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[Ontario] Province must build RoF road – Editorial (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – October 27, 2014)

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

National media coverage on the Ring of Fire has been of the doom-and-gloom variety of late, but that doesn’t mean the province should throw in the towel on the idea for a main access road into the remote mineral rich zone.

Not surprisingly, in the wake of falling metal prices right across the globe, pundits and mining industry analysts have been questioning the RoF’s value. Maybe it’s not that rock-solid after all, the thinking goes.

But surely that thinking is flawed. It’s hardly a shock to discover that when mineral prices fall and stock values plummet, companies are no longer in a position to fork out the enormous upfront costs of building new mines.

Not until a mine is up and running is its proponent in a position to make operational changes, including temporary shutdowns, to ride out the industry’s inevitable ups and downs.

A few years ago, North American Palladium wisely shut down its Lac des Iles mine north of Thunder Bay when the price of palladium plunged. It restarted the operation when the price came back up, casting the views of cynics aside.

Fortunes can also lead the other way. Some may remember when Inmet Mining caved on a major expansion at its former Schreiber zinc mine after prices for that mineral crashed. But none of that means the province should abandon a sensible plan to build a main access road into the James Bay lowlands.

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Russian Mining Tycoons Seek to Trim Debt as Sanctions Sting – by Yuliya Fedorinova and Alex Sazonov (Bloomberg News – October 27, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Russia’s mining billionaires are starting to feel the sting of economic sanctions.

Mikhail Prokhorov, whose investment empire stretches from the world’s largest aluminum maker to the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, recently explored whether fellow oligarchs, including Vladimir Potanin, were willing to buy a portion of his $2.7 billion stake in potash miner OAO Uralkali, two people familiar with the matter said. The reason: the sinking value of his Russian holdings means he’d like less debt and more cash, they said.

While Prokhorov aborted the plan after failing to get the price he wanted, it’s the latest example of the pressure on Russia’s commodity magnates as sanctions hit the economy at home and a global slowdown undercuts metals demand. Billionaires including Alexey Mordashov, who controls steelmaker OAO Severstal (SVST), and Potanin, the biggest shareholder in OAO Norilsk Nickel, have increased dividends from their businesses after selling some assets.

“Whenever you hear billionaires say they are not affected by sanctions and the general situation in Russia, that’s not quite true,” said Yulia Bushueva, who helps to manage about $500 million at Arbat Capital in Moscow. “It’s natural that they are looking at options to cut the debt. Others just want to get some extra cash in the current situation.”

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Column – India, Indonesia take different, but similar coal paths – by Clyde Russell (Reuters India – October 27, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia – India, poised to become the world’s largest importer of thermal coal, appears to be opening up its domestic mining sector to foreign competition just as Indonesia, its biggest supplier, is making it harder for exporters.

On a superficial level it appears that India and Indonesia are choosing different paths for their coal sectors, but the policies being pursued by the countries’ new, reform-minded leaders may have more in common than first appearances suggest.

India may allow foreign companies to mine coal, as long as they set up units in the country, Reuters reported on Oct. 22, citing a source familiar with the matter.

This would be a major change for the South Asian nation, which has the world’s fifth-largest coal reserves but suffers from ongoing shortages because of inefficiencies across the mining, transportation and distribution chains.

Coal mining has been dominated by state-controlled Coal India, which consistently fails to meet targets for production and supply. What private mining existed in India was thrown into chaos recently by court rulings that found the allocation of coal blocks by the previous government had been illegal, and that these areas would be returned to the state and Coal India.

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A Kingdom of riches: Saudi Arabia looks to strike it rich with mining sector – by Adam Leach (Mining Technology – October 23, 2014)

http://www.mining-technology.com/

While Saudi Arabia remains the world’s largest petroleum producer, the prospect of US shale gas eating into its dominance of the energy export market has highlighted a need for it to diversify its economy. Having already established itself in the gold market, the kingdom is now setting its sights on ruling the copper, zinc and phosphate markets.

The history of mining in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia stretches back thousands of years. The first record of it has been dated to 2100 BC, while carbon dating has shown that operations at Madh Ad Dahab mine were underway at around 1000 BC. Archaelogists have claimed that a copper mine was generating revenue for King Solomon in the 10th century BC. But despite its early rising in the development of mineral extraction, resources in Saudi Arabia have remained relatively untapped.

Controlling around a quarter of the world’s reported petroleum reserves, Saudi Arabia has been under little pressure to exploit other resources it may have access to, with the ever growing global demand for oil enabling the country to get richer and richer.

However, over the past decade the globalisation of oil exploration, an increase in climate change pressure and an influx of US shale gas and oil to the market have served to slightly ease the monopoly of Saudi Arabia and its fellow OPEC members. In response to recent reports that US exports would reduce demand for Saudi oil, the kingdom announced that it would be cutting production to 400,000 barrels per day, the lowest since 2011, in order to preserve the current price of $100 per barrel.

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Aboriginal rights: A simple matter of rights denied – by Jim Coyle (Toronto Star – October 26, 2014)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

“People went into the Ring of Fire under the old idea that they could get what
they wanted under the old terms. And it turns out that under the new terms it’s
going to be done differently. This is the shifting of power, just as the pipeline
story is the shifting of power. Suddenly, people are realizing that they can’t get
those pipelines without the aboriginals. That’s real power. This is not the same
Canada.” (Public thinker John Ralston Saul)

If the biggest favour one human being can do another is to speak the truth, especially when that truth is uncomfortable to hear, then Canadians probably owe John Ralston Saul a collective nod of thanks.

To this high season of books by and about aboriginal people in Canada, Saul this week adds The Comeback, a celebration of how native people are empowering themselves, a review of how they’ve been (and continue to be) wronged, and a warning that Canada is at an historic moment when this missing piece in nation-building must be addressed.

He does not claim to speak for aboriginal Canadians. More than ever, they do that for themselves, he says. “There’s a critical mass of aboriginal thinkers and leaders and writers who are using the methods which can get to the population at large — very fine novels, very fine essays, very fine public arguments,” he told the Star.

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Doomsay away, it’s still China’s century – by David Olive (Toronto Star – October 25, 2014)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Why China matters, even as alarms are sounding about a looming debt crisis in the People’s Republic.

More signs that this century is destined to be recalled as China’s century as much as America’s have appeared in recent weeks, even as alarms have recently been sounded about a looming debt crisis in the People’s Republic, and an alarmist but influential report this week forecasts plunging growth rates in China’s economy through to 2025.

China matters, of course, as a long-time exporter of affordable goods that have increased the standard of living, and reduced the cost of living, for hundreds of millions of North Americans and Europeans. China is also an increasingly important customer for imports. It is now the world’s biggest buyer of industrial robots, for instance. And Beijing long ago assigned to Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. the megaproject of building China’s state-of-the-art intercity commuter rail network.

China has also rapidly created industries that generate vast amounts of electric power and manufacture cars and trucks, jetliners and advanced environmental-protection goods, gaining an early lead on the U.S. in, for instance, solar panels.

“China shouldn’t be underestimated,” economics columnist John Cassidy wrote this week in The New Yorker. “Whatever one thinks of (China’s) authoritarian state-capitalism model, its success in building industries from scratch cannot be denied.”

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Coal, Climate and Orangutans in Indonesia – by Daniel Stiles (The Epoche Times – October 24, 2014)

http://www.theepochtimes.com/

What do the climate and orangutans have in common? They are both threatened by coal – the first by burning it, and the second by mining it.

At the recent United Nations Climate Summit in New York, world leaders and multinational corporations pledged a variety of actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation to avert a looming disaster caused by global warming.

Indonesia, home to most of the world’s orangutans, is a major player in both emissions and deforestation, with the third largest tropical forest area in the world, after the Amazon and the Congo Basin. In 2012, Indonesia surpassed Brazil as the country with the highest annual rate of primary forest loss. The country is also ranked the fourth top emitter of greenhouse gases in the world (after China, the U.S., and the European Union) during some years, largely due to high deforestation rates and peatland fires.

The New York Declaration on Forests, announced at the UN Climate Summit, called on partners to work to at least halve the rate of natural forest loss globally by 2020 and strive to end natural forest loss by 2030. It also targeted achieving a reduction in deforestation-related emissions by 4.5-8.8 billion tons per year by 2030.

The now-former Indonesia president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, announced in 2009 a voluntary commitment to reduce the country’s carbon footprint by 26 percent.

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Federal bill to boost transparency of public, private resource companies – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – October 25, 2014)

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.

OTTAWA — he federal government has introduced legislation requiring resource companies to publish what they pay to foreign and domestic governments, with a plan to include First Nations governments after two years.

Representatives of mining and oil and gas industries welcomed the bill Friday, saying it would make it easier for them to demonstrate the benefits of their investments to local communities at home and abroad.

The long-promised legislation was part of an omnibus bill introduced Thursday, and will impose fines for companies that fail to report payments exceeding $100,000. It covers all publicly traded companies, as well as privately held ones that meet two of the following three conditions: have at least $20-million in assets, $40-million in revenue or 250 employees.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper promised to pursue the “publish-what-you-pay” initiative at a G20 meeting in Britain in 2013. Some industry groups had urged the provincial securities commissions to take the lead on the effort to be consistent with similar rules in the United States and the European Union.

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Saskatchewan mining has quiet future – by Paul Sinkewicz (Regina Leader-Post – October 25, 2014)

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

Gouging potash from deep beneath Saskatchewan’s surface has been the work of nasty, snarling, belching beasts of machines for more than 60 years.

The application of brute force courtesy of workhorse diesel engines did the job just fine, but with each burly r.p.m. came the inevitable byproducts of internal combustion – fumes and diesel particles and the need to bring more sweet, clean air down the shaft and deep into the subterranean tendrils of the mines.

That will all change if Patric Byrns has his way. The president and CEO of PapaBravo Innovations has been rapidly creating a new way of doing business in the province’s potash mines with a line of electric trucks. They are clean, quiet and powerful, and they are attracting attention.

“You can only exhaust so much diesel particulate into a confined space without expanding the ventilation system,” said Byrns. “So, in that environment, if you can replace diesel engines with electrics, it expands their production capabilities for what they have for ventilation, and ventilation costs a lot of money.”

Byrns said converting to electric vehicles provides operators with almost a blank cheque for how many vehicles they can put underground.

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Gordienko, Hunt, Cochrane and Sigurdson: Environmentalists get facts wrong about coal – (Vancouver Province – October 26, 2014)

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

Mark Gordienko is president, International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada; Steve Hunt is director, United Steel Workers District 3; Brian Cochrane is business manager, International Union of Operating Engineers Local 115; and Tom Sigurdson is executive director, B.C. Building Trades.

“I look at it from the perspective of the importance of coal…..in terms of employment, it’s huge here but I would remind city folk that it provides employment also for people in the Greater Vancouver area.” — Sparwood Mayor Lois Halko

While there has been much attention and controversy surrounding a small, proposed coal terminal — Fraser Surrey Docks — the larger picture of how important coal mining and exports are to British Columbia’s economy is being missed.

Our unions’ members are the coal miners and workers who ship steelmaking coal from B.C. to markets overseas, where steel is made to produce everything from cellphones to wind turbines to subway cars to surgical equipment.

B.C.’s coal sector employs 26,000 people directly and indirectly, creates $3.2 billion in economic activity and generates $715 million in tax revenues for the province and B.C. cities and towns every year.

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‘Please tell people about this:’ London students’ horror at Dominican Republic mines – by Mark Spowart (Metro News – October 27, 2014)

http://metronews.ca/

Three London students were shocked by what they found last winter during a trip to the Dominican Republic. Canadian mining companies, they say, are destroying lives in the country.

“We visited the Barrick Gold mine, and while we were there, we spoke with a woman named Juliana (Rodriguez). She is 82 years old and has lived in the area for all of her life,” Klaire Gain said. “She told us the last four years, which (has seen) Barrick Gold mining in the region, have been the worst years of her life.”

Now, Gain, Claire Morrow and Natasha Jimenez — all recent graduates of the social justice and peace program at King’s University College — are working to show the world what they witnessed. Using their own money, and some brought in through fundraisers, the trio travelled back to the region this summer.

They spent two months living in the area, working on farming co-ops, meeting and talking with as many residents, along with environmental and academic experts, as they could. They also hired former CBC cameraman Mark Visser, and flew him to the region where he filmed more than 100 hours of footage for a documentary expected to be ready by spring 2015.

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BHP CEO defends iron ore strategy as best play in gloomy market – by Silvia Antonioli (Reuters U.S. – October 23, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON – (Reuters) – BHP Billiton’s chief executive said its strategy of high-volume iron ore production was the best way to profit in a gloomy market, defending a plan that has come under growing criticism for depressing prices.

Iron ore, the biggest earner for global miner BHP Billiton, has lost about 40 percent of its value this year, reaching five-year lows, as big increases in new supply from top three miners Vale, Rio Tinto and BHP have exceeded lackluster demand.

Analysts expect the price decline to continue in the next few years under the weight of extra supply.

BHP has said it intends to boost production at existing assets by 65 million tonnes to 290 million a year by June 2017 and plans to cut its production costs to overtake rival Rio Tinto as the cheapest iron ore supplier to China.

“The lowest-cost producer has a right to continue to produce at very high margins in a free market,” BHP Chief Executive Andrew Mackenzie told reporters after the company’s annual general meeting in London.

“We have always been of the view that the iron ore market is more likely to decline than rise, and therefore producing the maximum amount we can now is very sensible.”

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Coal Miners Fired in Appalachia Getting Hired in Wyoming – by Tim Loh (Bloomberg News – October 23, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

It’s boom times in Wyoming for embattled U.S. coal companies, where the mining industry is hiring workers while shedding them in Appalachia.

Alpha Natural Resources Inc. (ANR), the second-largest U.S. producer, hasn’t posted a profit in three years and is closing money-losing mines in West Virginia amid plans to increase production out West by as much as 30 percent.

Miner Steven King is going along for the ride. After losing his job last month at the company’s Black Castle operation, King, 42, is getting ready to move his family 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) to a state he’s never visited to work at an Alpha site in Wyoming.

With the U.S. coal industry in its worst decline in decades, companies including Alpha and Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU), the biggest producer, are pivoting toward pockets of future profit. No prospect is bigger than the Powder River Basin, a high, mineral-rich plain of yellow grass and sagebrush stretching from central Wyoming to southern Montana.

“It’s going to be running a good while in Wyoming, because of how much coal they put out,” said King, who expects to start work by next month. While he doesn’t know what he’ll be earning, a friend made the move a year ago and since then his base pay has increased to about $35 an hour from $25.

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The Importance of the Ring of Fire with Hon. Bob Rae

Published on Oct 23, 2014 The Ring of Fire could be the single greatest economic development opportunity for Ontario in a generation. Hon. Bob Rae speaks to its potential and the importance of accessing the undertapped pool of Aboriginal talent.

NEWS RELEASE: Balmoral Named Prospector of the Year in Quebec for Second Consecutive Year

(Vancouver, October 23, 2014) Balmoral Resources Ltd. (“Balmoral” or the “Company”) (TSX: BAR; OTCQX: BALMF) is pleased to announce that Balmoral’s exploration team has been recognized, for the second consecutive year, as the “Prospectors of the Year” in the Province of Quebec. The Company was recognized this year for the discovery of the Grasset Ni-Cu-PGE system, after winning the award in 2013 based on the Bug Lake and related gold discoveries on the Company’s nearby Martiniere Property. Balmoral is the first company to receive the award in two consecutive years, and only the second two time winner of the award. The award was presented last evening at the annual Association de L’Exploration Miniere du Quebec (“AEMQ”) awards ceremony in Montreal, Quebec.

The Grasset nickel-copper-platinum-palladium discovery is located in west-central Quebec, 55 kilometres west of Mattagami and 40 kilometres east of the Bug Lake/Martiniere Gold system. To date, the Company has intersected broad zones of Ni-Cu-PGE mineralization in two horizons, for up to 840 metres along strike. Results have been highlighted by intercepts of 45.28 metres grading 1.79% Ni, 0.19% Cu, 0.42 g/t Pt, 1.04 g/t Pd and 44.79 metres grading 1.53% Ni, 0.16% Cu, 0.37 g/t Pt and 0.86 g/t Pd. The Company recently announced a doubling of both the along strike and at depth extent of the recent Horizon 3 discovery (see NR14-22, Oct. 1, 2014). The Grasset Ni Zones occur at the southern end of a 16 kilometre long intrusive complex which is wholly controlled by the Company and is the focus of on-going exploration activities.

“Being presented with an award by one’s peers is the highest form of compliment and we thank the members of the AEMQ for bestowing this honour on us. I cannot describe how proud I am to represent a team that has been able to receive this award in consecutive years, and in 2 of its first 4 years of active exploration in the province” said Darin Wagner, President and CEO of Balmoral.

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