SA gold miners wrestle with housing targets – by David McKay (MiningMx.com – April 17, 2015)

http://www.miningmx.com/

[miningmx.com] – THE release of a preliminary report into how South African mining firms measured up against the targets outlined in the 2004 mining charter, which was updated in 2010, was predictably focused on ownership.

This is the issue regarding the mining charter’s demand that a minimum 26% of South Africa’s mining companies be owned by historically disadvantaged South Africans (HDSAs). The mining sector believes that target has been met whilst the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) insists it has not.

The difference of opinion turns on the DMR’s refusal to acknowledge transactions that are now no longer in existence of which the best example is Mvelaphanda Resources, a Johannesburg-listed mining company that was closed in about 2010.

Ngoako Ramalathlodi, mines minister, has agreed to take the matter to the High Court jointly with the Chamber of Mines. As a lawyer, he knows that fighting the matter separately could take a considerable amount of time and lead to more uncertainty for the sector.

A lesser known aspect of the mining charter, however, is the DMR’s unhappiness with the sector’s efforts to improve housing and living conditions, as well as sustainable development. As with the ownership targets, the DMR believes the sector has failed the charter.

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Nickel miner TVI may delay Philippine IPO due to weak metal prices – by Erik dela Cruz (Reuters U.S. – April 17, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

Manila – (Reuters) – TVI Resources Development Phils. Inc (TVIRD), a Philippine nickel miner partly owned by Canada’s TVI Pacific Inc, may push back a planned initial public offering to next year if metal prices remain depressed, its chairman said on Friday.

After a sterling performance in 2014, shares in Philippine nickel miners have fallen this year because of a slump in metal prices and an economic slowdown in China. Shares in top producer and exporter Nickel Asia Corp have lost nearly 39 percent.

“The target is to list in the fourth quarter. But right now I would not be recommending to the board that we do it,” TVIRD Chairman Clifford James told reporters after speaking at an industry forum. “When market conditions are good, that’s when we’ll list.”

In October, TVIRD began nickel ore exports from its newly developed Agata mine in Surigao province in southern Philippines, a major nickel-producing region supplying ore to processing plants in Australia, China, South Korea and Japan.

Last year the Southeast Asian country became the biggest ore supplier to China’s producers of nickel pig iron, which is used in stainless steel production, after Indonesia banned exports of unprocessed metallic minerals.

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Marten Falls First Nation and Webequie First Nation Sign Ring of Fire Protocol Agreement – by James Murray (Netnewsledger.com – April 17, 2015)

http://www.netnewsledger.com/

THUNDER BAY – The First Nations whose lands and resources will be most affected by the proposed Ring of Fire development met today to sign a protocol agreement. “This will not only be good for us, but will also be good for the exploration companies to know the protocols for exploration on our mutual traditional lands”, stated Chief Cornelius Wabasse of Webequie First Nation.

Marten Falls First Nation and Webequie First Nation today entered into a “Negotiation Protocol Respecting Early Exploration in the Ring of Fire”. The protocol strengthens the commitment of both First Nations to work together to advance their common interests in a coordinated manner while respecting their mutual and unique interests over their respective lands and approvals to use the lands.

The need for such a protocol is evidenced by over 100 mineral exploration companies that have staked claims and proposed other related developments in the Ring of Fire. Both Marten Falls and Webequie agreed that they had to be come together to set out their mutual expectations respecting early exploration activities in the Ring of Fire.

Within the Ring of Fire only Webequie and Marten Falls share a unique relationship with Ontario. The Government of Ontario entered into a Memorandum of Cooperation with Webequie and a Memorandum of Understanding with Marten Falls related to mineral exploration and development activities.

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NEWS RELEASE: VALE STATEMENT REGARDING CORONER’S INQUEST INTO FATALITIES AT STOBIE MINE

SUDBURY, April 17, 2015 — On Monday, April 20, a coroner’s inquest begins at the Sudbury Courthouse into the June 2011 deaths of Jason Chenier and Jordan Fram at Vale’s Stobie Mine. The purpose of the inquest is to review the circumstances around the deaths in hopes that similar deaths can be prevented in the future.

The deaths of Jason and Jordan continue to sadden our operations and our community. Revisiting events of June 2011 will be difficult for everyone involved. There will be a lot of testimony during the course of the inquest and it will be emotional for many, but will be hardest on the Fram and Chenier families. While we cannot turn back the clock, we hope the families find some comfort in the significant work done since that night to ensure this kind of tragedy never occurs again.

Following our own internal investigation into this incident, a plan of action, including more than 40 recommendations, was put in place to address the contributing factors and improve control measures to protect the health and safety of our employees.

We believe this work, coupled with the recent recommendations from the provincial Mining Health, Safety & Prevention Review, will help ensure that Vale and mining companies across Ontario become safer places to work.

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Activist leads America’s biggest iron miner out of Ring of Fire, but not danger – by Stephen Gandel (Fortune Magazine – April 16, 2015)

https://fortune.com/

Hedge fund Casablanca Capital took over mining company Cliffs Natural eight months ago. So far, it’s not going so well.

These days, activist investors paint themselves as Wall Street’s turnaround specialists. Activists’ track record at getting companies to boost their share buyback programs, hand over board seats, or put themselves up for sale has been impressive. But when it comes to actually turning around a troubled company, or steering a company away from trouble, the jury on activism is still out.

Last July, activist hedge fund Casablanca Capital won control of the board of mining company Cliffs Natural Resources CLF -3.63% after a six-month proxy fight. Days later, the hedge fund installed a new CEO and said that it had a new strategy to increase shareholder value. Eight-and-a-half months later, Cliffs’ stock has plunged 69%. So much for increasing shareholder value.

To be sure, Casablanca’s biggest problem has been commodities prices, which are out of the hedge fund’s control. Cliffs is the largest U.S. miner of iron. And iron prices in 2014 fell nearly 50% in 2014. That drop has taken Cliffs’ cashflow with it.

But Cliffs was also over leveraged. And it may have tried to do too much too soon. The hedge fund may have also underestimated how hard it would be to compete against its larger and more diversified competitors, such as Rio Tinta Group and BHP Billiton.

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Why coal looms large in India’s future – by Peter Foster (National Post – April 17, 2015)

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

Narendra Modi is the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Canada since Indira Ghandi. For much of the intervening period, relations were sticky because of that unfortunate business of India using Canadian technology to manufacture nuclear weapons. At the same time, India’s growth was held back by poor economic policies and widespread corruption, much of it soaked in socialist cant.

Those lousy policies also go back to Mrs. Ghandi. Mr. Modi is rightly seen as a breath of fresh air, even if he inevitably has to play the hypocritical game of global realpolitik.

The alleged landmark deal of Mr. Modi’s visit is India’s $350 million purchase of Saskatchewan uranium. This both symbolically buries the bomb issue, and enables Mr. Modi to trumpet his country’s commitment to “sustainable development,” even as SD is increasingly exposed for the unworkable non-concept that it is.

The notion first emerged at the 1972 UN conference on the environment in Stockholm. Conceived by British intellectual Barbara Ward, who thought the Industrial Revolution had been a mistake, SD’s conceit was that poor nations had to grow while avoiding free markets and fossil fuels.

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RPT-COLUMN-China aluminium surplus to eat away global deficit – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – April 16, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, April 16 (Reuters) – China’s exports of aluminium products have continued to surge, a trend that if continued may push the rest of the world toward a surplus.

China’s exports of primary, alloy and semi-finished aluminium grew by around 43 percent in the first quarter over the same period last year, according to preliminary customs data released on Monday.

While the initial data release doesn’t provide the detailed breakdown, figures for January and February show that the overwhelming share is semi-finished products, such as bars, rods, wire, plates, sheet and foil.

In the first two months of the year, exports in this category, commonly known as semis, surged 91 percent to 770,000 tonnes, a trend that will almost certainly be continued when the detailed March figures are released later this month. Exports of semis have surged because they get a 13 percent value-added tax rebate, that largely offsets the 15 percent export tax on aluminium.

The tax rebate doesn’t apply to exports of primary aluminium, but it’s a common view in the market that much of China’s exports of semis is melted down and re-fabricated by importers.

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Between boom and bust – by Phil Hopwood (Lawyers Weekly – April 17 2015)

http://www.lawyersweekly.ca/

Cutting red tape just one of the ways to help junior miners raise money in hard times

I always say you can tell you’re at the peak of the market when your cab driver starts offering you stock tips. Likewise, I now say you can probably tell you’re at the bottom of the market when mining companies start transforming themselves into medical marijuana producers.

That may sound strange, but it’s true: Canadian mining companies have grown weary of lacklustre returns and are looking to other sectors that hold out greater promise. It just goes to show how very challenging the mining market has become, especially for the juniors.

Heavily responsible for exploration and discovery of new deposits, junior miners are the foundation of the industry’s food chain, often selling their new discoveries to larger developers before starting the cycle all over again. But after years of being battered in a bear market, juniors are struggling to keep the lights on, cutting back on exploratory costs in the past year by 29 per cent — on top of a 39 per cent cut the year before.

Given the time it takes from exploration to development to production, we are headed for serious supply shortages in key minerals and metals in the next decade if this trend continues. To compound the problem, investors have already been taking note of the poor returns from mining stocks and are leery of the sector. Gone are the days of Chinese investors financing large capital projects, while banks rarely offer favourable terms anymore.

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Copper Miners Eyeing M&A as Red Metal’s Scarcity Sparks Interest – by Javier Blas, Agnieszka de Sousa and Juan Pablo Spinetto (Bloomberg News – April 16, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

In the world of mining, copper is by far the most sought-after industrial metal.

China is short of it, the mines that form the backbone of current supply are aging, and the few new deposits are positioned in far flung locations such as Mongolia. “Everybody likes copper because there is not much of it,” said Menno Sanderse, a mining analyst at Morgan Stanley.

And yet, mining companies that have long coveted copper assets have been thwarted by an industry tightly controlled by a handful of players. Until now. The news that producers Antofagasta Plc and Teck Resources Ltd. have looked at a potential deal suggests companies may be trying to find ways to break the impasse. Both have said they aren’t currently in merger talks.

“The opportunities for consolidation are real,” Paul Espie, managing director of mining-focused private equity group Pacific Road Capital, which has $800 million in assets, said in an interview Tuesday in Santiago. “It’s an interesting time because valuations are low. We are looking at the consolidation situation in Chile right now.”

The scarcity of new copper deposits, falling grades at mines in Chile, the U.S., Australia and Indonesia, and runaway costs to develop projects combine to make it more attractive to buy a rival than build a new mine.

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Modi’s coal turnaround to ease chronic power cuts – by Krishna N. Das (Reuters India – April 16, 2015)

http://in.reuters.com/

NEW DELHI – (Reuters) – Fewer power cuts are likely in India this summer after a surge in output at Coal India (COAL.NS) helped generators amass record stocks, a turnaround for Narendra Modi who had to battle a power crisis within months of becoming prime minister last May.

Fast-track mine approvals, tighter production oversight and more flexibility in coal sales have helped power station stocks recover from a six-year low hit in October, vindicating Modi’s pitch to voters as the state leader who brought round-the-clock power to industrial Gujarat.

As Modi prepares to mark his first year in office and seeks to fulfil a poll promise to provide power to all of India’s 1.2 billion people by 2019, power stations hold 28 million tonnes of coal, a 38 percent jump from a year ago, government data shows.

“The situation is improving,” said K. Raja Gopal, head of the thermal power business at construction, power and real estate conglomerate Lanco Infratech (LAIN.NS), pointing to recent growth in Coal India output. “More needs to be done but 8 to 9 percent didn’t happen before.”

India, the world’s third-largest coal buyer, is expected to cut imports by a fifth in the fiscal year to March 31 from an estimated 200 million tonnes in the previous year. Power companies have relied on imports for 15 percent of their coal needs.

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Unlikely allies: Mexican miners and farmers unite over toxic spill – by David Bacon (Al Jazeera America – April 15, 2015)

http://america.aljazeera.com/

Outside groups help revitalize a six-year workers’ strike against copper giant Grupo México

CANANEA, Mexico — The pipes have gone silent. Gone is the hum of water flowing through them to the world’s second-largest copper mine, just south of the U.S. border. Instead, in the normally empty desert here, tents and buses line the highway. Dust and smoke from cooking fires fill the air while hundreds of people listen to speeches and discuss the day’s events.

This plantón, or occupation, which began on March 18, has shut down most operations at the Cananea mine, which consumes huge quantities of water pumped from 49 wells across the desert in order to extract copper concentrate from crushed ore.

Many of the people involved in the plantón are miners who have been on strike since 2008, when they walked out because of dangerous working conditions. Two years later, the government brought in 3,000 federal police, drove miners from the gates and occupied the town. Since then Cananea has been operated by contracted laborers recruited from distant parts of the country. But the strike has continued, as miners struggle to survive in this small mountain town where the mine is virtually the only source of work.

Now, for the first time in five years, the mine is again paralyzed. This time, strikers didn’t stop its operation by themselves. Half the people with them are farmers — residents of the Rio Sonora Valley, angry over a toxic spill that upended their lives last August, causing health problems and economic devastation.

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NEWS RELEASE: The Cree Nation keeps Uranium in the spotlight

QUEBEC CITY, April 16, 2015 /CNW/ – The Cree Nation has kept uranium in the spotlight this week, hosting the International Uranium Film Festival and participating in the World Uranium Symposium in Quebec City. The Cree Nation’s position against uranium development in Eeyou Istchee, its territory in Northern Quebec, has garnered support not only from the people of Quebec, but also from the national and international experts and celebrities gathered this week for both events.

“We have always maintained that once Quebecers learned what the Cree Nation has come to know about uranium mining and radioactive waste, they would stand with us. This past year has proved this to be true,” said Grand Chief Dr. Matthew Coon Come. “We have proudly partnered with the International Uranium Film Festival to show Quebecers that the world stands with us as well. We have been very pleased by the turnout and interest this event has generated both in Quebec and around the world.”

The Cree Nation’s stand against uranium development began in 2008 when junior mining company Strateco Resources applied to the Quebec Government to pursue the Matoush advanced uranium exploration project. Located on the family hunting grounds of the Cree Nation of Mistissini, at the crest of two major watersheds that bring water throughout Eeyou Istchee, the Matoush project was the most advanced uranium project to date in Quebec. The Government of Quebec has since denied the required permit for the Matoush project, due largely to its lack of social acceptability amongst the Cree Nation.

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First Nations need real reform – by Lorne Gunter (Ottawa Sun – April 14, 2015)

http://www.ottawasun.com/

We are killing our First Nations with kindness – and political correctness.

What most First Nations need is fewer tax dollars, better educational options for their young people and more individual liberty. Instead, Canada’s courts and politicians think more collectivism and more cash are the solutions to Third World conditions on many reserves.

Both the Chretien and Harper governments have attempted to break the cycle of bad governance that is behind much of the dysfunction on half or more of Canada’s just over 630 reserves.

The Liberals attempted to pass a First Nations Governance Act (FNGA) in 2002. It was an effort to make band councils more democratic and more accountable to their members and to Ottawa.

Chretien’s FNGA would have replaced the race-based Indian Act and introduced new rules to ensure free and fair elections on reserves, applied financial management standards comparable to those used by municipal and provincial governments, and sought to make on-reserve administration more professional.

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REFILE-As rivers dry up, Chile copper mines turn to the Pacific for water – by Anthony Esposito and Fabian Cambero (Reuters U.S. – April 12, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Alvaro Badillo remembers a time when his dad would take him fishing in the stream just a stone’s throw away from the dusty streets of their small hometown of Caimanes in central Chile.

Now, like countless communities that dot the arid valleys north of the capital, Santiago, Caimanes is left with a dry riverbed. The culprit? That depends on who you ask.

For many in the town of 1,200 people, the answer lies just a few miles upstream: a 470 foot tall wall that stretches nearly a half-mile straight across the valley. It is the tailings dam for Los Pelambres, Chilean miner Antofagasta Plc’s flagship copper mine, which holds enough leftover processed rock to fill some 140,000 Olympic swimming pools.

For its part, Antofagasta blames an eight-year drought in Chile for the evaporation of already slim water resources, and says the canals it built to redirect rain water have minimized the impact on the stream.

Both sides have findings that support their arguments and are thrashing them out in a court battle that could stop work at one of the world’s biggest copper mines.

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