Republic of Mining

Northern Growth Plan stunted – by Elaine Della-Mattia (Sault Star – March 14, 2014)

March 17, 2014

http://www.saultstar.com/

It was designed as a plan that would be the blueprint for growth across Northern Ontario for the next 25 years. However, since it was first released in March 2011, communities have not seen much action to implement the plan, penned as something to give government priorities, initiatives and investments in the North.

There have been suggestions that the comprehensive plan takes time to implement and it must be done in steps and stages, but few communities, to date, have seen any action.

Sault Ste. Marie CAO Joe Fratesi said that while the Northern Ontario mayors met with Premier Kathleen Wynne and senior cabinet ministers in Timmins last fall, Sault Ste. Marie and other communities have not seen much movement.

The group is to meet again in Thunder Bay in April with Northern Development and Mines Minister Michael Gravelle. Mayor Debbie Amaroso said the Ministry of Transportation has never said when its study on the North’s transportation needs would be completed, despite her asking the question at the Timmins meeting.

Takeover of Augusta would heighten concern over Rosemont’s promises – by Tony Davis (Arizona Daily Star – March 16, 2014)

March 17, 2014

http://azstarnet.com/

If Hudbay Minerals Inc. takes over Augusta Resource Corp., it will inherit far more than a massive copper mine site outside Tucson, a potential for huge production and profits, and an equally massive controversy.

It will face a truckload of legal obligations and commitments to mitigate and compensate for the mine’s environmental impacts. It will also face questions and concerns from the community about how real those commitments are — questions that don’t always have simple answers.

Over the past seven years, Rosemont Copper and its Canadian parent Augusta have promised verbally and in writing to carry out dozens if not hundreds of mitigation measures for the planned Rosemont Mine in the Santa Rita Mountains. Those commitments have mushroomed in number and scale as the mine has inched closer to final federal permitting decisions, which Augusta expects by June but which Hudbay has predicted will take much longer.

Toronto-based Hudbay is nearing the final stages of its Augusta takeover effort. On Friday, it extended the deadline for Augusta shareholders from Wednesday to April 2 to decide whether to accept the takeover bid.

McEwen Mining’s president gives the BEST answer on why someone should consider a career in mining – by Michael Allan McCrae (Mining.com – March 16, 2014)

March 17, 2014

http://www.mining.com/

McEwen Mining’s president discussed innovation, why the company has not cut back on exploration and why more young people should consider a career in mining.

Ian Ball spoke with MINING.com in early March while he was preparing to meet shareholders before the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada convention. McEwen Mining is gold and silver miner miner operating in the Americas. The company was founded by mining legend Rob McEwen, the founder and former Chairman and CEO of Goldcorp. McEwen Mining’s stated goal is to qualify for inclusion in the S&P 500.

While miners cut back on exploration expenses during the drop in commodity prices last year, Ball said McEwen Mining’s (NYSE:MUX) programs were kept in place since the company believe that is how it would ultimately out-perform its peers. He pointed to the company’s Gold Bar project.

Copper miners eye increase in output – by James Wilson (Financial Times – March 16, 2014)

March 17, 2014

http://www.ft.com/home/us

Copper producers plan to expand mine capacity and output to record levels again this year, underlining potential additional downward pressures on prices, which have fallen steeply recently.

Prices for the red metal tumbled last week to the lowest level since 2010, amid signs of sluggish demand and the building up of inventories in China, by far the largest market for copper and most other metals. The copper market is closely watched as a gauge of global economic health.

Global copper miners – of which the largest are Codelco of Chile, Freeport-McMoRan, Glencore Xstrata and BHP Billiton – plan expansions of mine capacity that would add between 1.1m tonnes and 1.3m tonnes of copper annually to the market until 2016, according to data provider SNL Financial.

Such increases would be roughly equivalent to the annual output of Escondida, the world’s largest mine, which provides about 5 per cent of world supply.

Johannesburg’s Golden Legacy Includes Radioactive Dump – by Kevin Crowley (Bloomberg News – February 10, 2014)

March 17, 2014

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Johannesburg sits atop the world’s most productive gold reef — a staggering 40,000 tons of the precious metal has been mined from it during a history tracing back 130 years. That legacy of riches has left behind a toxic inheritance: radioactivity from uranium hauled up in the mining process.

Scientists have found uranium quantities in rivers west of the city to be as much as 4,000 times natural levels and in tap water as much as 20 times higher. A soil sample taken by Bloomberg News and tested by government-certified WaterLab Ltd. from pumpkin roots grown a little more than a mile from a recently closed gold mine contained five times more uranium than background levels considered normal by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Residents of Johannesburg and surrounding communities live among an estimated 600,000 metric tons of uranium buried in waste rock and covering an area four times the size of Manhattan, according to university researchers. Another undetermined amount lies below ground, where water has filled abandoned mines and leaks into the environment.

“There’s nowhere in the world where you’ll find so many people living alongside such a vast amount of ore-bearing uranium,” said Carl Albrecht, head of research at the Cancer Association of South Africa, or Cansa.

Peter Munk: A mining magnate nears the end of his golden reign – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – March 15, 2015)

March 15, 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.

KLOSTERS, SWITZERLAND – On a chilly evening in early March, Peter Munk picks me up from my hotel in his tiny Fiat Punto, manual transmission, that he drives himself. His wife Melanie is stuffed in the back and our destination is the local schnitzel restaurant, where the Munks are treated like anyone else in Klosters, the Swiss ski village near Davos.

What a change. The last time I spent more than a few minutes with Mr. Munk was in 2008, in Montenegro’s glorious Bay of Kotor, the Mediterranean’s only fjord. We were on his chartered superyacht, the 50-metre Te Manu, a nautical pleasure palace with a crew of 11 that would have made any oligarch proud.

Has Mr. Munk, the founder, co-chairman and former chief executive officer of Barrick Gold Corp., fallen on hard times since then? Yes and no.

At $27-billion, Barrick is worth less than half of its peak in 2011, just before the gold price collapsed and the financial horror of the company’s now-suspended Pascua-Lama mining project in the Andes was exposed. Mr. Munk’s wealth has declined along with the share price (although he owns only 2.1 million common shares), but certainly not to the point where he is flying economy and forgoing oysters and champagne.

Instead, the Fiat represents the new, simpler life of the Hungarian emigrant to Canada who turned a motley collection of gold assets into the world’s mightiest gold producer. Mr. Munk will leave the Barrick board at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Toronto on April 30, after which John Thornton will go from co-chairman to chairman.

Why building a mine on budget is so rare – by Alisha Hiyate (Mining Markets – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 2014

http://www.miningmarkets.ca/

There is a well-established history of capital cost overruns in the mining industry stretching back at least 50 years, mining analyst Christopher Haubrich told the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) conference in Toronto in early March.

In fact, since 1965, capital cost overruns in the sector have averaged between 20% and 60%. Even so, there has been little investigation into the cause of the problem, said Haubrich.

“Retrospectively looking at capital cost overruns has obviously not helped at all,” Haubrick noted. “We still have a problem, we have for at least 50 years as I’ve mentioned, and all reports suggest that we will continue having a problem.”

Haubrich, however, came to the PDAC armed with some new insight into the cause of capital cost overruns, a topic he researched while interning at Colorado-based Resource Capital Funds (RCF) on a fellowship arranged through the Colorado School of Mines for eight months last year. Haubrich noted that the research he presented belonged to RCF, but that the conclusions were his own.

In a statistical analysis of 50 mines built between 2005 and 2013 that were representative of the industry, Haubrich said that only two of the many factors that are often given for capex overruns — including poor execution or engineering, poor weather, inflation and currency fluctuations — had a statistically significant association with capital cost overruns.

Half-mln tonne zinc position sparks jitters about hidden stocks – by Eric Onstad (Reuters India – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

LONDON, March 14 (Reuters) – Metals markets are nervous that nearly half a million tonnes of hidden zinc may be delivered on the London Metal Exchange next week, shaking a market unsure about the extent of further concealed stocks.

Investors who had bought into a bullish story about zinc may be particularly concerned since the appearance of the unforeseen inventories could weigh on prices of zinc, the top LME performer last year.

LME zinc stocks MZNSTX-TOTAL have declined by a third over the past 12 months, encouraging bullish investors, but analysts are uncertain about how much more inventory is stashed away in off-exchange depots in financing deals.

“It’s a very real risk that we do see a very big physical delivery onto the LME at some point over the next week,” said analyst Gayle Berry at Barclays in London. “There has been, we think, a large accumulation of unreported zinc inventories, which could be mobilised to deliver against a large short futures position.”

Quebec and Ontario: Different Mining Acts for Similar Issues – by Herb Shields and Raymond Goulet – (Stantec Blog -March 14, 2014)

March 14, 2014

http://stantecinc.blogspot.ca/

Herb Shields is an Aboriginal Relations Specialist with Stantec. Raymond Goulet is a Principal, Environment Services with Stantec.

In the 2012-2013 Fraser Institute Mining Survey, Ontario and Quebec virtually tied for 8-9th position in a global ranking of mining jurisdictions. Both Canadian provinces have taken a serious look at their respective Mining Acts and made significant amendments to address concerns and pressures from their constituents. What are the chief reasons for these changes and what do they mean for mineral exploration and development in each province?

1. Aboriginal communities. Quebec’s Act now contains three provisions that relate specifically to Aboriginal communities. First, Quebec is to draw up an Aboriginal community consultation policy specific to the mining sector; second, the Act states that it is to be construed in a manner consistent with the obligation to consult Aboriginal communities; and third, the Act requires Quebec to consult them separately (Chapter 1 – Application, Interpretation).

Driving the Ontario Mining Act amendments was a need to enhance Aboriginal consultation approaches. Ontario’s modernized Mining Act included several regulations and subsequent policies whose objective is to implement effective consultation protocols and foster positive Aboriginal-government-industry relations.

Agencies Dodge Responsibility for Human Cost of Mountaintop-Removal Coal Mining – by Mary Anne Hitt (Huffington Post – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

Mary Anne Hitt is director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

This week, we got some disappointing news – a judge ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers isn’t responsible for considering the health effects of coal pollution when it issues permits to fill valleys with rubble from mountaintop-removal coal mines. As Appalachian residents continue to suffer every year from well-documented health problems linked to mountaintop removal, this decision highlights a deadly loophole that requires long-overdue action from the White House and Congress.

Responsibility is a tricky thing. In our daily lives we work to be conscientious of our bills, our taxes, our family lives and a myriad of other duties that come up every day. But what happens when say, no one in the house takes responsibility for the dirty dishes? They keep piling up and things get pretty nasty.

Now, instead of dishes, think about what happens when no one chooses to take responsibility for the terrible effects coal pollution has on public health. From soot and smog to asthma, cancer and heart attacks, things go from nasty to life-threatening.

Building the platinum demand of tomorrow – by David McKay (Miningmx.com – March 14 2014)

March 14, 2014

http://www.miningmx.com/

[miningmx.com] – TRYING to understand just how much platinum metal sits in investor hoards or mining company inventories is something of a dark art. GFMS Thomson Reuters, a UK-based market consultancy, estimated in 2012 platinum stocks at 4.5 million ounces.

The thinking is that there’s been drawn-down on those stocks, but the market is not sufficiently relieved. It also supposes 900,000 of platinum ounces held in Absa Capital’s exchange traded fund (ETF) is not actually an inventory.
Derek Engelbrecht, the outgoing marketing director of Impala Platinum (Implats), says these ounces are unlikely to be liquidated, although the track-record of ETFs shows they can be counted as ‘hot money’; in other words, investors will sell the metal – release it into the market – when there’s a profit to realise.

In any event, the inventories of platinum which have been amassed over the years is dampening the ‘fundamental deficit’ in the platinum market. Platinum producers aren’t mining enough metal to meet market demand such as autocatalysis.

That’s why Engelbrecht is hoping the South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) accept his idea for a Mandela platinum coin.

POSCO to revamp non-steel ops, shun major steel investment – new CEO – by Hyunjoo Jin (Reuters India – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

SEOUL – (Reuters) – POSCO’s (005940.KS) new chief executive said the South Korean steelmaker will restructure non-steel businesses and not make any major investment in increasing steelmaking capacity, in a marked break from the strategy of his predecessor.

Incoming CEO Kwon Oh-joon, a former POSCO chief technology officer, will sell non-core assets and list affiliates after a wave of investment and acquisitions left the world’s fifth-biggest steelmaker with high debt and credit-rating downgrades.

POSCO, once one of the industry’s star performers, posted its third straight year of profit decline last year as it continued to grapple with steel oversupply and reduced customer demand brought about by recent global economic downturn.

“POSCO’s biggest task is to improve its financial structure,” Kwon said at a news briefing after starting a three-year term as chief executive and chairman. “First of all, we have to improve our core competitiveness in steel and generate profit.”

To that end, POSCO will restructure its materials and energy businesses, and focus on lithium, nickel, fuel cells and clean coal, Kwon said.

Canada in Afghanistan: From digging trenches to digging mines? – by Murray Brewster (Canadian Press/CTV News – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 2014

http://kitchener.ctvnews.ca/

KABUL, Afghanistan – Canadians could go from digging trenches to helping dig gold and copper mines in Afghanistan if the Harper government has its way.

The country’s ambassador to Kabul signalled this week that the moribund Afghan economy will be a principal focus for Canada, which has formally ended its military mission.

The hope is to turn the page on a decade of military involvement and aid handouts in the desperately poor, war-torn nation. Standards which Canada has long promoted, education, good governance and women’s rights, will still be there, with an additional emphasis on business.

“Our diplomatic focus will also be on economic development,” said Deborah Lyons, who took over as Canada’s first woman ambassador to Afghanistan six months ago. The approach has the enthusiastic endorsement of Shamial Bantija, Afghanistan’s ambassador-designate to Canada and an economic adviser to President Hamid Karzai.

Rio Tinto unveils its Processing Centre of Excellence – by Cole Latimer (Mining Australia – March 13, 2014)

March 14, 2014

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

Rio Tinto has unveiled the latest component of its Mine of the Future program – the Processing Centre of Excellence.

Based in Brisbane, Rio says this “is a world first, state-of-the-art facility that ehances monitoring and operational performance by examining in real time processing data from several Rio Tinto operations spread across the globe”.

Known by some colloquially as ‘the excellent centre for excellent excellence’, it will be operated by a team in Brisbane, that will provide processing solutions and initiatives to mine sites in Mongolia (at Oyu Tolgoi), the US (at Kennecott), and across Australia (at five different sites).

A massive interactive screen while show, and analyse, technical data in real time, “allowing processing improvements ot be immediately introduced and operational performance to be optimised,” the miner said in a statement.

Early trials have already led to improvements such as adjusting the flotation process for gold and copper recovery at Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia.

Barrick transformed under steady hand – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – March 14, 2014)

March 14, 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.

CEO Jamie Sokalsky has overseen ‘most radical change’ in gold miner’s history

Jamie Sokalsky is the first to admit he’s not the flashiest guy in the rough and tumble gold mining game. “I’m an accountant, my wife is an accountant, my oldest daughter is an accountant and my youngest daughter is studying to be an accountant,” says the chief executive of Barrick Gold Corp. with a chuckle.

While the mild-mannered 56-year-old likes to downplay his management style as rather dull, Sokalsky has ironically overseen the wildest times in the history of the world’s largest gold miner after taking the helm nearly two years ago.

“Barrick is quite a changed company in the last couple years. We’ve radically changed how we’re running it,” he says in his first sit-down interview since his surprise promotion to CEO in June, 2012.

Indeed, the bullion behemoth – whose mantra for years had been ‘bigger is better’ and growth at all costs – is almost a shadow of itself, having gone from 27 mines across the world to 19 in the last six months alone as it shed almost $1 billion of money-losing assets amid the plummeting gold price.