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Agrium eyes asset sale as new CEO narrows focus – by Boyd Erman (Globe and Mail – March 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.

Agrium Inc.’s last chief executive officer loved to buy. The new CEO is open to selling assets – and one that could end up on the market is the fertilizer company’s phosphate production operation.

In his first months on the job, Chuck Magro has made a point of saying his main priority is to “optimize” the businesses that his very acquisitive predecessor, Mike Wilson, made in his 10 years in the role. Mr. Wilson, say deal makers who know him, liked to be in everything.

Calgary-based Agrium now owns facilities producing the three big crop nutrients – potash, nitrogen and phosphate – as well as a big retail network that can sell those products and more to farmers.

Mr. Magro is not so sure the company has to be everywhere. The retail business and the North American nitrogen business are as big as anybody’s in their respective games. The potash business is relatively small, but it has advantages such as as a low cost base. Phosphate is a tougher question, Mr. Magro said in an interview in Toronto.

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‘Emotional’ testimony expected at Sudbury hearing – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – March 25, 2014)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Anyone with an opinion or idea about how to make mining safer and healthier is invited to attend public consultations in Sudbury next week that are part of the Mining Health, Safety and Prevention Review.

People who want to present must register by Wednesday for the April 2 and 3 sessions, but written submissions will be accepted after that. The review, which is being conducted by the Ontario Ministry of Labour, is being overseen by an advisory group headed by the province’s chief prevention officer, George Gritziotis.

So far that group has met twice in Sudbury, mostly to figure out the logistics of how its members will oversee a comprehensive review of mining practices in Ontario in less than a year. It will meet four more times in Sudbury.

John Perquin, who works for United Steelworkers’ international office in Pittsburgh, is vice-chair of labour for the advisory group. Businessman Fergus Kerr is vice-chair for employers.

Perquin said the advisory group isn’t sure what to expect at the public consultations because the first one won’t be held until March 31 in Timmins. But it is at those sessions committee members expect to get some of the best ideas to improve mine safety.

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Oil sands foes ignore the facts as cancer claims dealt a blow by study – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – March 25, 2014)

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

Much like other claims made by opponents of oil sands development, shocking stories about higher cancer rates among aboriginals living near such projects are falling apart with close scrutiny.

After reviewing the incidence of cancer in the Fort Chipewyan, Alta., aboriginal community between 1992 and 2011, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. James Talbot, said Monday the overall cancer rate in the community is not significantly higher than elsewhere — 81 cases, compared with 79 that would be expected in the rest of Alberta.

While three types of cancer — cervical cancer (four cases), lung cancer (eight cases) and bile duct cancer (three cases) — are slightly more prevalent, the first two are preventable through vaccination and less smoking, he said. The third is more complicated and has been linked to such risk factors as obesity, diabetes, alcohol, viral hepatitis and family history.

“There isn’t strong evidence for an association between any of these cancers and environmental exposure,” Dr. Talbot told reporters after releasing the report in Edmonton. “The perception is that there is more cancer, and to some extent the perception is correct, but it’s not unique to this community,” he said.

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In the aftermath [Elliot Lake Mall Collapse] – Mine Rescue – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – March 24, 2014)

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 Mine Rescue stood anxiously on the sidelines during the fatal Elliot Lake mall collapse, but it may prove to be a watershed event in the history and evolution of the 86-year-old volunteer organization.

In the investigative aftermath, a new relationship has sprung up between the Sudbury-based Mine Rescue and Toronto’s Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR) Task Force that was deployed to the Algo Centre Mall when the rooftop parking lot collapsed in 2012, killing two.

“I think it’s going to transform and reshape things,” said Alex Gryska, director for Mine Rescue. No formal mutual aid agreement has ever existed between them, but that could all change in the coming months.

The two organizations have met regularly since the conclusion of the Elliot Lake Inquiry’s testimony phase to talk about joint training exercises sometime this year. “We need to know the nature of how we (each) operate,” said Gryska.

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Miners target funds to spread the message on coal – by Annabel Hepworth (The Australian – March 24, 2014)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business

MINING giants are targeting Australia’s most influential superannuation funds to convince them that coal is here to stay in a dramatic escalation of a strike against environmentalists campaigning for the divestment of fossil fuel assets.

The Australian can reveal that the Minerals Council of Australia — whose members include BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Glencore — has been pitching the case for coal to more than 1000 powerbrokers at big investors.

As well as industry funds including Australian Super and Uni Super, the campaign has targeted investment managers Colonial First State, investment bank Goldman Sachs and the Australian arm of the world’s biggest asset manager BlackRock, as well as ratings agencies.

The move is an escalation of the industry’s plans to take on the fossil fuel divestment campaign, where green groups are pushing investors to dump their holdings in coal companies. The approach is modelled heavily on the South African divestment campaign against apartheid. The Greens have been demanding that the $96.6 billion Future Fund get out of coal.

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NEWS RELEASE: Royal Nickel Welcomes Construction of World’s First Processing Plant Capable of Producing Stainless Steel Directly Utilizing Nickel Sulphide Concentrate

Leading Chinese Stainless Steel Producer Tsingshan Expects to Bring Plant into Operation in 2014

Follows Strategic Alliance between Tsingshan and Royal Nickel

TORONTO, March 24, 2014 /CNW/ – Royal Nickel Corporation (TSX: RNX) (“RNC”) is pleased to report that Tsingshan Holding Group (“Tsingshan”), a party with whom RNC entered a strategic alliance in March 2013, is currently constructing the world’s first integrated nickel pig iron (“NPI”) plant to utilize nickel sulphide concentrate as part of the stainless steel production process. The plant is expected to begin operation within this year.

This significant innovation represents the first time that nickel sulphide concentrate will be directly used to create stainless steel. This innovation offers significant potential benefits to the producers of suitable nickel sulphide concentrate feed including lower costs due to simpler processing compared to traditional smelting and refining, and greater flexibility for more potential partners and customers. This plant is also expected to be possibly capable of handling nickel sulphide concentrate anticipated to be produced from RNC’s Dumont Nickel Project (“Dumont”).

Mark Selby, Interim President and CEO, commented, “The Tsingshan plant in China is an industry first and a positive development for projects such as Dumont.

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Philippine finance minister says government must get more revenue from mining – by Rosemarie Francisco and Erik dela Cruz (Reuters India – March 24, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

MANILA – (Reuters) – The Philippine finance minister said he will push mining companies to pay bigger shares of their revenue to the government even though the industry maintains that taxes are already too high and higher ones could kill the business.

Taxation of Philippine miners is a thorny issue that has delayed development of the country’s vast mineral resources. President Benigno Aquino, seeking to raise revenue from mining, has met stiff resistance.

Philippine Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima told the Reuters ASEAN Summit on Monday that the government should be getting one-half of gross revenue from mining. Last year, according to a government agency, direct state revenue from mining was worth only 2 percent of total output, though miners also pay corporate income tax of 32 percent and other fees to different agencies.

“Where I start is 50-50,” Purisima told the summit, held at the Reuters office in Manila. “The return of the government must be two-fold — as owner of the mineral, and two, as a taxing authority.”

Still, Purisima said it is the Philippine Congress that will decide the revenue-sharing formula, taking into account the industry’s position.

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Business leaders plug Canada to Brazilian companies – by Stephanie Nolen (Globe and Mail – March 22, 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.

RIO DE JANEIRO — Canada is a stable, predictable country where “some of the rules are tough, but you know what they are,” and Brazilian companies will find it astoundingly easy to set up shop here, an audience of business leaders heard in Rio de Janeiro this week. That ringing endorsement came from no less an authority than Luciano Siani, chief financial officer of Vale SA, which has the highest-profile Brazilian investment in Canada.

Mr. Siani described his company’s move to set up potash operations in Saskatchewan in 2009: “We were promptly welcomed by a central agency of the government that provided us in a few months with a contract for gas, water, energy – there was no difficulty whatsoever to get all of the logistics for the project. And these are things that would have taken several years here in Brazil … it would be a nightmare.”

Mr. Siani made this unexpected plug for Canada at an event organized by the Canadian consulate in Rio, which brought BMO Financial Group vice-chairperson Kevin Lynch to town to talk up Canada as its “investment champion.” Canada’s trade with Brazil is currently $6-billion a year. That’s up 25 per cent from where it was five years ago, but it is still only the equivalent of four days of Canada-U.S. trade, Mr. Lynch noted.

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Excellon CEO talks Mexican tax reform and strategy – by Anthony Vaccaro (Northern Miner – March 21, 2014)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry.

Excellon Resources’ (TSX: EXN) La Platosa Mine in Durango is one of the world’s highest grade silver mines. The mine also boasts lead and zinc byproducts that help make it one of the lowest cash cost silver mines in Mexico.

The company’s CEO, Brendan Cahill, took some time to sit down with The Northern Miner at the recent Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention in Toronto to discuss recent changes to Mexico’s tax code and Excellon’s strategy for thriving in a low cost commodity environment.

The Northern Miner: Your company, like other producers in Mexico such as Sierra Metals (TSX: SMT), took a more expedited route towards production, eschewing the formalities of completing a bankable feasibility study. Is there something about Mexico that allows companies to fast-track to production?

Brendan Cahill: With all the talk of tax reform, when you go through the checklist of things a company is looking for in a country it is going to invest in — the geology, the security, the community relations, education, stability of government — it is still better than almost anywhere else in the world for building a mine.

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Investors worried about Ukraine miss the real problem: China – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – March 22, 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.

Rome — What’s scarier if you are an investor with an over-the-horizon view: The Ukraine crisis or the economic slowdown in China?

Blinded by the media glare, you would probably pick the Ukraine crisis, which began last month with the ousting of the country’s corrupt, pro-Moscow president and may have reached its climax this week with Russia’s annexation of Crimea – Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss moment.

But maybe the climax has yet to come. Investors in North America and the European Union are duly worried that the sanctions designed to punish Mr. Putin and his cronies will evolve into full-blown trade, investment and banking sanctions that would severely damage the Russian economy, the world’s eighth largest. Broad, punitive sanctions could in turn trigger retaliatory sanctions that could damage the fragile EU economy (less so the U.S. economy).

We got a hint of the possible mess to come on Friday, when Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev threatened to raise the price that Ukraine pays for natural gas and sue the country for $11-billion (U.S.) in arrears to Gazprom, the Russian state gas exporter.

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Going deep underground in Canada in search of dark matter – by Ivan Semeniuk (Globe and Mail – March 22, 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.

SUDBURY, Ont. — The deeper you go, the higher you fly. The Beatles lyric seems apt while I’m plunging down a mine shaft at 10 metres a second. My ears pop as the open-air elevator descends and the bare rock walls rush past in a blur.

After three minutes we’re two kilometres below ground, and the elevator stops. We’ve finally reached the level of SNOLAB. Located near Sudbury, Ont., it’s one of the world’s deepest laboratories and a place where scientists are hoping to answer a riddle of cosmic proportions: What is dark matter?

Unseen but ever present, dark matter makes up 85 per cent of all the stuff in the universe. Like an invisible conductor, its gravity guides the motions of galaxies and stars. When the universe began, dark matter helped to shepherd atoms together, ultimately making it possible for planets to form and life to emerge. Until we understand dark matter, we won’t really understand why we exist.

Like the Higgs boson, which was confirmed last year, or the gravitational echoes from the Big Bang reported earlier this week, the detection of dark matter would be a Nobel Prize-worthy find – one that would offer a genuinely new piece of information about the nature of reality.

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Investors return to Indonesia, but World Bank warns of challenges – by Peter Alford (The Australian – March 24, 2014)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

WHILE a resumption of strong portfolio flows so far this year suggests the Indonesia story is getting renewed and favourable consideration from foreign investors, the World Bank has warned the country faces a highly challenging 2014.

The bank’s new Indonesian Economic Quarterly, pointedly titled Investment in Flux, appears as investment confidence, domestic and foreign, has got another lift from the confirmation of Jakarta governor Joko Widodo will contest, and most likely win, the 2014 presidential race.

The decision by Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle doyenne Megawati Sukarnoputri that “Jokowi” — not she — would carry the party’s banner in July lifted the Jakarta stockmarket 4 per cent in the final two hours of trade on Friday, while the currency strengthened nearly 2 per cent against the US dollar.

The 52-year-old former small businessman from Jogjakarta is perceived by investors, domestic and foreign, as by far the most market rationalist of the main candidates. A Jokowi administration is expected to promote public-private investment in critically underfunded sectors like transport infrastructure and healthcare.

The Jokowi effect reinforces strengthening sentiment about Indonesia apparent since late January, which in turn reflects significant improvements in current account deficit, government fiscal deficit and inflation outlook since the third quarter of last year.

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[Yellowknife] Giant Mine bomber now seeking day parole – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – March 24, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Convicted of the deaths of nine miners during a bitter strike at a Yellowknife gold mine, a former miner has applied for day parole for the first time, despite being eligible since 2010.

RENO (MINEWEB) – A former miner convicted of committing one of Canada’s worst mass murders during one of the most violent mining strikes in the nation’s history is seeking day parole.

Roger Warren, who confessed and was convicted in 1995 of nine counts of second-degree murder in connection to the 1992 bombing at Yellowknife’s Giant Mine, is serving a life sentence.

The September 18, 1992, blast set by Warren exploded when a rail car transporting mining replacement workers hit a trip wire.  Between 1948 and 2004, the Giant Mine was a major economic driver for Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories.

Royal Oak bought the Giant Mine in 1990 when the price of gold dropped below mining costs. Then-mining CEO, Margaret Witte, slashed costs and increased production although the union complained that mine safety was comprised. The union went on strike in May 1992 with the strike lasting 18 months.

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The next age of mining? – by Cole Latimer (Australian Mining – March 21, 2014)

http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/home

Are we entering the last age of the open cut mine? Is the end of open pit mining near? Speaking to a number of sources, the answer is clearly no, but as grades decrease and deposits become deeper, the increase of underground mining will continue apace as older open cut mines are worked out and new, deeper deposits are discovered.

Underground mining will soon count for a much larger proportion of total mining. According to a Rio Tinto seminar in 2010, in 2009 underground operations accounted for 26 per cent of all copper production, however Rio forecast that by 2025 underground operations would account for 40 per cent of global copper production.

This included major copper producers such as Chile and Australia, where massive open cut pits are the norm. But this is not to say open cut mining has been uneconomical. Surface mining has been, for some time, the most economical form of mining in Australia.

Underground contract mining specialist Pybar’s group business development manager David Noort told Australian Mining “open cut mines have been, economically, the most viable, which has been due to relatively near surface expressions”.

With wide open spaces and often remote locations, it has been the more cost effective form of mining, but globally it has already started coming to an end, with Noort explaining that “many of these higher grade expressions close to the surface have already been discovered, so we are left chasing ore down”.

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INSIGHT-Russia’s leading role in the Indonesian mining revolution – by Randy Fabi and Fergus Jensen (Reuters U.S. – March 23, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

JAKARTA, March 24 (Reuters) – Russia’s two metal giants have emerged as big winners from Indonesia’s new mining law, after leading a drive to get Jakarta to stick to its controversial mineral ore export ban in the face of opposition from miners and Asian buyers.

In its six-month lobbying campaign last year, United Company Rusal and Norilsk Nickel delivered a blunt message to Indonesian officials: We will only invest billions of dollars in smelters if you ban bauxite and nickel ore exports.

The effort seemed to have paid off, despite a denial by Indonesia that it was influenced. When the law came into effect this year, Indonesia enforced a water-tight export ban for only two major minerals – nickel ore and bauxite.

The halting of $3 billion of annual nickel ore and bauxite exports has already lifted the price of nickel and helped support aluminium, boosting the fortunes of Rusal and Norilsk, the world’s top aluminium and nickel producers, respectively.

At the same time, it has strengthened the case for the pair to invest billions of dollars in Indonesia to build smelters to replace costly capacity in Russia, a key part of a recovery plan for struggling Rusal and in line with Indonesia’s own aims to earn more from its minerals resources.

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