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Mick Davis’ timing haunts Glencore’s Glasenberg – by Robert Gottliebsen (The Australian – September 9, 2015)

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

Former Xstrata founder Mick Davis may have a wry smile at the sight of Glencore being forced to raise $US2.5 billion in new equity to reduce its debt.

Davis has a remarkable record for being part of groups that buy assets cheaply and sell them at high points in the market.

Glencore is in trouble partly because in 2013 it paid some $US40bn for the two thirds of Xstrata it didn’t own. Mick Davis had sold at the top of the market. It is true Xstrata shareholders received Glencore shares but they had time to sell them before the market declined sharply.

That sale was Davis’s second coup. Back in 1997 he became chief financial officer and an executive director of Billiton, which sold out to BHP four years later in 2001. BHP never made a success of most of those Billiton assets and a large number were floated off in South32 earlier this year.

After BHP took control of Billiton, Davis made his exit and established Xstrata in the belief that around Australia there were a large number of mining assets that were underpriced because there was a looming boom coming on the back of a big rise in demand for minerals from China.

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Is Ecuadorian ‘justice’ Canada’s business? – by Peter Foster (National Post – September 9, 2015)

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

Last Friday’s decision by the Supreme Court to allow “Ecuadorian villagers” to pursue a US$9.5-billion claim against California-based oil giant Chevron in Ontario stresses that the merits — or otherwise — of the case were never at issue.

The decision was about jurisdiction, not justice. But since the case has been dubbed “the legal fraud of the century,” a cynic might suggest that that the decision was analogous to the Supremes being primarily concerned about whether an individual who engaged in a holdup had a proper gun licence.

The nine judges do make reference in their unanimous decision to a devastating U.S. district court finding that the Ecuadorian claim was rooted in massive fraud perpetrated by Steve Donziger, the American lawyer driving the case. But, wrote Justice Clement Gascon, “That decision, and the underlying allegations of fraud are not before this Court.” Undoubtedly those allegations, and the U.S. decision, will be a very big part of the proceedings when the case returns to Ontario.

Certainly, global trade and investment depends on the rule of law, and, according to Justice Gascon, “Canadian courts, like many others, have adopted a generous and liberal approach to the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments.”

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How Chevron’s courtroom loss in Ontario against Ecuador villagers was just the end of the beginning – by Drew Hasselback (National Post – September 9, 2015)

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

Chevron Corp.’s Ecuador case is unfolding in many jurisdictions around the world, but Ontario is emerging as one of the most important.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada decision gave plaintiffs from Ecuador a green light to ask an Ontario judge to recognize and enforce in Canada a US$9.5 billion judgment debt. The plaintiffs obtained the judgment against Chevron in an Ecuador court back in 2011.

This was a big win for the Ecuador plaintiffs. Yet buried deep within the Supreme Court judgment is recognition that the enforcement action will be no slam dunk. Indeed, the Supreme Court has merely set the stage for a huge legal showdown between the company and the Ecuadorian plaintiffs in an Ontario courtroom.

In a separate U.S. proceeding, Chevron convinced a U.S. federal judge that the Ecuador ruling was an “egregious fraud.” That fraud finding will be tested yet again in Ontario as the Canadian enforcement proceeding continues.

The Supreme Court dealt only with a question of whether the case was properly brought in Ontario. The court did not endorse the underlying Ecuadorian legal case.

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Anglo American sells lossmaking platinum mines to Sibanye – by James Wilson and Andrew England (Financial Times – September 9, 2015)

http://www.ft.com/

Abidjan and Johannesburg – Anglo American on Wednesday unveiled plans to offload some of its most problematic assets, striking a R4.5bn ($330m) deal to sell lossmaking South African platinum mines.

The proposed disposal to Sibanye Gold ends Anglo’s long ownership of the mines near Rustenburg and further reduces the global mining group’s ties to South Africa, its historic home.

Selling assets has been a priority for Mark Cutifani, Anglo’s chief executive, as he tries to improve the group’s financial performance amid a deep commodities downturn.

Sibanye, a South African miner, will pay R1.5bn upfront in cash or shares for the Rustenburg operations owned by Anglo American Platinum, an Anglo subsidiary focused on platinum production. Sibanye will also pay Anglo 35 per cent of the mines’ free cash flow over a six-year period, with a minimum amount set at R3bn.

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Erin Brockovich, activist portrayed in film, accuses feds of lying about extent of mine spill (Associated Press/U.S. News & World Report – September 8, 2015)

http://www.usnews.com/

SHIPROCK, N.M. (AP) — Environmental activist Erin Brockovich, made famous from the Oscar-winning movie bearing her name, on Tuesday accused the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of lying about how much toxic wastewater spilled from a Colorado mine and fouled rivers in three Western states.

Her allegation came during a visit to the nation’s largest American Indian reservation, where she saw the damage and met with Navajo Nation leaders and farmers affected by last month’s spill, which was triggered by an EPA crew during excavation work.

Brockovich said she was shocked by the agency’s actions leading up to the release of waste tainted with heavy metals and its response afterward.

“They did not tell the truth about the amount. There were millions and millions of gallons,” she said while speaking to a crowd of high school students in Shiprock, New Mexico.

The EPA did not immediately respond to email and telephone requests for comment Tuesday.

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First Steel, Now Copper: Rio Stays Optimistic on Chinese Growth – by Jasmine Ng (Bloomberg News – September 7, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Rio Tinto Group isn’t just bullish about China’s steel demand, it’s also upbeat about copper use in the world’s biggest consumer.

Signs of improvement in China’s property market are boosting prospects for the metal, Jean-Sebastien Jacques, head of Rio’s copper and coal operations, said in an interview in Singapore. The government will also implement more stimulus measures if the world’s second-largest economy slows too much, he said.

Rio’s optimism stands out amid views from Glencore Plc that mining companies were wrong-footed on a slowdown in China, with demand getting tough to call. The country’s grappling with overcapacity, a downturn in property investment and a volatile stock market that threaten Premier Li Keqiang’s growth target of about 7 percent for this year.

Rio has a direct insight into the Chinese market through its Oyu Tolgoi operations in Mongolia, located north of the Chinese border, Jacques said.

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Nova Construction hopes to open Junction Road coal mine – by Richard Cuthbertson (CBC News Nova Scotia – September 9, 2015)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/

Town once famous for mines could start supplying Nova Scotia Power

An industry that was once the economic lifeblood of Springhill, N.S., could soon return to the town, as an Antigonish company seeks the green light to sample 10,000 tonnes of coal starting as soon as early next year.

Springhill Coal Mines Ltd., a subsidiary of Nova Construction, wants to dig an open pit to pluck the coal from land it owns in the Junction Road area and ship it to Trenton to test as fuel in Nova Scotia Power’s generating station.

“We’re still a province that burns a lot of coal per year to generate electricity,” Nova Construction President Donald Chisholm told CBC News. “For a number of years to come, that’s probably going to remain the same.”

Springhill Coal Mines submitted an application to Nova Scotia Environment on July 27. At this point, the company is only applying to drill for test amounts and any move to open a full scale open pit mine would be subject to a fresh application and full environmental assessment.

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Opinion: Environment exposes political hypocrisy – by Harry Sterling (Vancouver Sun – September 8, 2015)

http://www.vancouversun.com/

Harry Sterling, a former diplomat, was the Department of External Affairs’ representative to the International Joint Commission from 1981-83, representing the interests and views of the Canadian government on trans-boundary issues.

It seems politicians everywhere have a tendency to become somewhat schizophrenic when confronting sensitive issues that many of their constituents may strongly support or vehemently oppose.

One such increasingly contentious subject is the environment and exploitation of its resources, an issue politicians in both Canada and the United States increasingly find dividing members of their respective societies.

Such divisions can be especially sharp and heated when involving proposed economic development of untapped resources, especially if it involves offshore oil drilling or mining in pristine regions.

Both U.S. President Barack Obama and Canadian lawmakers, notably in provinces such as British Columbia, have recently found themselves increasingly confronting divisions over specific economic projects in their jurisdictions that are raising concerns regarding cross-border developments some believe could endanger their local or national interests.

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All Eyes on Anglo American After Glencore Cedes to Investors – by Jesse Riseborough and Thomas Biesheuvel (Bloomberg News – September 8, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Glencore Plc’s billionaire chief executive caved this week to shareholder demands that the commodity-trader bolster its balance sheet. Now attention is turning to whether rival Anglo American Plc will follow.

The two companies have been among the hardest hit by China’s cooling demand for commodities on concern they’ll be unable to withstand raw-material prices at a 16-year low and pay off a combined $43.5 billion in debt. Measures might include cutting its dividend, which is yielding a record 9 percent, higher than the level in 2009, when the company last scrapped the payout.

The collapse in commodity prices is undermining Anglo’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Cutifani’s efforts to turn around the fortunes of a business that mines platinum and diamonds in Africa and iron ore in Brazil.

Glencore shares rallied the most in almost three years on Monday after the company outlined a $10 billion debt-reduction plan, including selling $2.5 billion in shares and suspending its dividend.

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Tesla interest could spark new Nevada gold rush for lithium – by Andy Colthorpe (Storage-PV Tech.com – September 07, 2015)

http://storage.pv-tech.org/

A gold exploration and mining company has agreed to purchase a potential site for excavating lithium in Nevada, citing the “great deal of attention” brought onto the state by Tesla’s decision to locate its mammoth manufacturing facility there.

The EV-maker’s decision to go into stationary storage, officially confirmed at the end of April, followed a period in which Tesla was supplying its partner SolarCity with battery-based energy storage in a number of pilot projects for houses and for the installer’s DemandLogic commercial solution.

The confirmation brought high-profile attention onto the energy storage industry, sparking mainstream media interest. By that point, it was already well known that Tesla was building a “Gigafactory” in Nevada and the announcement of the launch of Powerwall, for houses, and PowerPack for the commercial and utility-scale markets merely confirmed the company’s ambitions beyond EVs. The Gigafactory’s planned “500,000 battery packs by 2020” of production would be soaked up by stationary storage too.

In the final week of August this year, Tesla signed a conditional long-term lithium hydroxide supply deal with Canadian company Bacanora and British company Rare Earth Minerals.

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Our view: Abandoned mines or future disasters? (Santa Fe New Mexican – September 8, 2015)

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/

Outrage over the spill at the Gold King Mine in Colorado — where 3 million gallons of polluted water gushed out — should be put to good use. That water, flowing into the Animas River, and eventually downstream to New Mexico waters, provided a stark reminder of the dangerous legacy of abandoned mines.

Now, rather than rage against an accident, the nation needs to deal with the hundreds of other accidents that are waiting to happen. As Justin Horwarth reported in Sunday’s New Mexican, there are some 500,000 abandoned mines across the country. How many of those are in New Mexico? We just don’t know either the number of mines or what kind of environmental risk they pose. That’s not acceptable.

To date, the Bureau of Land Management has identified some 13,000 abandoned mines in New Mexico, but has not analyzed most of them. Close to 90 percent of the mines that BLM has identified have not been remediated.

After the Gold King Mine spill, Gov. Susana Martinez has said she would put some $750,000 into addressing fallout from that spill. Some of that, say state authorities, could be put to use at other abandoned mine sites.

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NEWS RELEASE: Ivanhoe Mines, Laurentian University and the University of Limpopo forge educational partnership to provide skills for South Africa’s miners of tomorrow

Representatives of the South African and Canadian governments, Ivanhoe Mines, Ivanplats, Laurentian University (LU) and the University of Limpopo (UL) celebrate the new partnership in mining education at the latter's Turfloop Campus in Polokwane today. (L to R) Vinesh Devchander (Department of Mineral Resources), Dr. Patricia Makhesha (Managing Director, Ivanplats), Dr. Bruce Jago (LU), Michael Langa (MSc candidate), Prof. John Dunlevey (UL), Prof. Mahlo Mokgalong (Vice-Chancellor, UL), Prof. Aifheli Gelebe (UL), Thabiso Makohliso (MSc candidate), Louise Holt (Canadian High Commission) and Jeremy Michaels (Ivanhoe Mines).
Representatives of the South African and Canadian governments, Ivanhoe Mines, Ivanplats, Laurentian University (LU) and the University of Limpopo (UL) celebrate the new partnership in mining education at the latter’s Turfloop Campus in Polokwane today. (L to R) Vinesh Devchander (Department of Mineral Resources), Dr. Patricia Makhesha (Managing Director, Ivanplats), Dr. Bruce Jago (LU), Michael Langa (MSc candidate), Prof. John Dunlevey (UL), Prof. Mahlo Mokgalong (Vice-Chancellor, UL), Prof. Aifheli Gelebe (UL), Thabiso Makohliso (MSc candidate), Louise Holt (Canadian High Commission) and Jeremy Michaels (Ivanhoe Mines).

www.ivanhoemines.com

POLOKWANE, SOUTH AFRICA – September 9, 2015 – Ivanhoe Mines Limited (TSX: IVN), the University of Limpopo in South Africa and Laurentian University in Canada signed an agreement today officially launching an educational collaboration between the two universities. The collaboration, initiated and sponsored by Ivanhoe’s South African subsidiary, Ivanplats, was celebrated at a signing ceremony on the University of Limpopo campus attended by officials from Laurentian University, the University of Limpopo, Ivanhoe and the South African and Canadian governments.

A principal goal of the five-year partnership, which is renewable for a further five years, is to develop and equip the University of Limpopo’s geology department to become a centre of excellence in geosciences. This will be achieved through measures that include:

• improved training and curriculum choices in economic geology and mineral exploration at the University of Limpopo;
• increased teaching and research capacities at the graduate student level;
• equipping laboratories;
• purchasing an outdoor vehicle and trailer for field excursions; and
• collaborating with Laurentian University to improve the University of Limpopo’s learning programmes.

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Coal Companies Are Hurting. But the Coal Industry Is Not Dying. – by Daniel Gross (Slate.com – September 8, 2015)

http://www.slate.com/

Climate hawks must realize that bankruptcies aren’t the way to a lower-carbon future.

Climate hawks have been gleeful over the trend of big U.S. coal companies filing for bankruptcy. Patriot Coal filed for Chapter 11 in May, Walter Energy sought protection in July, and Alpha Natural Resources succumbed in August. And it makes sense: A financially unviable coal industry could be a big step in the movement toward a lower-carbon future.

A report this month by Taylor Kuykendall and Hira Fawad at SNL Energy found that roughly “10.4% of all the coal produced in the U.S.” in the second quarter of 2015 came from companies that have filed for bankruptcy protection. “In Central Appalachia, 37.5% of the coal mined in the quarter came from mines that were owned or operated by companies that have filed for bankruptcy since 2012,” they write.

But coal haters shouldn’t be too gleeful at this spate of bankruptcies. While some mines are being idled, they’re not being shuttered en masse. The financial failure of many coal companies, by itself, won’t necessarily bring about a low-carbon future—and for particularly Americans reasons.

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Companies Struggle to Comply With Rules on Conflict Minerals – by Lynley Browning (New York Times – September 8, 2015)

http://www.nytimes.com/

A pink My Little Pony balloon does not usually evoke images of rifle-toting warlords in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Still, Party City Holdings, the decorations and costumes retailer, recently disclosed a possible link to securities regulators, helping to put it near the bottom of a list ranking companies on their compliance with laws against using minerals mined in war-torn regions across Africa.

Party City is just one of 1,262 companies that filed the required disclosures on their use of so-called conflict minerals. Ninety percent of those companies, including Microsoft, Apple, General Electric and Ford Motor, said they also might be using tainted supplies. Yet Party City landed near the bottom of a list compiled by Tulane University researchers that ranked the companies’ compliance records in this area, while giants like Microsoft achieved perfect scores.

“Anybody with a relative interest in ethical sourcing would be interested in this list,” said Matthew Whitteker, the marketing director for Assent Compliance, a software and services firm in Ottawa that commissioned the Tulane study. “For any company that manages this well, both Wall Street and Main Street will look at their brand favorably.”

The Tulane study is just one example of a growing business opportunity for consultants, auditors, lawyers and software firms looking to cash in on a complex provision in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law that requires companies to disclose their use of conflict minerals “necessary to the functionality or production” of products they make or contract out for manufacturing.

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Public fears put uranium mining on same path as shale gas in Quebec – by Ross Marowits (Canadian Press/CTV News – September 8, 2015)

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

MONTREAL — Fears about radioactive contamination may close the door to uranium mining in Quebec just as public angst shelved shale gas extraction in the province in 2011. “Like shale gas, it touches a sensitive chord in Quebec,” says Ugo Lapointe of MiningWatch Canada, which opposes mining of the metal that fuels nuclear power plants.

Hundreds of municipalities have joined First Nations to oppose uranium mining, worried that it could threaten their health, harm natural environments and ruin traditional hunting and fishing.

Quebec’s environmental regulation agency (BAPE) has concluded there is no “social acceptability” for uranium mining to proceed at this time. After a year of study, a three-person panel said that it would be premature to authorize development of Quebec’s uranium industry.

While uranium mining has made substantial progress, especially in containing waste, there are still many uncertainties and “significant gaps in scientific knowledge of the impacts of uranium mining on the environment and public health,” it said in a lengthy report.

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