out of hand that Barrios, then 50, was forced to beg Romagnol, through notes to the surface, to lend him some clothes.

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Miners Find $42 Billion Writedowns as Diversification Backfires – by Joe Deaux and Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – November 9, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

A bid by some big mining companies to spread the risk of low commodity prices by expanding and diversifying in recent years has turned into a costly failure.

Over the past 12 months, major mine owners including Freeport-McMoRan Inc. and Vedanta Resources Plc have written down asset values by a combined $42.2 billion, 46 percent more than the previous period, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The adjustments reflect an across-the-board plunge in raw materials and the prospect of a prolonged slump.

Just a few years ago, the companies were flush with cash as oil topped $100 a barrel, copper and gold were at records, and Chinese demand seemed unquenchable. In the seven years through 2014, mining companies made about $400 billion of acquisitions, data show. With commodities at a nine-year low, and China’s economy slowing, companies have stepped up writedowns of the assets they bought.

“It was an overaggressive investment cycle, which was badly timed,” Colin Hamilton, head of global commodities research at Macquarie Group in London, said by telephone.

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Mining chiefs seek the Pope’s blessing – by James Wilson (Financial Times – September 18, 2015)

http://www.ft.com/

If the mining industry wants to try to get something done these days, there is a new door to knock on: the Pope’s.

A clutch of mining leaders, including the chief executives of Rio Tinto and Anglo American, will hold talks in Rome with Vatican officials this weekend in an attempt to spread more understanding of their often controversial industry.

As well as being under severe financial pressure as commodity prices slide, resource companies are also facing mounting public hostility amid concerns about climate change and the potential environmental damage caused by mining.

This can make it riskier and more expensive for the industry to develop projects, particularly as the global quest for new mineral deposits takes it into previously unexplored regions.

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Who’s behaving rationally in iron ore, steel? Everybody and nobody – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – November 9, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

Nov 9 (Reuters) – – It’s becoming harder to work out who are the most rational players in the global iron ore and steel markets, where contradictions are multiplying amid the persistent supply glut.

Iron ore miners and steel producers are likely to claim they are acting rationally, but both are probably guilty of selective thinking and a touch of amnesia.

Take Rio Tinto for example. The world’s second-biggest iron ore miner reiterated last week that it has no plans to cut output amid the current oversupply, which has caused spot Asian iron ore prices .IO62-CNI=SI to slump about 75 percent since the record high in February 2011.

At face value, this seems logical and rational. When you have the lowest cost mines in the world, why should you cut output, as this would simply allow higher-cost producers to take some of your market share.

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North Country aluminum giant Alcoa to lay off 500 in Massena and seal its toxins in riverbed – by Brian Nearing (Albany Times Union – November 9, 2015)

http://www.timesunion.com/

Massena – An aluminum smelting plant that has operated on the shores of the St. Lawrence River for more than a century is closing, taking with it hundreds of good-paying jobs in the North Country.

But while last week’s announcement by Alcoa means jobs will be lost, a troubled environmental legacy will linger at its sprawling, 2,700-acre Massena Plant at the Canadian border in St. Lawrence County.

Alcoa touts the plant, first opened in 1902, as the longest continually operating aluminum smelter in the world; since the 1950s, the plant has relied on a flood of cut-rate state hydropower provided by the New York Power Authority.

Last week, Pittsburgh-based Alcoa announced it was abandoning plans to modernize its Massena East Plant mothballed two years ago — formerly owned by Reynolds aluminum — and will close its newer Massena West Plant by the first quarter of 2016, throwing 500 people out of work. Smaller facilities at Massena for aluminum casting, forging and extrusions will remain in operation.

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