Republic of Mining

The Environmental Disaster That is the Gold Industry (Smithsonian Magazine – February 14, 2014)

May 5, 2015

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/

The mining industry has had a devastating impact on ecosystems worldwide. Is there any hope in sight?

A global campaign to boycott what activists are calling “dirty gold” gained its 100th official follower three days before Valentine’s Day.

The pledge was launched in 2004 by the environmental group Earthworks, which has asked retail companies not to carry gold that was produced through environmentally and socially destructive mining practices. Eight of the ten largest jewelry retailers in the United States have now made the pledge, including Tiffany & Co., Target and Helzberg Diamonds. The No Dirty Gold campaign is anchored in its “golden rules,” a set of criteria encouraging the metal mining industry to respect human rights and the natural environment.

While the list of retailers aligned in their opposition to dirty gold continues to grow longer, most gold remains quite filthy. The majority of the world’s gold is extracted from open pit mines, where huge volumes of earth are scoured away and processed for trace elements. Earthworks estimates that, to produce enough raw gold to make a single ring, 20 tons of rock and soil are dislodged and discarded.

Much of this waste carries with it mercury and cyanide, which are used to extract the gold from the rock. The resulting erosion clogs streams and rivers and can eventually taint marine ecosystems far downstream of the mine site.

BHP’s South32 Has a Big Plus: China’s Not Its Chief Customer – by David Stringer (Bloomberg News – May 4, 2015)

May 5, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

The mining industry’s biggest spinoff in almost a decade will offer investors a once unthinkable big plus. China’s not its biggest customer.

The world’s biggest buyer of metals will account for about 11 percent of sales for South32 Ltd., while parent BHP Billiton Ltd. and its biggest competitor Rio Tinto Group rely on China to generate more than a third of their revenue.

With less dependence on China and no iron ore mines, the new Perth-based company offers a different proposition to producers that have focused on feeding the Asian nation’s hunger for steelmaking, according to Aberdeen Asset Management Ltd.

The China story has changed since the start of the decade. Growth slowed last year to the weakest pace since 1990, while steel consumption will probably decline this year, according to the China Iron and Steel Association.

“If you’ve got a softening of growth in China, or a move to a more sustainable path, do you want all your eggs in that one basket?” said Andrew Preston, a Melbourne-based senior investment manager at Aberdeen, which oversees about $12 billion in Australia, including BHP shares.

NEWS RELEASE: High costs and lack of infrastructure inhibiting exploration and mining development in Canada’s North: Study

May 5, 2015

May 05, 2015

Capital costs for northern mines often more than double that of southern mines

A new study entitled Levelling the Playing Field reveals the cost to explore and build new mines is as much as 2.5 times higher in northern Canada, largely as a result of a lack of critical infrastructure. This is creating major obstacles to exploring and operating in Canada’s remote and northern regions.

The study was produced by the Mining Association of Canada (MAC), the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), the Association of Consulting Engineering Companies – Canada, the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines, and the Yukon Chamber of Mines. The report defines “north” or “northern” to include Canada’s territories, as well as remote and northern regions of the provinces.

The study’s main findings were two-fold. First, the costs of mineral exploration and building and operating mines are significantly higher in remote and northern regions of Canada’s provinces and territories. Second, this cost premium is directly linked to the lack of infrastructure in these areas.

INCO’s Roots: How Far Back? – by Marty McAllister (Inco Triangle – January 1990)

May 5, 2015

For Inco Triangle Archives, click here: http://www.sudburymuseums.ca/triangle/?home

This article came from the January 1990 issue of the Inco Triangle: http://www.sudburymuseums.ca/triangle/data/INCOTriangle-19900101.pdf

It has taken more than a century — actually, quite a lot more — to build the Inco Limited of today. There have been good times and bad times — and successes and failures, you bet. Throughout, we’ve demonstrated a capacity to learn from the things we’ve done, to grow, as our current motto says, “Stronger For Our Experience.

I think that’s a pretty good motto, don’t you? It doesn’t say anything about being perfect, but it implies a process of continuous improvement. In order to learn from our collective experience, we have to study it. As we face the changes and challenges of the future, we’ll want to know how we’ve coped with such things in the past. History is more than just nostalgic fun, although that’s what carries us past the boring parts. Confucius said: “Study the past if you would divine the future.”

To start 1990 off on the right foot, I want to back up to square one and give you a clearer picture of the many pieces that came together to form the company as we know it, and to maybe change a few pre-conceived notions in the bargain.

Battle between Canadian mining magnates for Coastal Gold Corp heats up – by Peter Koven (National Post – May 5, 2015)

May 5, 2015

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

Two Canadian mining magnates are fighting an increasingly heated battle for a tiny junior company, with one accusing the other of “incestuous behavior” within his empire.

Keith Neumeyer’s First Mining Finance Corp. has offered six cents a share (or about $10.2 million) for Coastal Gold Corp., which has a project in Newfoundland. The rival offer for Coastal, from Stan Bharti’s Sulliden Mining Capital Inc., is worth about 2.3 cents.

Given that First Mining’s offer is more than double Sulliden’s offer, one might assume that Neumeyer is convinced he will win. But that isn’t the case. Coastal’s board is currently endorsing the Sulliden bid, and Neumeyer would be surprised if that changes.

“It’s a joke,” he said in an interview. “They are obviously not acting in the best interests of shareholders and exercising their fiduciary duties properly.”

Neumeyer, who previously founded First Quantum Minerals Ltd. and First Majestic Silver Corp., thinks the problem here is inter-relationships between Bharti’s companies. Both Sulliden and Coastal are under the umbrella of Forbes & Manhattan (F&M), Bharti’s conglomerate of resource companies.

Phelps Dodge Corporation History (1885-1999)

May 5, 2015

For a large selection of corporate histories click: International Directory of Company Histories

One of the largest copper miners in the world, Phelps Dodge Corporation produces 30 percent of the copper in the United States and operates several manufacturing businesses to insulate the company from the cyclicality of copper prices. Phelps Dodge’s copper business is conducted through the company’s Phelps Dodge Mining Company subsidiary, which also produces silver, gold, and other minerals as a byproduct of its copper operations. The manufacturing side of the company’s business operates through a division called Phelps Dodge Industries, which has expanded aggressively during the 1990s.

The manufacturing businesses include a ten percent interest in Accuride Corporation, a truck wheel and rim manufacturer; Columbian Chemicals Company, one of the world’s largest producers of carbon black (used in inks and tires); Phelps Dodge Magnet Wire Co., the world’s largest producer of magnet wire; and Phelps Dodge High Performance Conductors, which manufactures specialty conductors used by the automotive, computer, and aerospace industries.

19th-Century Origins

In 1834 founder Anson Phelps, a New York entrepreneur thoroughly experienced in the import-export trade and well-connected in his targeted British market, formed Phelps, Dodge & Co. Along with his junior partners, sons-in-law William Dodge and Daniel James, Phelps supplied his English customers with cotton, replacing it on the homeward journey with tin, tin plate, iron, and copper, for sale to government, trade, and individual consumers in the United States.

Black Fury (1935) – by Andre Sennwald (New York Times Review – April 11, 1035)

May 5, 2015

http://www.tcm.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/

Hollywood, with all its taboos and commercial inhibitions, makes a trenchant contribution to the sociological drama in “Black Fury,” which arrived at the Strand Theatre yesterday. Magnificently performed by Paul Muni, it comes up taut against the censorial safety belts and tells a stirring tale of industrial war in the coal fields.

Some of us cannot help regretting the film’s insistent use of the whitewash brush, which enables its sponsors to be in several editorial places at the same time. But when we realize that “Black Fury” was regarded by the State Censor Board as an inflammatory social document and that it has been banned in several sectors, we ought to understand that Warner Brothers exhibited almost a reckless air of courage in producing the picture at all.

Norway’s oil fund slashes coal investments after criticism – by Stine Jacobsen (Reuters U.S. – May 4, 2015)

May 4, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

May 4 (Reuters) – Norway’s $900 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world’s biggest, has reduced the value of its coal mining portfolio by almost 40 percent in the first quarter, its head told parliament on Monday.

Environmental groups and some Norwegian politicians have accused the fund of having too large an exposure to coal and not making enough use of its influence to reduce carbon emissions.

As of March 31 the fund had coal mining assets worth 493 million crowns ($3.75 million), down from 805 million at the end of 2014.

The fund owns assets worth 31 billion crowns in general mining, 109 billion in power production and 228 billion in oil and gas production.

The fund, owning around 1.3 percent of all listed companies globally, is still exposed to firms using coal for steel production and those where coal is only one of several business areas, such as large mining conglomerates, the fund’s head Yngve Slyngstad told the parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs.

[Montana Mining History] The Copper King’s Precipitous Fall – by Gilbert King (Smithsonian Magazine – September 20, 2015)

May 4, 2015

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/

Augustus Heinze dominated the copper fields of Montana, but his family’s scheming on Wall Street set off the Panic of 1907

Frederick Augustus Heinze was young, brash, charismatic and rich. He’d made millions off the copper mines of Butte, Montana, by the time he was 30, beating back every attempt by competitors to run him out of business. After turning down Standard Oil’s $15 million offer for his copper holdings, Heinze arrived in New York in 1907 with $25 million in cash, determined to join the likes of J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller as a major player in the world of finance. By the end of the year, however, the Copper King would be ruined, and his scheme to corner the stock of the United Copper Co. would lead to one of the worst financial crises in American history—the Panic of 1907.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1869. His father, Otto Heinze, was a wealthy German immigrant, and young Augustus was educated in Germany before he returned to the United States to study at Columbia University’s School of Mines. An engineer by training, Heinze arrived in Montana after his father died, and with a $50,000 inheritance he developed a smelting process that enabled him to produce copper from very low-grade ore in native rock more than 1,500 feet below ground. He leased mines and worked for other mining companies until he was able, in 1895, to purchase the Rarus Mine in Butte, which proved to be one of Montana’s richest copper properties.

In a rapid ascent, Heinze established the Montana Ore Purchasing Co. and became one of the three “Copper Kings” of Butte, along with Gilded Age icons William Andrews Clark and Marcus Daly. Whip smart and devious, Heinze took advantage of the so-called apex law, a provision that allowed owners of a surface outcrop to mine it wherever it led, even if it went beneath land owned by someone else.

Pebble mine backers aren’t ready to give up the gold – by Erica Martinson (Alaska Dispatch News – May 2, 2015)

May 4, 2015

http://www.adn.com/

WASHINGTON — Purveyors of the proposed Pebble mine aren’t done fighting federal, activist and state efforts to stop the massive gold and copper mine in its tracks.

This month, the Pebble Partnership will test its arguments that the Environmental Protection Agency jumped the gun in its efforts to stop the project and illegally colluded with the projects’ opponents before doing so. Meanwhile, the EPA’s independent inspector general is nearing completion of an investigation into the agency’s process.

Now it’s down to the lawyers, mining legal documents and unearthing years-old emails. Pebble CEO Tom Collier hopes a few legal wins will breathe new life into the project that many Alaskans consider down and out.

Since 2007, Pebble has spent several hundred million dollars in efforts to move forward on its mineral claims about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, according to financial statements. Between 1988 and 2013, Pebble drilled 1,355 holes in the ground to test what lies beneath, and found gold, copper and molybdenum worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

COLUMN-Iron ore reality check shows small, but significant change – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.K. – May 4, 2015)

May 4, 2015

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, May 4 (Reuters) – It’s time for a reality check all round in the iron ore market.

In recent weeks there has been a strong rally in prices, tentative signs that the headlong expansion of capacity will be reined in, calls for a producer cartel of some sorts and a small miner scrappily hanging on in the face of seemingly overwhelming adversity.

All of this makes for great drama and news headlines, but also should lead to questions and analysis as to whether anything has actually changed in the iron ore market.

The first reality check is that despite the near 27 percent rally in the spot Asian iron ore price between April 6 and April 27, the price remains extremely weak.

Iron ore ended last week at $56.20 a tonne, having retreated from the $59.20 reached on April 27, leaving the steel-making ingredient down 21 percent so far this year. It’s also roughly half of what it was this time last year and not much better than a quarter of the record $191.90 a tonne in February 2011.

‘Game changer’: Gas company offers $1-billion to First Nations band in B.C. – by Justine Hunter and Brent Jang (Globe and Mail – May 1, 2015)

May 4, 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.

VICTORIA and VANCOUVER — The proponent of a liquefied natural gas plant on British Columbia’s north coast is offering more than $1-billion to obtain the consent of a First Nations community, a groundbreaking proposal that could establish the new price for natural resource development in traditional aboriginal territories.

In a province where resource projects have stalled and sometimes foundered over aboriginal opposition, the tentative deal between the Prince Rupert-based Lax Kw’alaams band and a joint venture led by Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas sets a new benchmark for sharing the wealth from energy extraction.

If approved by band members, the agreement will transfer roughly $1-billion in cash to the Lax Kw’alaams band over the span of the 40-year deal, while the B.C. government is putting more than $100-million worth of Crown lands on the table. For the 3,600 members of the Lax Kw’alaams community, the total package works out to a value of roughly $320,000 per person.

INCO HISTORY: MOND: The Man, The Process, The Company – by Marty McAllister (Inco Triangle – September, 1989)

May 4, 2015

For Inco Triangle Archives, click here: http://www.sudburymuseums.ca/triangle/?home

This article came from the September 1989 issue of the Inco Triangle: http://www.sudburymuseums.ca/triangle/data/INCOTriangle-19890901.pdf

Just enough paint has peeled off an old tank in the Nairn powerhouse to partially reveal the hand-lettered words: Mond Nickel Company.

At least on this side of the Atlantic, there remain few such reminders of the proud organization that became part of Inco sixty years ago. As an independent company, “the Mond” barely lasted thirty years; its spirit, however, began much earlier with its founder, and its contribution is not yet complete. In a reverse version of the Canadian Copper story, Mond Nickel began as a process looking for raw materials.

Remember the Bunsen burners in high school? Well, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen was Ludwig Mond’s chemistry prof at the University of Heidelberg. The lessons stuck, and Mond went on to earn a sizable fortune in the chemical business in England.

His home, known as The Poplars, was an ornate mansion north of Regent’s Park, and he converted one of the stables into a research lab. It was in this lab in 1889 that Mond, then 50, set out with Carl Langer to develop a bleaching powder.

Private company, public resource: The Inco Triangle archives are home to a rich collection of historically important documents – by R. Bergen (CIM Magazine – November 2009)

May 4, 2015

http://www.cim.org/en/

“I hope my comments won’t seem picayune, but Inco’s history is an integral and important part of our heritage in the Sudbury Basin. As with any locale, I suppose, some local legends have been embellished a little over time.” — Marty McAllister, in a 1989 letter advising a correction in the Inco Triangle

Twenty years after his first dispassionate contribution to the Ontario division of Inco’s now-defunct community news magazine, Marty McAllister no longer bothers to mince words. “If a magazine could be a legend, that one was,” he declares unabashedly, referring to the Inco Triangle from his Barrie, Ontario, home. His attention to the historic record earned him a regular heritage column. As a Greater Sudbury native, lifetime reader and career Inco employee, McAllister understands better than most the unique role of the publication in the hundreds of Sudbury area households that received the Triangle each month.

Of course, the operations were often featured in its pages and trumpeted for their forward thinking, but the Triangle was far more than a company mouthpiece. From the 1930s to the 1990s, the paternal influence of the Triangle helped tie together the communities that Inco had built to support its mines. Workers named Salfi, Kanga, Levesque and Rainville, whose birthplaces were scattered across Europe and North America, featured as a fraternity in the Triangle. Marriages, births, deaths, bonspiel winners and expert gardeners were fixtures in the magazine. Sports always featured prominently.

Black interests opting out of once-mighty [South Africa] ferrochrome business – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – May 4, 2015)

May 4, 2015

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Black South African interests are giving South Africa’s once-mighty ferrochrome business the cold shoulder.

The value-adding pursuit, which puts six times more value into chrome and generates three times more jobs than mere raw chrome exportation, was last week ditched by Royal Bafokeng Holdings, the investment arm of the 300-strong Bafokeng community, which has for long been associated with chrome, and earlier by Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), which first opted out of ferrochrome in Machadodorp with its Assmang partner and then chose to close the Machadodorp ferroalloys operation altogether and relocate to a new ferroalloys project in Malaysia.

Both steps represent a serious indictment of the government’s beneficiation policy, which is failing when it comes to chrome beneficiation on the scarcity of competitively priced electricity and a lack of incentivisation.

Ironically, China is making use of South Africa’s raw chrome exports to advance to a leadership position in ferrochrome – and is likely to advance further in coming quarters as it lowers power tariffs to stimulate energy-intensive operations and as South Africa enters the more expensive winter tariff electricity period.