Republic of Mining

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

November 9, 2015

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.

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

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.

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

November 9, 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.

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

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.

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)

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.

COLUMN-Gold’s medium-term outlook brightens on China, India – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – November 6, 2015)

November 9, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

Nov 6 (Reuters) – With gold falling to a seven-week low it may seem an odd moment to outline the case why the gloom over the yellow metal may finally be starting to lift.

Spot gold dropped to $1,103.90 an ounce on Thursday, the weakest since Sept. 16, and is getting close to the 5 1/2-year low of $1,077 reached in July this year.

The usual suspects of looming higher U.S. interest rates and a stronger U.S. dollar are being blamed for the latest bout of weakness, but while gold may struggle in the short term, its medium-term outlook is somewhat more promising.

Gold is now heading for a third year of declines and is 40 percent below the record high of $1,920 an ounce, reached on Sept. 6, 2011. While this looks ominous, it’s worth noting that gold has stabilised in a range around $1,070 to $1,300 for much of the past two years.

BHP says ‘no confirmation’ of cause of dam failure, reviewing ore forecasts – by Rhiannon Hoyle (Dow Jones/The Australian – November 9, 2015)

November 9, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

BHP Billiton shares have hit a seven-year low in the wake of the deadly collapse of two tailing dams at a mine in Brazil. As more information emerges, analysts are trying to tote up the potential bill for BHP and Vale of Brazil, the mine’s co-owner.

The dam breach was the largest-ever spill of its kind, according to Robert Chambers, president of the non-profit Centre for Science in Public Participation, whose group has tracked these types of failures back to 1915.

The cost to the companies, including for clean-up and rebuilding, could top $US1 billion, said Paul Young, a Sydney-based analyst at Deutsche Bank, who estimated the mine could be closed until about 2019. He described the dam burst as “catastrophic.”

“The uncertainty regarding clean-up and legal costs is likely to be an overhang on” shares, according to Jefferies analyst Christopher LaFemina, who said the reputations of both BHP and Vale, which have relatively good safety records, would emerge damaged.

Two dozen missing in vast mudflow of Brazil mine disaster – by Stephen Eisenhamer (Reuters U.S. – November 8, 2015)

November 9, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

MARIANA, BRAZIL – Brazilian authorities late on Saturday were investigating a second suspected death after two dams at a major mine in the country’s southeast burst and unleashed a massive mudflow that wreaked havoc across more than 80 km (50 miles).

A dozen residents of villages downstream from the burst dams remain missing, along with 13 workers from the mine. Officials warned of a higher death toll even as they struggle to find bodies probably swept away by the torrent.

One death from the disaster was confirmed on Friday, and authorities reported the body of someone believed to be a second victim on Saturday evening. A spokesman for the state fire department said they expected to be able to determine on Sunday if the body is that of one of the missing people.

“The death toll will rise for sure,” said Duarte Júnior, mayor of Mariana. “Some people still aren’t accounted for.”

Empty words from the climate doomsayers – by Rex Murphy (National Post – November 7, 2015)

November 9, 2015

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

There is perhaps no political territory where piety trumps policy more exuberantly than global warming. Those leaders with a gift for high platitude delivered in the dialect of showy earnestness can always be confident of energetic applause from the multitudes who love to be seen as concerned and “making a difference” on this most vaporous of issues.

It is better to speak well on global warming than actually to follow through on the logic of the thought behind speaking well. The more eloquent the signals of planetary distress, the more dire the alarms raised, the less likely it is that those who summon that eloquence or issue those alarms will actually — as the wretched phrase has it — “walk the talk.”

It is now nearly seven years since the Chrysostom (golden mouth) of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, U.S. President Barack Obama, embedded in his victory speech the promise that the moment of his triumph was also “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

GLOBE EDITORIAL: Ottawa couldn’t help Keystone, but it can still approve pipelines at home (Globe and Mail – November 7, 2015)

November 9, 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.

In the more than half a decade the Keystone XL pipeline proposal spent in limbo – neither accepted nor rejected, neither pumping nor scrapped – thousands upon thousands of miles of new oil pipeline were built across the United States, without fuss or much public interest.

In the years to come, many other pipelines crisscrossing U.S. soil will surely be approved. But Keystone is, or was, different. American politics long ago took hold of it, first putting it into an indefinite deep freeze, and then this week keeping it alive just long enough to finally kill it.

On Monday, the company behind the project, TransCanada Corp., asked the U.S. government to suspend its application. The move made sense, given that it was already apparent that the application had little chance of success under the Obama administration.

But the U.S. State Department, which long ago put the application into suspended animation, refused to agree to the company’s request.

Mining Alaska Part V: Mining and the environment – by Mallory Peebles (KTUU.com – November 6, 2015)

November 9, 2015

http://www.ktuu.com/

It took thousands of years for minerals to form but over just one century the process of mining changed drastically.

Today, machines weighing more than 2,000 tons quickly move dirt, miners use remote operated trucks and chemicals separate the minerals from their ores. The advancements are as huge as the mines themselves.

Critics of mines say that’s not a good thing. Dave Chambers, with the Center for Science in Public Participation, says large open pit mines create a greater risk for environmental damage.

[South African] Platinum mines may run short of water in 2016 – by Tina Weavind (MiningMx.com – November 6, 2015)

November 6, 2015

http://www.miningmx.com/

[miningmx.com] – WHILE the mining industry is so far coping with the effects of the ‘Godzilla’ el Nino event causing a drought in large parts of South Africa, the potential for forced cuts still looms large.

Peter Shepherd, principal hydrologist at consulting agency SRK, said he anticipated that platinum mines in the country’s North West province would “… begin to run short [of water] in the next year”.

It’s a potential nightmare for already stressed companies whose operations would face a further setback. Mining is notoriously water intensive and imposed cuts would immediately limit production. Shepherd said that while much of the water used in the processes was recycled, the evaporation from the tailings dams meant this closed cycle system would become less efficient.

In its 2015 annual report released last month, Impala Platinum (Implats) flagged water shortages as one of the most critical issues the company faces and where interventions were needed.

Obama Rejects Construction of Keystone XL Oil Pipeline – by Coral Davenportnov (New York Times – November 6, 2015)

November 6, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/

WASHINGTON — President Obama announced on Friday that he had rejected the request from a Canadian company to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ending a seven-year review that had become a symbol of the debate over his climate policies.

Mr. Obama’s denial of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of carbon-heavy petroleum from the Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast, comes as he seeks to build an ambitious legacy on climate change.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,’’ Mr. Obama said in remarks from the White House. “And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.’’

The move was made ahead of a major United Nations summit meeting on climate change to be held in Paris in December, when Mr. Obama hopes to help broker a historic agreement committing the world’s nations to enacting new policies to counter global warming. While the rejection of the pipeline is largely symbolic, Mr. Obama has sought to telegraph to other world leaders that the United States is serious about acting on climate change.

Fiery Exchanges in Question Period over Ring of Fire (NetNewsLedger.com – November 5, 2015)

November 6, 2015

http://www.netnewsledger.com/

QUEEN’S PARK – POLITICS – There was a fiery exchange in Question Period in Queen’s Park between Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown and Thunder Bay Superior North MPP and Minister of Northern Development and Mines Michael Gravelle today. The PC Leader is demanding action on the Ring of Fire mining project that Brown states is stalled after eight long years.

There have been reports, in the Financial Post that Noront Resources is frustrated over progress on the mining project.

Minister Gravelle stated “As a government, we remain absolutely committed to the project. We have got our commitment of $1 billion locked in, thanks to the Minister of Finance for the transportation infrastructure corridor. We are looking forward to having an opportunity to have a discussion with the new federal government to engage in the process that was not very successful in the past with the previous government.

“We are engaged in a regional framework discussion with Matawa First Nations, and we have set up a development corporation to move that forward. So we are indeed making very positive progress.”

Western senators launch effort to reform mining law to spur cleanup – by Bruce Finley (Denver Post – November 5, 2015)

November 6, 2015

http://www.denverpost.com/

Legislation introduced by Sen. Michael Bennet and colleagues from New Mexico would charge companies fees and royalties

Western senators Thursday weighed in on the toxic mines problem, launching legislation to reform the nation’s 1872 Mining Law and require companies to pay fees to create a cleanup fund for abandoned inactive mines.

The legislation, introduced by Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet and New Mexico Sens. Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, would apply to existing and new mining operations. It aims to raise at least $100 million a year.

The idea is to create a new path — beyond “Superfund” responses to environmental disasters — to begin to clean up tens of thousands of inactive mines in Western states that continue to taint headwaters of the nation’s rivers. These include an estimated 230 sites in Colorado where state officials have documented bit-by-bit degradation of waterways.

Congress has been giving greater attention to the problem after the Aug. 5 Gold King Mine disaster in southwestern Colorado above Silverton, where an EPA crew triggered a deluge of 3 million gallons of mustard-yellow liquid that worsened contamination of the Animas River.