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Jakarta jubilant as nickel soars, China plans smelters – by Melanie Burton and Fergus Jensen (Reuters India – May 19, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

SYDNEY/JAKARTA – May 19 (Reuters) – When Indonesia vowed to halt exports of mineral ore to wring more profit from its rich resources, many predicted the policy would be an economic own-goal.

But in the case of nickel, at least, Indonesia is proving its doubters wrong as the price of the metal soars and Chinese producers starved of raw material begin to ship equipment for processing plants to the Southeast Asian nation.

Just four months after a ban on ore exports, one smelter is under construction and equipment for two others has been shipped from China to Indonesia, including a dismantled blast furnace, industry sources told Reuters.

At least two other firms plan to start construction of processing plants by year-end or shortly after, amid fears that China’s nickel-pig iron industry is running out of raw material.

“It’s been a success,” Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik told Reuters. One Chinese firm that told Reuters it expected to start production by year-end at the earliest said the smelter would produce nickel pig iron with 4 percent metal content, which then would be shipped back to China for production of higher value grades with 10-15 percent metal.

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Ontario needs its own immigration program [Ring of Fire proposal] – by Viresh Fernando Tim Leahy (Toronto Star – May 19, 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.

Viresh Fernando is a chartered accountant, lawyer and international investment consultant. Tim Leahy is an immigration lawyer.

The Constitution grants concurrent power to the provinces and Ottawa over immigration. Quebec wisely took full control over immigration in 1991. It is time for Ontario to do likewise.

Quebec has used its immigration program to attract capital to fund Quebec businesses, thereby increasing employment, to target immigrants to fill skill shortages and to maintain and enhance French language and culture by attracting francophones. Quebec’s immigration program has been very successful on social, cultural, economic and political levels.

Other provinces and territories have lesser accords. For example, Ottawa allows Prince Edward Island to select “investor immigrants” who have a net worth of at least $2 million, who commit to invest $800,000 in approved projects within P.E.I. and agree to reside in the province. P.E.I. makes all selection decisions and the federal government’s role is limited to ensuring that these nominees are not medically or criminally inadmissible. Thus, processing of investor immigrants is expedited and, most importantly, P.E.I. directs where the investment is made.

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Ontario election: On jobs, leaders offer some good, some bad, but little revolutionary – by David Olive (Toronto Star – May 17, 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. 

The province that pioneered innovations from insulin to smartphones is falling behind.

In recent years, Nortel Networks Corp., BlackBerry Ltd., the U.S. Steel-owned Stelco Inc., the Caterpillar Inc.-owned Electro-Motive Diesel, Kellogg Co. and H.J. Heinz Co. have laid off more than 100,000 Ontario workers. That’s the short list. No sooner had the current Ontario election campaign begun than Unilever PLC said it would shut down its Brampton plant, maker of Knorr and Lipton foods, at a cost of more than 450 jobs.

Unfortunately, the job-creation centrepieces of the three major parties contesting the June 12 Ontario election would not curb that misery or do much if anything to recapture lost jobs.

Oddly, Hudak’s plan for creating jobs starts with destroying 100,000 of them, held by public servants. That’s 100,000 additional EI recipients draining the federal treasury. (There is only one taxpayer, as Tories like to point out.) Hudak, not gifted with a sense of irony, acknowledges that his own parents and his sister have been employed by government, as indeed Hudak himself has been for the past 19 years.

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Robert Friedland’s son going public with African uranium play – by Peter Koven (National Post – May 17, 2014)

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

It is awfully tough for a mining company in the beaten-down uranium sector to raise money these days. But it doesn’t hurt if the executive chairman has the last name “Friedland.”

That’s Govind, not Robert. Govind Friedland’s company, appropriately named GoviEx Uranium Inc., has filed a final prospectus for an initial public offering on the Canadian Securities Exchange. It is a small deal expected to raise between US$1.5-million and US$5-million, with up to 2.3 million shares being issued at US$2.15 each.

There are more than 117 million shares outstanding today, though only 24.5% of them will be converted into freely-trading stock following the IPO. Vancouver-based GoviEx will use the proceeds to fund work on its Madaouela project in Niger.

Govind is the son of legendary mining financier Robert Friedland, and he has spent plenty of time working for his father’s companies. But he also made a name for himself with his uranium exploration work in Niger.

Between 2007 and 2011, GoviEx raised roughly US$100-million in private funds to pursue uranium opportunities in the West African nation, according to the IPO prospectus. The company attracted big-name investors like Cameco Corp. and Toshiba Corp. in that period.

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Big Oil’s kindred spirit Jim Prentice must now convince ordinary Albertans – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – May 17, 2014)

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

It has been a while since Alberta’s oil community found a kindred spirit like Jim Prentice to take a run at the premier’s chair.

After weeks of orchestrated suspense, Mr. Prentice picked up his nomination papers on Thursday, the first step on a path that could make him leader of Alberta’s reigning Progressive Conservative party by the fall. Seen as a superstar candidate, Mr. Prentice has been deliberately tight lipped about his plans, which he is expected to formally announce next week.

If all unfolds as strategized, the 57-year-old Mr. Prentice — a former aboriginal claims lawyer, federal Indian affairs, industry and environment cabinet minister, bank executive, and self-described ‘honest broker’ between the oil community and British Columbia aboriginals to resolve differences over the Northern Gateway pipeline — would be the most qualified Albertan to become premier since Peter Lougheed.

Many in the corporate community admire what they see as a great personal sacrifice to return to public service. Mr. Prentice is trading a well-paid banking career and top-drawer corporate directorships for the leadership of a stale political party that after 43 years in power may not win the next election.

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First Nations leader Phil Fontaine: An angry radical embraces compromise – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – May 17, 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 — At 30 years old, Phil Fontaine was an angry man.

A survivor of sexual abuse at a residential school, separated from his parents at a young age, forbidden from speaking his native language, the Anishinaabe from Manitoba was elected at the age of 29 as chief for the Sagkeeng First Nation, situated east of Lake Winnipeg. By his own account, he was impatient and belligerent, especially in his dealings with government bureaucrats.

The former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations mellowed over the years. He became convinced he could do more for aboriginal people through compromise and pragmatic action than angry radicalism. But he remains passionate about the need for Canada to address the appalling poverty among First Nations people. He sees resource development as one way to end that poverty.

Now 69, Mr. Fontaine works with some of this country’s largest companies – the Royal Bank of Canada and TransCanada Corp. – to advance their interests among aboriginal Canadians and to advise them on how to support First Nations communities and businesses.

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First Nations have a say in resource development, not a veto -by Brian Lee Crowley (Globe and Mail – May 16, 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.

Duty to consult and accommodate. Remember those five words. Properly applied, they could help usher in a new era of co-operation between First Nations and natural resource development. Ignored or disregarded by governments, or used to raise unrealistic expectations of unlimited aboriginal power, they could herald a period of discord, mistrust and lost opportunity – including for indigenous people.

The words themselves are drawn from a Supreme Court decision on a British Columbia government decision to transfer some tree licences to a forestry company. The Haida First Nation sought an injunction to stop the transfer, because it believed it violated their aboriginal rights. The B.C. government claimed it had the traditional legal and constitutional authority to manage the province’s natural resources as it deemed appropriate.

When the issue reached the Supreme Court, neither party got what it wanted. Instead of confirming government power, or transferring some or all of that power to aboriginal peoples, the court created the duty on governments to consult and accommodate aboriginal interests when government decisions encroach on potential or established aboriginal or treaty rights.

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Why Ontario is the Silicon Valley of the North– by Mark J. Barrenechea (Globe and Mail – May 16, 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.

Mark J. Barrenechea is President and CEO of OpenText Corporation.

California’s Highway 101 stretches 95 kilometres between San Francisco and San Jose, connecting small and large technology companies, students, innovators and venture capitalists. Nestled around Highway 101 is the largest innovation corridor in the world – Silicon Valley.

Similarly, Ontario’s tree-lined Highway 401 stretches 115 kilometres between Toronto and Waterloo, also connecting small and large technology companies, students, innovators and venture capitalists. Last year, this Ontario corridor surpassed all other cities and regions and became the world’s second largest innovation corridor. It is the Silicon Valley of the North.

In my 25 years in technology, I have traveled both valleys end-to-end and the similarities between the two corridors are more striking than their differences.

Silicon Valley employs approximately 380,000 tech workers; the Toronto-Waterloo corridor has nearly 280,000. The Waterloo Region boasts nearly 1,000 companies, contributing more than $30-billion annually to the global economy. In 2013, Startup Genome ranked Waterloo as 16th among the world’s 20 global startup hubs.

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Platinum industry: Golden goose – or dying duck? – by Lisa Steyn (Mail and Guardian – May 16, 2014)

http://mg.co.za/

Platinum producers have oversupplied the market to such an extent that, even if nothing was mined for an entire year, global demand would still be more than satisfied.

This has been the case for several years now, with the industry producing more than what the market requires. Analysts say the over-production is the result of overly optimistic predictions of demand for platinum, mainly used in the manufacture of autocatalysts, which date as far back as a decade ago.

But the forecasts have proved incorrect, and efficiencies such as recycling technologies have muted the need for new platinum production.

Still, platinum mining companies have continued to pile up the precious metal, meaning that the commodity price has been under pressure. Despite limited or no production from the major mining houses as the strike persisted over the past four months, the oversupply of platinum is so substantial that the metal price – staying around the level of $1 450 an ounce – has failed to respond notably to the developments.

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Eric Sprott: Gold shortage coming, data shows (Mining.com – May 15, 2014)

http://www.mining.com/

Eric Sprott, Founder and Chairman of Sprott Asset Management, said recently that he expects a “significant re-rating of the gold price” due to high physical demand from China and India, coupled with a gold supply shortfall. The effect, which he calls the “Chinese Gold Vortex,” is rapidly taking physical gold from West to East. When the West runs out of gold, the price should go much higher, he believes. I recently spoke with him on the phone about his near-term views.

Hello Eric, what do you see happening today in the metals markets?

Eric Sprott: I am very excited about developments in the gold and silver markets today. I have been speculating since late 2012 that Western central banks could be running out of gold. I put the sell-off in gold and silver in 2013 to the fact that the Western banks needed a way to generate physical gold supplies. As the metals prices went down, there was a lot of liquidation of gold which increased the supply by an estimated 900 tonnes last year.

Let’s look at the figures. The annual supply of gold is around 4,300 tonnes. 3,000 tonnes come from mining and the other 1,300 tonnes or so from recycled material2. In 2013, an additional 900 tonnes came onto the market from ETFs that were being liquidated – a supply increase of around 21%.

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Mine Disaster Casts Harsh Light on Turkey’s Premier – by TIM ARANGO, KAREEM FAHIM and SEBNEM ARSUMAY (New York Times – May 16, 2014)

http://www.nytimes.com/

SOMA, Turkey — There was no one to treat in the first aid tents near the entrance to the mine, where nearby an old woman wailed, “Our children are burning!” A man and his wife, dazed from a lack of sleep, walked the muddy grounds, looking for information that no one in the government could provide.

“This is how they steal people’s lives,” said the grieving father, Bayram Uckun, who like many here has become increasingly angry with the government for its response to the disaster. “This government is taking our country back 90 years.”

The body of Mr. Uckun’s son, and those of at least 17 other men, was almost certainly still trapped underground, after the deadliest industrial accident in Turkey’s modern history. But with the death toll from Tuesday’s accident expected to rise above 300, this disaster has quickly metastasized from a local tragedy into a new political crisis for the Islamist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Relatives wept during a funeral service on Thursday in Soma, Turkey. Officials have confirmed 284 deaths in the mining accident, Turkey’s worst.Public Discontent Rises as Families Gather to Bury Victims of Turkish Mine DisasterMAY 15, 2014
Labor unions staged a one-day national strike on Friday as security forces shot tear gas and water cannons at protesters in Soma, in the capital, Ankara, and in Istanbul.

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Pro-business Modi storms to historic election win – by RAJESH KUMAR SINGH AND ADITI SHAH (Reuters India – May 16, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Narendra Modi thundered to victory on Friday in election, trouncing the ruling Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in a seismic political shift that gives the Hindu nationalist and his party a mandate for sweeping economic reform.

Modi’s landslide, the most resounding election victory India has seen in 30 years, was welcomed with a blistering rally on India’s stock markets and raucous celebrations at offices across the country of his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), where supporters danced, let off fireworks and handed out sweets.

The BJP looked certain of a parliamentary majority, giving the 63-year-old former tea-seller ample room to advance reforms started 23 years ago by current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh but which stalled in recent years.

Speaking to a sea of people dressed in the party’s official orange colours and chanting his name in his home state of Gujarat, Modi thanked the nation, and immediately addressed concerns his pro-Hindu leanings would sideline minorities.

“The age of divisive politics has ended, from today onwards the politics of uniting people will begin,” Modi said. “We want more strength for the wellbeing of the country … I see a glorious and prosperous India.”

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Are the clouds parting for junior miners? – by Alisha Hiyate (Mining Markets Magazine – May 16, 2014)

http://www.miningmarkets.ca/

Slow, volatile recovery under way; exploration interest remains limited

Junior miner Novo Resources (CSE: NVO) checks all the boxes: It’s led by a well-known, connected and respected geologist; it has several prospective gold projects (one of which has an inferred resource) in the low-risk jurisdiction of Australia; it has a tight share structure and supportive shareholders (including Newmont Mining [NYSE: NEM], which bought a 35.7% stake in the junior last year); and it has managed to deliver both positive news and an increasing share price over the past three tumultuous years.

But the next time Novo needs its next infusion of cash, company president and CEO Quinton Hennigh won’t be looking to the equity market. “I’m looking at alternative means,” he said in late April. “I can’t speak too much about it at the moment, but we have two opportunities that could actually bring money into the treasury without having to raise equity.”

The company won’t need to raise cash until 2015 — it has $10 million in cash and only plans to spend $4.5-5 million this year. But three years into the current mining downturn, it’s telling that Hennigh, who last led Novo to the market for an equity financing in December 2012 and who released an initial inferred resource of 8.9 million tonnes grading 1.47 grams gold per tonne at the Beatons Creek project last year, is seeking to avoid the equity market.

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Moving Kiruna: what does it take to relocate a city? – by Rhys Thomas (World Finance – April 9, 2014)

http://www.worldfinance.com/

The irresistible call of the world’s biggest [underground] deposit of iron ore is forcing the Swedish city of Kiruna to move two miles east, signalling a new beginning for its citizens. But can this groundbreaking project succeed with so much at stake?

As the northernmost city in Sweden, Kiruna is used to seemingly endless winters, short, cold summers, and relative isolation in the vast expanse of Swedish Lapland. Its population, just shy of 20,000, has learned to expect adverse weather and the long dark night that descends on the city between December and January – all things that are part and parcel of living some 90 miles above the Arctic Circle. They could not have expected the gravity of the newest challenge that the city faces – a problem that simply must be overcome, before it swallows it whole.

When state-owned Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) – one of Sweden’s biggest mining companies – told the residents of Kiruna it needed to dig deeper into the mountain near the city to extract more iron ore, some eyebrows might have been raised. Veterans of the city would remember that in the 1970s rampant expansion forced the city’s Ön district to be vacated and the residents moved elsewhere.

What they probably didn’t realise was the scale of what would have to happen this time. LKAB didn’t want one district to be vacated.

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In The Amazon, A New Mining Frontier For Iron Ore – by Marina Amaral (Huffington Post/Angencia Publica – March 4, 2014)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theworldpost/

Meet Canaã dos Carajás, the new frontier of iron ore mining. It’s in the South of Brazil’s Para, where jobs and mining royalties did not bring as much progress as expected.

Between 1982 and 1985, Brazil’s last military ruler, João Figueiredo, settled 1,551 families through colonization projects around the mining area of the Carajás Forest, in the south of Para state in the Amazon. The project to exploit the world’s biggest high-grade iron ore, discovered in 1967, started to get momentum after the first mine in Serra de Carajás (Carajas Hills) was opened. Today it is a complex that produces about $13 billion worth of iron ore per year, most of which is exported.

The early settlers, however, had no idea that they were going to live on top of the “biggest project ever” of Vale — the world’s second mining corporation.

The goal of the military government was to reduce land conflicts in the Bico de Papagaio (“Parrot’s Beak”) region. The region was the center of the Araguaia guerrilla in the 1970s and is mainly situated around reserves holding an estimated 18 billion tons of iron ore, as well as deposits of manganese, copper, nickel, and gold.

Today, Vale digs 110 million tons of iron ore from the North Hills of Carajás. With the new project, called S11D, the company aims to double the production by exploring the South Hills of Serra dos Carajás until 2016.

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