Republic of Mining

Canada’s brand new climate Boy Scout joins countdown to Paris – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – October 27, 2015)

October 27, 2015

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

As the Paris climate summit approaches activists are gearing up for the final push through November and into December, although the movement suffered a bit of a downer over the weekend. Hurricane Patricia, building as a major hurricane of unprecedented proportions, fizzled as a climate mega-disaster into a mere tropical storm, leaving behind no opportunities for media and negotiators to use it as a pre-Paris PR bonanza.

As news of Patricia reached Europe at a climate change negotiating session in Bonn on Friday, the head of the Mexico delegation, Roberto Dondisch, said Patricia was evidence the frog was already in the boiling water. A reporter for Climate House quoted Dondish saying “I don’t think I need to say more about the urgency to get this deal done.”

When the total death toll is near zero, the climate angle is also near zero. But the climate machine kept rolling. Reports from the negotiation front are garbled and inconsistent, but a major session held in Bonn ended last Friday without any clear proposals for the final Paris sessions.

Canada’s once-booming Arctic diamond sector loses luster – by Susan Taylor (Reuters Canada – October 27, 2015)

November 3, 2015October 27, 2015

http://ca.reuters.com/

YELLOWKNIFE, Northwest Territories (Reuters) – A decline in diamond prices because of lower growth in Chinese jewelry demand is dulling the appeal of Canada’s Arctic diamond industry, with the resulting drop in exploration hurting the region’s long-term prospects.

Exploration spending in Canada’s diamond-rich Northwest Territories (NWT), the world’s third-biggest producer, is forecast to drop 54 percent this year, according to a Canadian government estimate earlier this year. That is bad news for an industry where even profitable deposits can take 10 to 20 years to develop into a mine.

“It’s worrisome,” said Tom Hoefer, executive director of NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines, which is based in Yellowknife, the territories’ economic hub and capital. “Exploration is the lifeblood of mining.”

Once the engine for booming diamond demand, the growth in China’s appetite for polished gems has slowed alongside its economy.

Anglo American-owned De Beers, the world’s top producer by value, expects 3-5 percent sales growth in China this year for its polished diamonds.

Risk-Taking Miners Work Through Civil Wars for Africa Gold Boom – by Thomas Biesheuvel and Kevin Crowley (Bloomberg News – October 27, 2015)

October 27, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

When rebel soldiers overthrew the Mali government in 2012, coup leader Amadou Konare closed the border to everyone except the employees of Randgold Resources Ltd.

It’s pretty clear why. The company’s Loulo-Gounkoto and Morila mines were producing about 700,000 ounces of gold annually, valued at almost $1.2 billion. Randgold’s tax bill made it the biggest contributor to Mali’s economy. To keep the cash flowing, the new government quickly issued permits so workers could fly bullion out of the country to sell it on global markets.

“When you pay tax, you’re paying rent, and when you pay rent, the landlord doesn’t kick you out,” said Mark Bristow, Randgold’s chief executive officer, adding that his company delivers enough cash to Mali’s government to fund the entire civil-service payroll annually.

Africa has become the gold industry’s biggest growth story, despite the increased risks posed by political upheavals like a coup in Niger, Ivory Coast’s civil war or the Arab spring protests that spanned from Egypt to Morocco.

Centamin brings industrial-scale gold production back to Egypt – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – October 26, 2015)

October 26, 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.

The Egyptian Museum in the northern Italian city of Turin is considered one of the finest museums of its kind outside of Egypt. Among its marvels is the Turin Papyrus Map, one of the earliest known maps.

It is a must-see for anyone interested in the history of gold. According to scholars, it was made about 1150 BC and was prepared for a quarrying expedition for King Ramses IV in the eastern desert. The map, which is almost three metres long, shows a gold mine, a gold mining settlement and gold-bearing quartz veins.

The Egyptian pharaohs adored gold. It was believed to be the flesh of the sun god Ra and was evidently produced at near-industrial scale. Three millenniums later, industrial-scale gold production is back in Egypt’s eastern desert, thanks to a gold company called Centamin PLC, with listings in both Toronto and London.

Coal country unruffled by strip mining in flourishing Egypt Valley – by Geoff Williams (America AlJazeera – October 26, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://america.aljazeera.com/

Despite blow to Ohio wildlife, locals see environmental upside, are more concerned with fracking in their backyards

PIEDMONT, Ohio — The Egypt Valley Wildlife Area is a tribute to what can happen after land is strip-mined of its coal and restored to nature. The area, state-owned land in eastern Ohio, is 18,011 acres of rolling hills, wetlands and grasslands. There is the 2,270-acre Piedmont Lake, popular with boaters and campers, and as one would expect in a wildlife area, there is wildlife. River otters were introduced in 1993, and black bears have made their home there, among the deer and wild turkeys.

For decades, this land was strip-mined for coal. But in the 1990s, Ohio began purchasing the land, transforming it into a magnet for animals, birdwatchers, hikers, hunters, fishermen and tourists.

However, much of the state’s and nature’s hard work is now at risk, ever since July, when the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) granted the Oxford Mining Co. a permit to strip-mine coal there. The company plans to mine underneath 741 acres for coal and to surface-mine 200 acres.

PGMs are the unchallenged metals of future – by Roger Baxter (MiningMx.com – October 26, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://www.miningmx.com/

Roger Baxter is CEO of the Chamber of Mines of South Africa.

[miningmx.com] – WHILE platinum and its other group metals grapple with current price weaknesses and market difficulties, it can be all-too easy to overlook the metals’ longer-term prospects in this world of rapid technological advance. In my view, platinum group metals (PGMs) are the unchallenged metals of the future.

Let’s start with their contribution to ‘greening’ the environment.

I am not going to comment on the fracas surrounding the Volkswagen’s issue. What I would like to remind everyone of is that – on average and because of PGM catalytic converters – emissions from 100 cars sold in 2015 are the equivalent of one car sold in the 1960s.

PGM vehicle emission catalysts are so successful that they convert 99% of combustion engine pollutants such as HC, CO, NOx and particulates to harmless outputs.

[Africa mining sector] Huge Potential, Wrong Time? – by Jade Davenport (World Policy.org – October 26, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://www.worldpolicy.org/

Africa’s mining sector has proven to be something of a mixed blessing. The continent’s mineral resources offer enormous possibilities of wealth, but they are also hard to reach. Sub-Saharan Africa, along with the inhospitable Arctic, remains the most underexplored region on earth, geologically speaking. Yet the continent accounts for approximately 30 percent of the world’s mineral reserves.

The geographical and logistical difficulties involved in locating and accessing Africa’s resource wealth have been exacerbated by the constrained post-2008 macroeconomic climate. Investors have been reluctant to fund new projects in far-flung geographies despite the rich rewards such projects offer in the medium to long term.

One lingering consequence of the 2008 global financial crisis has been that equity markets have largely closed up, says Wickus Botha, a mining and metals expert at EY, an accounting and professional services firm. Companies in high-risk, long-term industries such as mining have a harder time finding funding. This applies even more for projects in more remote regions.

Two factors have compounded the decline of interest in mining investment, Botha says.

Myanmar jade mining drives rights abuses, disasters, war-rights group – by Alisa Tang (Reuters India – October 23, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://in.reuters.com/

BANGKOK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Myanmar’s secretive jade industry – run by military elites, drug lords and crony companies – is fuelling armed conflict, land grabs, deadly landslides and floods in northern Kachin state, the rights group Global Witness said on Friday.

Jade is driving conflict between the government and ethnic Kachin rebels, funding both sides in a war that has killed thousands of people and displaced 100,000 since 2011, the London-based organisation said in a 128-page report.

Kachin’s Hpakant township has been stripped of forests, as two-storey-tall machines and dynamite take just four days to plough through jade-bearing mountains that once took 30 days to mine, leaving a “moonscape” of waste-filled craters prone to collapse, it said.

The loss of land, pollution and takeover of the jade industry by government-licensed companies have destroyed traditional sources of income – farming and small-scale mining – and stoked resentment in a volatile region, it said.

“Locals are literally having the ground cut from under their feet. There is a parallel social collapse involving endemic drug addiction amongst miners, prostitution and gambling,” Mike Davis, Asia director for Global Witness, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an email from Yangon.

India a factor in diamond trade migration from Antwerp to Dubai – by Kunal Bose (Business Standard – October 26, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://www.business-standard.com/

Earlier, the rough diamond cutting and polishing business had moved from Antwerp to Surat in Gujarat and a few other places, due to cost considerations

For gem traders and jewellery makers over the world, Dubai remains an important trade centre for pearls. But, of late, a growing portion of trade in rough diamonds is getting shifted from the Belgian port city of Antwerp to Dubai, a constituent of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Earlier, the rough diamond cutting and polishing business had moved from Antwerp to Surat in Gujarat and a few other places, due to cost considerations.

Business in rough, is now being squeezed out of the diamond district of Antwerp, which accommodates a World Diamond Centre and four trading exchanges, as dealers are finding it difficult to get bank funding. The big blow to dealers there, mostly Jews and Indians, came when Antwerp Diamond Bank (ADB) started the process of winding up operations globally, leaving a big gap in trade funding.

ADB used to make available around $1.5 billion to the trade. Also, toughening of banking regulations and non-governmental organisations doubting the effectiveness of the Kimberley Process Certification scheme (KPCS) in stopping all ‘blood diamonds’ finding their way into the legal market have made some other banks curb lending to the trade.

South Africa Plans First Mine Investment in Congo Since 2010 – by Franz Wild Thomas Wilson (Bloomberg News – October 26, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

South Africa’s Industrial Development Corp. said it plans to buy a stake in Alphamin Resources Corp., its first investment in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mining industry since a dispute over a canceled project in 2010.

Alphamin temporarily suspended its stock from trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Monday, before saying in a statement that it was in “advanced negotiations” for the Johannesburg-based IDC to invest in its Congolese unit. No shares were traded after the resumption, leaving the company valued at about C$71 million ($54 million).

“No definitive agreements have been entered into in respect of the financing and there can be no assurance that the financing will be completed,” the company said.

Alphamin is developing the Bisie tin mine in Congo’s eastern North Kivu province, where armed groups have controlled the area’s biggest mine on and off for years.

Bad water: Innovative solution for remote northern Ontario First Nations – by Tiar Wilson (CBC News Aboriginal – October 26, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/

‘We can make a huge difference’ if we invest in training people, says Safe Water Project’s Barry Strachan

Three northern Ontario First Nations have managed to stop boil water advisories in their communities since May because of access to a new real-time water quality monitoring system. Deer Lake, Fort Severn, and Poplar Hill First Nations have all spent close to 1,000 days on a boil water advisory in the past decade.

“Historically, what’s happened, is there’s a time delay. When you take a [water] sample, analyse it and get the results to those that can do things about it, it can often mean people are at high risks for a [longer] period of time,” said Barry Strachan, the lead on the Safe Water Project.

Strachan says that outdated process often lead to boil water advisories and do not consume orders. The Safe Water project provides the technology and support to respond immediately to potential problems.

“We get alerts of adverse water quality events immediately as they happen and it allows us to [advise] or actually attend the situation and fix it in short order,” said Strachan.

Camp Concern: Activists reunite for anti-uranium mining protest 40 years later inside Kakadu – by Emilia Terzon and Lisa Pellegrino (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – October 26, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://www.abc.net.au/

As uranium mining near Kakadu faces an uncertain future, activists calling themselves Camp Concern have reunited inside the Northern Territory park to mark 40 years on from the launch of an anti-mining protest.

Camp Concern was an anti-uranium mining protest camp that started with five people on October 26, 1975, on land now encompassed by the World Heritage-listed Kakadu National Park.

The camp ended up witnessing hundreds of participants, before being disbanded after four years. The Ranger Uranium Mine was controversially completed in 1980.

Camp Concern founding member Hip Strider was among those who returned to the original protest site at the weekend. “We’re having a gathering to celebrate,” Mr Strider said.

Essar plant rises amid industry decline – by John Myers (Duluth News Tribune – October 25, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

NASHWAUK — On a brisk, breezy October day, 18 big cranes reached for the sky over the sprawling Essar Steel Minnesota taconite plant just north of town where more than 700 construction workers were on the job.

Iron beams and steel siding hung from cables as ironworkers in bucket-lifts grabbed dangling pieces and secured them into place, players in what looked like the world’s largest erector set.

The first thing that strikes the eye is the size of the project — everything about the work is big — from the 240-ton capacity ore-hauling trucks being readied to the massive building that will house the taconite-baking furnaces and the hulking, 9-story-deep underground concrete edifice where boulders of raw ore will be crushed to a useable size.

The $1.9 billion taconite mine and processing plant is among the largest and most expensive construction projects in Minnesota history.

Ivan Glasenberg faces major test amid Glencore’s shaky future – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – October 24, 2015)

October 26, 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.

LONDON — The partners at mining and commodities trading giant Glencore PLC earned a fortune buying into the “stronger for longer” China story. That bet has been looking shaky for a couple of years and downright precarious since January, when copper – Glencore’s most important commodity – went into the tank and stayed there.

In early January, copper futures plunged almost $1,000 (U.S.) a tonne, to $5,400, taking them to their lowest level in more than five years. Glencore’s shares tripped into the sinkhole with them. Since then, copper prices have lost another 5 per cent or so, a bewildering scenario for Glencore’s normally unflappable traders and executives.

“It’s just not making sense,” Glencore chief executive officer Ivan Glasenberg told analysts on the company’s earnings call on Aug. 19. “We’ve never seen copper inventories down at these levels and prices, because, [at] these levels, you normally have a much higher copper price.”

Radioactive dump that burned in Nevada had past troubles (Associated Press/Mining Gazette – October 25, 2015)

October 26, 2015

http://www.mininggazette.com/

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The operator of a closed radioactive waste dump that caught fire in southern Nevada had trouble over the years with leaky shipments and oversight so lax that employees took contaminated tools and building materials home, according to state and federal records.

The firm, now called US Ecology Inc., had its license suspended for mishandling shipments in the 1970s — about the same time that state officials say the material that exploded and burned last weekend was accepted and buried.

Nevada now has ownership and oversight of the property, which opened in 1962 near Beatty as the nation’s first federally licensed low-level radioactive waste dump and closed in 1992. State officials said this week they didn’t immediately know what blew up.

A soundless 40-second video turned over by US Ecology to state officials showed bursts of white smoke and dirt flying from several explosions on Oct. 18 from the dump in the brown desert about 110 miles northwest of Las Vegas.