Republic of Mining

Prospector of the year – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – March 6, 2015)

March 9, 2015

http://www.mineweb.com/

And this year’s award for ‘Amazing Exploration Genius’ goes to…Western Australia. In an industry overweight with large, usual male egos and aggressive credit-taking, we tend to celebrate the individual.

The amazing CEO. The hardened, relentless prospector. The brilliant geologist. And each year they get their awards for driving, overseeing and being lucky in making significant discoveries.

Often, the praise is well-deserved, when they have played an instrumental role in doing one of the hardest things you can do: find a major deposit. I do it myself. I sometimes profile the person who “made” the big discovery, usually the geologist who targeted the obvious discovery drillhole. It’s exciting.

So we like to celebrate the genius – a trait shared by society at large, obsessed as it is with celebrity, of all kinds. But in focusing on the individual in mining, we overlook some very important players: namely governments that expend significant financial and cerebral resources on supporting exploration.

Indeed, maybe, given what can be their driving role in discovery, it’d be worth a class of award on its own: Best government in exploration. Really.

Can Mick Davis build another Xstrata? – by Stephen Bartholomeusz (Business Spectator – March 6, 2015)

March 9, 2015

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/

Mick Davis’s announcement overnight that his X2 Resources has raised $US5.6 billion could be a signal that he is about to begin the much-anticipated reprising of the game-plan that created Xstrata. Or else it could be another false dawn.

X2 announced that it had successfully completed its “initial” capital raising, securing $US5.6 billion in equity capital from a small number of “word-class” investors to create a new “mid-tier diversified” mining and metals group.

It described the raising, which comprises $US4 billion in committed capital available for immediate drawn-down and $US1.6 billion in conditional equity, as “one of the largest ever first-time raises by a private vehicle”.

The uncertainty about what the raising foreshadows relates to three earlier announcements by X2. The first, in 2013, not long after the merger/takeover of Xstrata by Glencore that saw Davis ousted as chief executive, announced that Noble Group and TPG had agreed to invest $US500 million each in X2.

The second, in March last year, was an announcement that X2 had secured $US2.5 billion in committed capital and another $US1.25 billion in conditional capital from five investors, including Noble, TPG, sovereign wealth and pension fund investors.

‘Major step forward for the Ring of Fire’ – by Greg Rickford (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – March 9, 2015)

March 9, 2015

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

Greg Rickford, MP for Kenora, is Minister of Natural Resources and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario.

This past week I was pleased to announce important support for Northern Ontario at the world’s largest mineral exploration conference and trade show. I feel strongly that the measures introduced by our government enhance Northern Ontario’s mining and resource development potential, creating and protecting Canadian jobs and opportunities.

Supporting the province’s efforts to develop the Ring of Fire is a priority for our government, and we are delivering. My provincial colleague, Michael Gravelle, and I met this January and agreed to further co-operation with a particular focus on specific, tangible infrastructure projects to support extractive activities and access to remote communities.

I agreed that should we become aware of appropriate initiatives, we would let one another know. FedNor became aware of a suitable proposal, and I engaged my counterpart.

One month later, we were joined in Toronto by First Nations and municipal leaders for the announcement of a plan to enhance economic prosperity and community access to the Ring of Fire region.

NEWS RELEASE: LAURENTIAN ENGINEERING STUDENTS MAKE HISTORY

March 9, 2015

Both Bharti School’s Junior, Senior Design teams Win Canadian Engineering Competition

SUDBURY, ON (MARCH 8, 2015) – Laurentian University’s Bharti School of Engineering makes history as both Junior and Senior Design teams win the 2015 Canadian Engineering Competition (CEC) in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Results of the CEC were announced at an awards banquet at Memorial University on Saturday evening.

After the Junior Design team won the Ontario Engineering Competition (OEC) last month and the Senior Design team came in second, both teams qualified to represent Ontario at the nationwide 2015 CEC. Laurentian’s Junior Design team members are: Aidan Simpson, Colin Roos, Matthew Bennison and Stephane Labine. Members of the Senior Design team are: Caitlin Roos, Jasmin Lemieux, Louis-Francis Tremblay and Philip O’Connor.

“This is truly an exceptional moment for Laurentian University and for the Bharti School of Engineering,” said Dr. Ramesh Subramanian, Director, Bharti School of Engineering. “For the first time in our University’s history we had both Junior and Senior Design teams represent Ontario on a national stage in the same year and we are inspired by their performance,” he said.

Teams competed in the following categories: Communications Engineering, Consulting Engineering, Innovative Design, Junior Design, Extemporaneous Debate, Re-Engineering, and Senior Design.

Take-Over Bids in Canada – A Must Read for Businesses, Boards and Bidders

March 6, 2015

http://www.fasken.com/en/home/

Click here for the 2015 Canadian Take-Over Bid Study

Toronto (Canada) – February 19, 2015 – International business law firm Fasken Martineau has released the results of a new 10-year empirical analysis of contested corporate take-overs in Canada. It arrives just as Canada’s securities regulators are set to release a proposal to make the most significant changes to the take-over bid rules in years, with the goal of levelling the playing field between bidders and target companies in unsolicited acquisitions.

Examining all 143 hostile take-over contests for control between 2005-14, Fasken Martineau’s study offers a sweeping, insightful overview of a decade’s worth of contested M&A deals in Canada. The research offers some surprising findings and will be of interest to all participants in Canada’s thriving M&A market, including boards, shareholders, bidders, advisors and regulators.

The study was co-authored by Fasken Martineau corporate partners in Toronto Aaron J. Atkinson and Bradley A. Freelan, both of whom have extensive experience advising in M&A, including contested transactions.

The study is the first of its kind in Canada and coincides with expected amendments to the Canadian take-over bid regime by the country’s securities regulators. In Canada, unlike the United States, boards do not have the ability to “just say no” to a hostile bidder to prevent it from proceeding. This has led to a spirited debate in Canada as to the proper role of the board in a transaction that is ultimately between the bidder and shareholders.

Polish Coal Miners Ride Solidarity Legacy to Oblivion – by Ladka Mortkowitz and BauerovaMarek Strzelecki (Bloomberg News – March 6, 2015)

March 6, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

(Bloomberg) — For decades, Polish coal miners have enjoyed benefits that are the envy of their working class countrymen: An annual bonus of two months’ pay regardless of performance, company-sponsored holidays, retirement before 50, and no weekend shifts. Today, that legacy of the communist era threatens the mostly state-owned mining sector and is digging a hole in the national budget.

To understand why reform remains elusive, take a drive through Upper Silesia, the coal-rich region in southern Poland that’s home to two dozen mines. The snowy countryside, drained of color in the feeble winter light, is framed by smoking chimney stacks and elevator towers that haul coal up from the pits.

Even as European coal prices have fallen by half in recent years and producers have struggled, powerful unions have foiled government attempts to close failing operations, cut jobs, and restore the sector to profitability. In January, the Economy Ministry cautioned that without significant restructuring Kompania Weglowa SA — the European Union’s largest coal producer — risked bankruptcy.

With their historical ties to Lech Walesa’s Solidarity, Poland’s roughly 100,000 miners are clinging to their jobs. Their unions’ links to the 1980’s movement mean they can easily forge alliances across the political spectrum — and threaten any reform-minded government with widespread strikes.

Cda. gaining poor rep starting up mining projects — Charest – by Len Gillis (Timmins Daily Press – March 5, 2015)

March 6, 2015

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Former Quebec premier Jean Charest told a breakfast audience in Timmins Thursday that government needs to be more pro-active when it comes to resource development because Canada is getting a reputation as a place where such projects do not get done quickly enough.

Charest was in Timmins as part of a quick cross-country tour for the Partnership for Resource Trade (PRT), a pro-resources organization.

Charest was in Vancouver and Winnipeg earlier this week and after his appearance in Timmins he will be speaking in Moncton and Halifax next week. The tour is sponsored by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

“The PRT is a group put that was together so we can have a much better dialogue about the future of resources in Canada and what role it plays in our economy,” Charest explained, adding there is growing concern about how resources are being managed.

“There is a sense that we must, in Canada, have a much, much better debate, dialogue, conversation, call it what we want, about the future of resources and how we manage them,” Charest told the Timmins business audience at Cedar Meadows Resort.

As a private sector lawyer, Charest travels the world setting up and negotiating agreements for Canadian mining companies. He said this gives him insight into how others see our country.

First Nations seek to reset relationship with Queen’s Park – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – March 3, 2015)

March 6, 2015

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North. Ian Ross is the editor of Northern Ontario Business ianross@nob.on.ca.

Ontario Regional Chief Stan Beardy is confident that a new relationship is emerging with Queen’s Park following a summit late last fall designed to find common ground on key issues that will allow resource development to proceed in the Far North.

First Nation leaders from across Ontario met in late November for a “Leaders in the Legislature” event with Ontario cabinet ministers in Toronto to table Aboriginal priorities starting at the community level.

Beardy called the intensive three-day event “a step in the right direction” with a series of roundtables on resource benefits and revenue sharing, treaty awareness, health, education, infrastructure, economic development and missing and murdered indigenous women.

The chiefs matched their issues with the appropriate ministers based on their mandate letters from the premier. Beardy said First Nations aren’t out to block resource development projects, but the law is on their side and must be allowed to participate and benefit from them.

With a number of Supreme Court decisions recognizing Aboriginal title to land – include last June’s Tsilhqot’in decision in British Columbia – Beardy said First Nations are taking a more proactive approach in discussing priority issues with government.

Copper faces looming supply gap – Teck Resources – by Simon Rees (MiningWeekly.com – March 5, 2015)

March 6, 2015

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

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The level of new copper output will be unable to plug a supply gap that could develop as early as 2017, Canadian diversified miner Teck Resources manager for market research Michael Schwartz told an audience at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada 2015 convention.

Teck had calculated that the average yearly rate of copper demand growth would reach 2.7% in the coming years. This equated to about 680 000 t of new supply being required each year, a level producers would be unable to match.

This supply/demand fundamental was in stark contrast with copper’s performance over the past 12 months, with Schwartz noting that Wood McKenzie had recorded a 300 000 t surplus for 2014. “Although we are showing a balanced market to a slight deficit,” he added.

The overhang had been reflected in the red metal’s price, which was currently hovering at around $2.65/lb, compared with a 52-week high of about $3.25/lb. Producers with cost-of-production rates above $2.50/lb would continue to struggle, Schwartz pointed out.

Disruption to output, which offered price support depending on its severity, would become an increasingly important issue as the industry mined lower-grade zones in remoter areas.

Lukas Lundin: Guts, glory and betting against the grain – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – March 6, 2015)

March 6, 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.

Lukas Lundin has no tricks for how to play the market, but somehow he has timed his deals impeccably.

The mining tycoon managed to sell a big gold mine for billions at the top of cycle. Then after bullion slumped 30 per cent he bought another gold project for a fraction of the original cost.

“It was some luck and some skill,” the executive said in an interview at this week’s Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada conference. Mr. Lundin said he learned his deal-making skills from his father, Adolf Lundin, who founded the $11.8-billion Vancouver- based Lundin Group, a conglomerate of mining and energy companies.

“He had a big appetite for risk,” said Mr. Lundin. One of the family’s 11 companies is called NGEx Resources Inc. It stands for “No Guts, No Glory Exploration,” a play on patriarch Lundin’s “no guts, no glory” motto.

“He was a big speculator, took big risks, sometimes maybe not calculated. Hopefully I take more risks that are calculated,” said Mr. Lundin.

Breaking mining’s ‘rock ceiling’ for women – by Derrick Penner (Vancouver Sun – March 6, 2015)

March 6, 2015

http://www.vancouversun.com/index.html

Goldcorp among companies taking steps to make industry more welcoming

By the numbers, the mining industry still looks very much like a boys club. Just 17 per cent of the sector’s workforce in Canada is female, according to Mining Association of Canada statistics.

Industry leaders know they need to raise that number over the long term if the sector expects to maintain a sustainable pool of applicants to fill jobs in its rapidly aging workforce.

The industry has also launched programs to recruit more minority groups and First Nations, which has proved a particularly successful strategy in northern B.C. Vancouver-headquartered Goldcorp Inc. has adopted its own edge in recruiting by expanding Creating Choices, its internal training and mentorship program for women.

The program is “becoming one of the tools” attracting potential recruits, said Anna Tudela, Goldcorp’s vice-president of regulatory affairs and corporate secretary and the program’s creator.

“In the mining industry, we’re lacking the (future) workforce,” Tudela said. “We will have to attract more women,” as well as workers from diverse backgrounds.

Rocky road ahead for sputtering China – by Brian Milner (Globe and Mail – March 6, 2015)

March 6, 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.

China has cut its growth target for this year by half a percentage point to about 7 per cent, a level that would mark its slowest expansion in a quarter of a century.

It also ought to dispel any notion that its leadership can engineer a fairly smooth economic transition toward the greater manufacture and domestic consumption of higher-value goods without serious growth hiccups and heavy state intervention.

The less optimistic outlook makes sense for a government that typically does whatever is necessary to meet – and preferably exceed – its publicly avowed goals for the economy.

The technocrats have known for some time that the sputtering economy has no chance of exceeding 7 per cent growth this year, and that it may take considerable data massaging (a government specialty) just to reach the lower bar. Major headwinds include continued weak demand in key export markets, serious manufacturing overcapacity and a bubble-ridden property market teetering on the brink.

Realizing the Indian Dream – by Jim O’Neill (Project Syndicate – March 5, 2015)

March 6, 2015

http://www.project-syndicate.org/

NEW DELHI – It is not often that I get to wear two hats at once. But that is exactly what happened earlier this month, when I spent a few days in New Delhi.

I was in India primarily as part of my current role as Chairman of a review for the British prime minister on anti-microbial resistance (AMR). But my visit coincided with the presentation of India’s 2015-2016 budget, the first under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Given some of my other interests and experiences, I found what was presented to be very interesting.

Following recent revisions to its GDP figures, India’s economy has recently grown – in real terms – slightly faster than China’s. A key feature of my research into the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) more than ten years ago was that at some point during this decade, India would start to grow faster than China and continue to do so for dozens of years.

The reasoning is straightforward. India’s demographics are considerably better than China’s, and the size and growth rate of a country’s workforce is one of the two key factors that drive long-term economic performance – the other being productivity. Between now and 2030, the growth rate of India’s workforce will add as much to the existing stock of labor as continental Europe’s four largest economies put together.

India is less urbanized than China, and it is in the early stages of benefiting from the virtuous forces that normally accompany that process.

Glencore transitioning into deficit in most commodities – Glasenberg – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – March 3, 2015)

March 6, 2015

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

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Diversified major Glencore was transitioning into deficit in most of the commodities it produced, CEO Ivan Glasenberg said on Tuesday.

Glasenberg, who has presided over returning $9.3-billion to shareholders in dividends and buybacks since 2011, told analysts and media in teleconferences in which Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly Online took part that most of the company’s commodities were free of oversupply threats.

“In most of our commodities, there’s no big supply coming into the market,” he said, adding that some of its commodities were already in deficit.

“We’re pretty comfortable we’re in the right commodities, which should bode well for the future,” he said, outlining how the company had returned $3.3-billion to shareholders during 2014.

Both a miner and a marketer, Glencore did far better than its peers in the 12 months to December 31, with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) of $12.8-billion only 2% down on 2013.

Ottawa Urged To Share Resource Taxes With Aboriginals – by Bob Weber (Canadian Press/Huffington Post – March 3, 2015)

March 6, 2015

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/politics/

EDMONTON – First Nations should get some of the money generated by resources on their lands, suggests a report commissioned by the federal government and the Assembly of First Nations.

The report, released Tuesday by the Working Group on Natural Resource Development, says a First Nations resource tax could be a consistent and practical way for mineral and energy wealth to benefit aboriginal communities.

“We strongly urge the federal government, along with the provinces and territories, to come together with First Nations to explore options for resource revenue sharing,” says the report.

“This discussion is long overdue and requires immediate action in order to bring greater predictability to resource development in Canada and establish a long-term pathway to greater First Nations self-reliance.”

The group was struck after a meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former Assembly of First Nations grand chief Shawn Atleo. Its report was issued after meetings in Toronto and Edmonton between First Nations, governments, industry and non-governmental organizations.