Republic of Mining

What was it like, Dad? – by Brent Cook (Exploration Insights/Kitco.com – June 19, 2015)

June 22, 2015

http://www.kitco.com/news/

https://www.explorationinsights.com/

It was tough kid. We were just coming out of the most perfect spring. The fruit trees were all in blossom, streams filled with fish, deer abounded, and we were all feeling pretty right with the world—we owned it and were the chosen ones.

Then we headed out across the flats, believing the prophets that the next paradise, just over the horizon, was even better. But the horizon never came, the land turned to salt flats and dust; the temperature reached 110°, day after day after day. We burned and suffered. The roving bandits knew we were doomed and had no interest in what little we had left. Each promising oasis was a mirage and one by one we lost our way, numbed and staggering in all directions. We lost nearly everyone on that journey which began so optimistically—and naively.

It was brutal and devastating kid; I hope to never go through that again. But some of us did survive to carry on, and I’m here to tell you about it.

Yeah, right, I’ve heard that, but like, what about the 1997 to 2002 mining bust?

COUNTING CARIBOU – by Ontario Forest Industries Association (May 2015)

June 22, 2015

http://www.ofia.com/

How Did Canada’s Most Populous Ungulate End Up On Ontario’s Endangered Species List?

The caribou is the most abundant wild hoofed animal in Canada. With 3.89 million caribou spread across the country, there are more caribou than deer, moose, and elk combined. It is globally abundant, too, since the caribou of Canada is the same species as the reindeer of Eurasia. So how did the most widespread and populous ungulate end up on Ontario’s Endangered Species List? It’s all about how they were counted.

There are five subspecies of caribou in Canada, with “woodland caribou” being the most widespread. It lives in mountainous areas, mature forests, and very sparse forests, where its preferred food – lichens – are abundant. Woodland caribou number about 1.28 million in Canada, according to the Committee on the Status of Species at Risk in Canada. Accordingly, it is far too numerous for the subspecies to be considered at risk as a whole.

However, the woodland caribou subspecies has been subdivided into two ecotypes: the “forest-tundra ecotype,” which moves between habitats; and the “forest-dwelling ecotype,” which prefers to live in the woods. One of these ecotypes is less populous, and therefore considered threatened. Needless to say, if any animal population is subdivided enough times, the result is bound to be a very small population that can be considered at risk, threatened, or endangered. That could be what has happened with woodland caribou in Ontario.

Happy days here again for NM mine industry – by Kevin Robinson-Avila (Abuquerque Journal – June 22, 2015)

June 22, 2015

http://www.abqjournal.com/

The Great Recession cut the bottom out of most mining operations in New Mexico but, in general, the industry is now back on a steady growth path and one sector – potash production in southeast New Mexico – is downright booming.

Overall, total income from mining operations statewide reached a record high in 2013 at $2.8 billion. That’s up from a low of $1.7 billion reported in 2009 during the throes of recession and it’s 27 percent higher than the state’s previous record of $2.2 billion before the economy crashed.

That’s good news for the New Mexico economy, particularly in rural areas, where mining now directly employs about 7,100 people. That represents a nearly 40 percent growth in jobs since 2009, when layoffs in copper production hit the Silver City area, contributing to a 28 percent statewide plummet in mining employment.

And some major new projects could be coming online in the next few years. That includes a huge new potash mine in Lea County, a copper operation near Hillsboro, and the state’s first magnesium mining and processing complex near Deming.

Canadian mining industry feeling the sting from China’s steel surplus – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – June 22, 2015)

June 22, 2015June 22, 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 steel industry is about to go from bad to worse. China, the world’s biggest consumer of steel, needs less metal. The Chinese housing market, responsible for using the bulk of steel, is bulging with empty properties.

As a result, the country, also the largest steel producer, is swimming in the metal and exporting more to get rid of it. “Things are getting worse and I don’t see any possibility of a rebound in under three years,” said Tim Murray, managing partner with investment adviser J Capital Research Ltd.

“What I have seen actually is a deepening of the crisis.” Although the country is aiming for economic growth of 7.5 per cent – a healthy clip that miners hope will help turn the commodities market around – there are alarming signs China is struggling with the overcapacity in its steel industry.

Last year, China’s steel exports jumped 50 per cent. The surge came in the same year that steel consumption eased 3 per cent, according to the World Steel Association.

COMMENTARY: Iron Range legislators: Cross us at your own risk – by Ron Way (Minneapolis Star Tribune – June 22, 2015)

June 22, 2015

http://www.startribune.com/

It was outrageous that a few legislators huddled in the dead of night at the end of this year’s legislative session and secretly agreed to slip language into a bill to abolish the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency’s Citizens’ Board.

But it’s a mistake to think, as too many do, that the board was done in by big agriculture’s concern that the board had reversed a PCA staff decision and required more environmental study of a planned animal feedlot. It’s another mistake to think that Minnesota business interests were finally successful in salving their decades-long pique that the PCA and its board burden business with “overregulation.”

The PCA board has dealt with many controversial ag and business issues ever since it was created in 1967. Ag got its pound of flesh early on when the Legislature required that one member of the nine-member board be a farmer. Business was able to dilute citizens’ power when then-Gov. Arne Carlson made his MPCA commissioner the board’s chair.

What really happened this year was that Iron Range legislators saw an opportunity to send yet another pointed message to everyone in government that there’s a political price for saying or doing anything that even hints of opposition to long-planned copper-nickel mining in northern Minnesota, with the environmentally dangerous sulfates that come with ore extraction.

Executives urge Canada to diversify beyond natural resources – by Richard Blackwell (Globe and Mail – June 22, 2015)

June 22, 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.

It is beginning to sink in among the Canadian business elite that the economy is going to have to start weaning itself off oil.

The latest quarterly C-Suite Survey shows that almost two-thirds of Canadian corporate executives – including those in the west – feel Canada’s economic policy relies too much on Alberta and its natural resources. Fewer than one out of five say the economy currently has a good mix of industrial sectors.

As the next decade unfolds, priorities must change, they said. Information technology, renewable energy and services will rise in importance to the Canadian economy over the next 10 years, the executives said, outpacing mining, automotive and oil.

David MacDonald, chief executive officer of Softchoice Corp., a Toronto-based technology services firm, said the need for diversification is becoming a strong theme both in corporate corner offices and in Bay Street financial circles. The spate of recent initial public share offerings outside the energy sector is one sign of this, he said. “You are starting to see that even the equity markets are starting to focus on non-resource-based companies.”

Francis should show a little faith in economics – by Konrad Yakabuski (Globe and Mail – June 22, 2015)

June 22, 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 antagonism between Catholicism and capitalism is as old as the Church itself. The Cold War obscured this fact as long as the Vatican viewed Communism as a bigger threat than the profit motive. One threat dead, Pope Francis has restored the Church’s mission as capitalism’s chief critic.

This isn’t going over so well in some circles. Many members of the church hierarchy view Francis’s rehabilitation of Latin American clergy who spread liberation theology as a dangerous sop to the pseudo-Marxist Bolivarian regimes of his native South America.

In the United States, where the favoured candidate for the Republican presidential nomination is a convert to Catholicism, the Pope’s critique of capitalism is creating awkward inconveniences for a party that relies on a coalition of religious faithful and free marketeers to win elections.

Francis’s newest encyclical on climate change, which casts the fight against global warming as a spiritual as well as environmental imperative, is a clear attempt to put the Vatican’s moral weight behind a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases. As such, it is generating political waves that exceed those of perhaps every papal pronouncement since Humanae Vitae banned the pill.

NEWS RELEASE: Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Approves Terms of Reference for Noront Resource’s Environmental Assessment Process

June 19, 2015June 19, 2015

(June 19, 2015) Toronto: Environment and Climate Change Minister Glen Murray has approved with amendments to the Terms of Reference for Noront’s proposed Eagle’s Nest multi-metal mine in the Ring of Fire.

The Terms of Reference is the first step in the company’s environmental assessment process and there is much work to be done before a decision on the project is made. It’s a work plan that outlines the types of studies and consultation Noront must undertake to demonstrate whether the proposed project can be done in a way that is protective of the environment and human health.

Some of the amendments to Noront’s Terms of Reference include ensuring potentially impacted First Nation communities can fully participate in and contribute to the company’s environmental assessment process. The amendments include:
• identifying and assessing alternative road alignments within their preferred road corridor
• providing specific opportunities for potentially impacted First Nations to fully participate in the company’s environmental assessment
• assessing impacts of aggregate extraction, and
• considering the impacts of climate change on the project and the impacts of the project on climate change.

NAN committed to Ring of Fire, says Grand Chief Yesno – by Carl Clutchey (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – June 19, 2015)

June 19, 2015

Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

That was then, this is now. Officials with Nishnawbe Ask Nation says mining and other developments in the Ontario’s far North won’t take place unless First Nations are the decision-makers at the forefront of that development.

“The days are long gone when industry or government can exploit our land and the resources it contains,” NAN Grand Chief Harvey Yesno declared in an address to the Ontario Mining Forum held in Thunder Bay on Wednesday.

As proof that NAN is determined to lead in the Ring of Fire development in the lower James Bay area, Yesno said the identification of key transportation corridors will be based on First Nation knowledge of local topography, sacred sites, cultural heritage and environment and resource development activities.

“This new approach will provide certainty for First Nations and the business community,” said Yesno. The lone main mining player in the Ring of Fire is Toronto-based Noront Resources. Noront is calling for an east-west transportation corridor that would link Pickle Lake to the main mining site, which is about 550 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay.

It’s time to look seriously at a new approach to infrastructure – by Jack Mintz and Claude Montemarquette (Globe and Mail – June 19, 2015)

June 19, 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.

Jack Mintz is director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. Claude Montemarquette is chief executive officer of CIRANO.

Canada has a major opportunity to position itself for sustained growth in the decades ahead. This opportunity is the creation of a new Northern Corridor, a multimodal infrastructure project (road, rail, pipeline, electricity generation and transmission, air and seaport facilities). It would connect Canada from sea to sea to sea and allow tidewater access to international markets for our renewable and non-renewable commodities.

We have been there before. Just as the national railway, the Trans-Canada Highway, the pipeline network and the St. Lawrence Seaway opened up trade and commerce in the 19th and 20th centuries, a Northern Corridor in this century will not only help get product to diverse markets but also further exploration and development in Canada’s north and near north.

The time is right. Into the foreseeable future, we have prospects for economic growth that would benefit from a major investment in infrastructure – up to $100-billion over 10 years. We have a historically low cost of capital. We have minimal materials and labour cost pressures.

Infrastructure corridor to Canada’s north examined in new project – by Ian Marlow (Globe and Mail – June 19, 2015)

June 19, 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.

With the aim of spurring northern economic development and ending regulatory gridlock on resource projects, an ambitious research project announced on Thursday will examine the feasibility of constructing a major new infrastructure corridor spanning Canada’s north.

The project is led by the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy and the Montreal-based Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis of Organizations, and will look at the possibility of erecting a new network of roads, rail and pipelines, as well as investing in port infrastructure and airports.

The scholars and experts enlisted by the group will consult with the federal government and the provinces and write a number of research papers over several years, likely with a budget of around $1-million.

Jack Mintz of the School of Public Policy says Canada’s existing road and rail networks were constructed based on the premise of doing trade with the United States. But he adds that attempts to shift gears and build pipelines or infrastructure aimed at other markets have stuttered and encountered regulatory gridlock because there is no comprehensive national vision for how and where new infrastructure should be built.

Mining Marshall Plan for Ontario’s Far Northwest (Part 1 of 2) – by Stan Sudol (June 18, 2015)

June 21, 2015June 18, 2015

Infrastructure desperately needed in Aboriginal northwest

There has been much commentary about healing and rapprochement with Canada’s First Nations due to the recent Truth and Reconciliation Commission report on the horrific abuse Aboriginal children experienced at residential schools during the last century.

However, if Ontario, which has the largest population of First Nations people in the country, truly want to make amends for the “sins of the past” than we need to look at “economic and social reconciliation” as our primary vehicle for restitution.

Until every First Nation community in the province has the same level of infrastructure and social services as non-Aboriginal towns and cities, most of the remorseful speeches by guilty white politicians are nothing more than “hot air.”

Without a doubt, some of the most destitute and impoverished First Nations communities are located in Ontario’s mineral-rich but isolated northwest, near the Ring of Fire – the most significant Canadian mineral discovery in almost a century – and in the regions to the west.

Almost a decade of political inaction by both the provincial and federal governments has caused Cliffs Natural Resources – a major American multi-national mining company – to abandon its $3 billion private sector investment in northern Ontario and miss out on the first part of a multi-decade commodity super cycle.

Mining Marshall Plan for Ontario’s Far Northwest (Part 2 of 2) – by Stan Sudol (June 18, 2015)

June 28, 2015June 18, 2015

For Part 1 of Mining Marshall Plan for Ontario’s Far Northwest click here: http://bit.ly/1RdhyAA

Roads, the best way to find new deposits

One of the first priorities is road transportation. Last March at the PDAC mining convention, the federal and provincial governments jointly announced roughly $800,000 in funding for four of the five isolated First Nations – Webequie, Nibinamik, Neskantaga and Eabametoong – to begin consultations on an east-west road that will connect their communities and the Ring of Fire camp to the provincial highway system. A small “baby step” of progress!

However, Marten Falls is currently not part of this initiative. While this community is the smallest populated of the Matawa Tribal Council, it probably has the most clout as its traditional territory encompasses the Ring of Fire. Although Webequie is considerably closer to the mining camp, it didn’t receive full-reserve status until 2001. Hence it is critical that Marten Falls be strongly encouraged to join the consortium discussing the road connection.

Manitoba is currently undertaking a visionary initiative to build “all season” roads on the east side of Lake Winnipeg – that has similar Canadian Shield geography as in northwestern Ontario – to connect isolated First Nations communities.

Vale Said to Hire Canada’s Stikeman Elliott for Base Metals IPO – by Juan Pablo Spinetto and Scott Deveau (Bloomberg News – June 17, 2015)

June 17, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Vale SA, the world’s top nickel producer, hired Canadian law firm Stikeman Elliott LLP to help it prepare for a possible initial public offering of its base metals business, three people with knowledge of the appointment said.

The Rio de Janeiro-based company probably will choose bank advisers in the coming months as it considers the IPO, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. The sale is subject to a nickel-price recovery, they said.

In December, Vale told investors in New York that it was considering selling a minority stake in its base metals operations, the largest generator of revenue after iron ore, to boost cash. Vale forecasts increased profit and output from the operations, which is based on a 2006 takeover of Inco Ltd., after years of setbacks including strikes in Canada, design defects at Brazil plants and a New Caledonia acid spill.

Vale declined to comment on IPO advisers.

Michelle Di Rocco, a Stikeman Elliott spokeswoman, didn’t respond to e-mails and voice messages seeking comment. The Toronto-based firm also advised Vale in the Inco takeover.

Mick Davis, Glencore among bidders for Anglo’s Chile copper mines – by Silvia Antonioli and Freya Berry (Reuters U.S. – June 17, 2015)

June 17, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, June 17 (Reuters) – Mining and trading company Glencore and X2, a vehicle set up by former Xstrata CEO Mick Davis, are among the companies that placed bids last week for two Anglo American copper mines in Chile, sources said this week.

British investment firm Audley Capital was also among the first round of bidders, the sources added.

The Mantos Blancos and Mantoverde copper mines in Chile together could fetch up to $1 billion, according to banking sources, but two mining sources familiar with the mines gave more conservative valuations of around $500 million or less.

“The deadline to submit the bids was a week ago and X2 is still in the running,” a first banking source said. “Mick (Davis) seems keen on those assets.” An industry source said although Glencore was still in the process it was unlikely to make a high enough bid to win the assets.

“They are both mines towards the end of their life although with some investment Mantoverde’s life can be extended,” a second industry source said. “I would think a smaller firm like Audley is more likely to get them. Certainly the John MacKenzie connection is strong.”

Audley Capital’s mining CEO John MacKenzie was Anglo American’s head of copper until 2013.