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[Northern Ontario] Aviation pioneer – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (February 4, 2014)

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

NORTHERN Ontario’s aviation pioneers are a special breed. From lone bush pilots to small fleet owners they hop-scotched into a growing number of remote communities as airstrips were hewn out of the boreal forest. Gradually, scheduled air services were established. Names like Wieben, DeLuce and Kelner are among a long list of adventurous fliers who took on the challenge of opening up such a vast region as this.

The list is short a key member this week with the sudden death of Harvey Friesen. Together with his brother, Cliff, they grew Bearskin Airlines from a two-floatplane operation to a large, scheduled airline with 50 years of service — a remarkable achievement in an industry where longevity is rare.

The company was created in 1963 by a bush pilot named John Hegland from a base in Big Trout Lake, flying charter service to Sioux Lookout. (Hegland named the operation after Bearskin Lake where he owned a store.) A second hop to Thunder Bay was a logical step.

New owners turned Bearskin into an air taxi service with Harvey Friesen one of its pilots. In 1972, at age 24, he bought half the company and purchased most of the rest of it five years later. Brother Cliff bought in shortly after and a family business was born and grew with the addition of a base in Thunder Bay to augment the one in Sioux Lookout.

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Human Rights Watch News Release: Uganda: Rights at Risk in New Mining Region (February 3, 2014)

http://www.hrw.org/

Urgent Need to Protect Indigenous Land Rights in Karamoja

Click here for full report: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/uganda0214_ForUpload.pdf

(Kampala) – Uganda’s nascent mining industry could do more harm than good for indigenous people unless the government makes reforms and mining companies start respecting rights, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Uganda’s government has promoted private investment in mining in the remote northeastern Karamoja region to bring economic development, but should implement reforms to respect the rights of indigenous people to determine how their lands are used.

The 140-page report, “‘How Can We Survive Here?’ The Impact of Mining on Human Rights in Karamoja, Uganda,” examines the conduct of three companies in different stages of the mining process: East African Mining, Jan Mangal, and DAO Uganda. Human Rights Watch found that companies have explored for minerals and actively mined on lands owned and occupied by Karamoja’s indigenous people.

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Canadian miners take another look at Africa – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – February 4, 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.

CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA — Just days into his post-political career, former Quebec premier Jean Charest took on one of his first and toughest assignments: flying into Senegal to negotiate a complex deal for a Canadian mining company, even as war was raging in neighbouring Mali.

It was a good introduction to the risks and rewards of Africa’s mining industry, and it helped preserve a $500-million gold project. A year later, Mr. Charest is increasingly bullish on African business, attending investment conferences in Abidjan and Cape Town over the past few days.

Some investors might be less keen on the risky African frontier, especially after a gloomy year globally for the mining industry in 2013, and the launch of a damaging strike by 70,000 platinum workers in South Africa last month.

The platinum strike continued on Monday as investors gathered for the Mining Indaba, the biggest annual African mining conference. But people such as Mr. Charest were looking beyond the labour unrest and seeing huge potential across the continent.

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Police Disperse Crowd of 3,000 at Amplats Amid Strike Talks – by Paul Burkhardt (Bloomberg News – February 4, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

South African police fired rubber bullets and water cannon to disperse a 3,000-strong crowd who massed at an Anglo American Platinum Ltd. (AMS) mine in support of a strike that has disrupted the world’s three biggest producers.

Police broke up the crowd at the Khuseleka mine, northwest of Johannesburg, Thulani Ngubane, a spokesman for the South African Police Service in the North West province, said by phone today. Two people were arrested.

The group had “the intention of not letting any mineworker go to work and we tried to resolve it amicably and we had to resort to minimum force,” Ngubane said.

Talks resumed in Pretoria aimed at resolving the dispute between producers and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, which has been on strike over pay since Jan. 23. The union has more than 70,000 members on strike at Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. (IMP) and Lonmin Plc (LON), which run the largest mines in a country accounting for about 70 percent of global output of the precious metal.

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NEWSMAKER-Indonesian minister tried but couldn’t block his own law – by Wilda Asmarini and Kanupriya Kapoor (Reuters India – February 4, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

Feb 4 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s mines minister, Jero Wacik, has been on an unusual mission in recent months: finding a way out of implementing his own government’s policy.

A smiling, well-rehearsed politician, Wacik was earlier tourism minister, pushing the charms of his native Bali island and other Indonesian attractions. In 2011, he was given the role of supervising the country’s $6 billion-a-year mining sector despite having no experience of the industry.

At the time, part of his job was to enforce a law President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had pushed through, a bold ultimatum to the mining industry: process your ores in Indonesia by 2014 or stop exporting.

But around the middle of last year, the government came to the conclusion that a ban on the export of ore would hurt the economy and lead to job losses that would be damaging in the 2014 election year. Wacik tried postponing the law, but parliament, already tired of the administration’s ambiguities, wouldn’t play ball. He then tried to water it down, but was not successful.

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Low-cost production key for gold – by Barry Fitzgerald (The Australian – February 4, 2014)

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

IT stands to reason that in the mining world, the best defence against commodity price weakness is to be the lowest-cost producer. That goes doubly for the gold sector after last year’s price collapse.All that has panned out for those investors who responded to the massive shakedown in the gold price and equity values last year for gold producers not by fleeing altogether, but by seeking safe harbour in the lowest-cost producers.

They have been doing very nicely, thank you very much. Australia’s lowest-cost (listed) gold producer, Doray Minerals (DRM), is a case in point. Its cash costs are the lowest in the local industry if Newcrest’s Cadia operation, which gets the benefit of a copper credit, is ignored.

It’s hard to believe now but Doray got as low as 35c a share last July when the shakedown for gold stocks was in full swing. Realistically, some of that weakness was due to the fact that the group’s new Andy Well operation, north of Meekatharra in Western Australia, had yet to pour its first gold, meaning it had yet to prove itself.

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COMMENT: Taku River Tlingit toss monkey wrench into Tulsequah Chief project – by Marilyn Scales (Canadian Mining Journal – February 3, 2014)

Marilyn Scales is a field editor for the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication. She is one of Canada’s most senior mining commentators.

A lawsuit filed on Dec. 17 by the Taku River Tlingit First Nation could derail plans by Chieftain Metals to develop its Tulsequah Chief base and precious metals project 100 km south of Atlin. The legal challenge seeks to void the environmental permit issued for the mine, naming the BC Minister of Environment, Environmental Assessment Office and Chieftain as co-respondents.

The Tulsequah project includes two former producers, the Tulsequah Chief and Big Bull mines. Readers can imagine that they have been producing acid drainage, and that problem can be solved by measures taken during the development of a new mine. Hence the sooner Chieftain can proceed, the closer a solution will be.

Why the Taku River Tlingit would want to delay the project seems counterproductive to environmental stewardship. But the lawsuit splits hairs over the term “substantially started”.

The original environmental certificate was issued in 2002 to then-owner Redfern Resources and was valid for five years. It carried a clause that the project must be substantially started within five years of its issuance. Redfern received a five-year extension in 2007.

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Indonesian govt must offer incentives to build smelters-PT Indosmelt – by Michael Taylor and Wilda Asmarini (Reuters India – February 4, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

JAKARTA, Feb 4 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s government must provide tax holidays and other financial incentives to convince companies to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to build copper smelters amid weak global prices, said the head of smelting firm PT Indosmelt.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last month imposed new mining policies, including a controversial mineral ore export ban and progressive export taxes, aimed at forcing miners to build smelters and process their raw materials in Indonesia.

The policies have forced U.S. miners Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold and Newmont Mining Corp, which together produce 97 percent of Indonesia’s copper, to halt all exports. The two firms have yet to commit to building smelters, saying it was not economically viable to make such large investments.

“The margins for smelters are small, very small,” Natsir Mansyur, president director of privately owned and unlisted PT Indosmelt told Reuters. “There must be incentives from the government. To build (a smelter), this business should be protected by the government.”

In mid-2012, government officials said they planned to offer financial incentives to help firms build smelters to comply with the new mining regulations, although the details have yet to be announced and talks are still ongoing.

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Andrew Forrest takes fight to Nintendo – by John Daffe (Herald Sun – February 4, 2014)

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/

IT’S the battle that pits one of Australia’s richest men against one of the world’s biggest video game makers. And it’s game on.

Mining billionaire and philanthropist Andrew Forrest has set his sights on Nintendo, hoping to force the Japanese giant to beef up measures ensuring its products contain no “conflict minerals”.

The name refers to minerals – commonly tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold – that are heavily mined in and around the Democratic Republic of Congo using forced labour, debt bondage and child slavery.

Walk Free, the anti-slavery group founded by Mr Forrest, is stepping up its campaign against Nintendo, which it says is yet to take concrete steps to guarantee that the microprocessors powering its consoles are free from the minerals.

The group started an email campaign encouraging people to quiz Nintendo chiefs about their conflict minerals policy last year. It has launched a new push after last month’s decision by Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker, to guarantee its microprocessors are conflict mineral free.

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Base metals in a post super-cycle world – Lennon – by Geoff Canday (Mineweb.com – February 4, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Jim Lennon discusses why demographics alone aren’t enough to recreate the massive type of growth in China that led to the super cycle.

CAPE TOWN (MINEWEB) – GEOFF CANDY: Hello and welcome to this Mineweb.com Newsmaker podcast, my name is Geoff Candy and joining me here live at the Cape Town International Convention Centre for the 2014 Mining Indaba is Jim Lennon, he’s the managing director at Red Door Research.

Jim, you’ve just done a presentation, the key note, about where we’re headed from a metals point of view, where the super-cycle is or if it’s going to come back, just generally speaking, the lay of the land. One of the things that struck from that is that it does seem to be moving very much from a demand-driven story to what’ s going to happening with supply over the next ten, 15, 20 years, is that a correct reading of things?

JIM LENNON: Partly, I think first China will continue to be a dominant factor on the demand side, the rates of growth in China were high double digit for the last ten years, we’re now seeing that slow down, so necessarily the growth rates are slowing. However, the volume required as a result of that slow growth because you’re working off the high base is still very, very high.

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Cuba to cut nickel plant output for major overhaul (Reuters U.S. – February 3, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

Feb 3 (Reuters) – Cuba will reduce production at one of its two nickel plants this year so it can carry out maintenance and capital improvements to make the plant competitive at low international prices.

A report on the evening government newscast on Sunday said the Ernesto Che Guevara processing facility in eastern Holguin province would be given a major overhaul.

The state-owned plant, built with Soviet technology and opened in 1986, has a capacity of about 30,000 tonnes of unrefined nickel plus cobalt a year at a cost of more than $12,000 a tonne.

Spot nickel prices on the London Metals Exchange opened at $13,695 a tonne on Monday. The broadcast quoted the plant’s head of maintenance as saying it would be the biggest overhaul in the plant’s 28-year history and that workers face the challenge of producing 14,700 tonnes of unrefined nickel plus cobalt while it is taking place.

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Tighter South African emission laws boost platinum ‘beneficiation’ – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – February 3, 2014)

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

CAPE TOWN (miningweekly.com) –Tighter vehicle emission legislation in South Africa would boost the struggling platinum mining industry and be a fantastic local beneficiation route for the metal, which is facing an uphill battle, SFA Oxford MD Beresford Clarke said on Monday.

Beresford, who was addressing the Investing In African Mining Indaba on Monday, said that South Africa was becoming less competitive in the platinum market and the next three years would be tough for platinum.

The recycling of platinum autocatalysts and platinum jewellery had risen to two-million ounces a year, four times higher than in 2000, and was tantamount to Lonmin-sized output being incrementally added every five years.

Palladium-rich Russian and North America were outdoing platinum-and-rhodium dominant South Africa, with both countries producing at lower cash costs and higher by-product credits than South Africa.

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Sage-grouse could become mining’s ‘Spotted Owl on Steroids’ – AMEA – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – February 4, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Federal designation of the Greater Sage-grouse as threatened or endangered could result in the withdrawal of over 17 million acres from mining, says the American Exploration & Mining Association.

RENO (MINEWEB) – The America Exploration & Mining Association (AEMA), formerly the Northwest Mining Association, recently accused the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service of making an unprecedented attempted to limit multiple use on public lands through use of “the Spotted Owl on Steroids”—the Greater Sage-Grouse.

“BLM and USFS are inappropriately using concerns about a potential listing of the Greater Sage-grouse as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act to asset a need for widespread land use restrictions—including withdrawing over 17 million acres from operation of the US Mining Law,” said AEMA, which represents U.S. explorationists, as well as mining companies.

The association claimed that the “sweeping land use restrictions and prohibitions” in the BLM/USFS Draft environmental impact statements for sage-grouse exceed the agencies’ statutory authority “by proposing actions that fail to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and violate:

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Obama won’t rush Keystone decision, White House says – by Barrie McKenna (Globe and Mail – February 3, 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 — Barack Obama is refusing to give Ottawa the quick answer it wants on the Keystone XL pipeline in spite of a State Department report that dispels the U.S. President’s main climate-change fears.

The White House said Sunday it will wait at least another 90 days to make a final decision as it awaits vital input from other government departments and agencies, raising the possibility that the U.S. President may avoid a decision on the controversial project until after the November U.S. midterm elections for fear of alienating Democratic voters.

On Friday, the U.S. State Department answered Mr. Obama’s main concerns about climate change by concluding that the TransCanada Corp. pipeline would not significantly boost greenhouse gas emissions or Canadian oil sands output.

But White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, Mr. Obama’s top adviser, insisted the President is still looking for more guidance and won’t be rushed into a quick decision. Keystone XL would carry 830,000 barrels a day of diluted bitumen from Alberta’s oil sands and light oil from North Dakota’s Bakken fields to the massive refining complex on the U.S. Gulf Coast.

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Grassy Narrows First Nation on alert for logging – by Crystal Greene (CBC News Aboriginal – February 3, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal

Longest running First Nations blockade effectively stopped logging since December 2002

The Asubpeeschoseewagong First Nation (Grassy Narrows) is on alert for logging trucks to come in April 2014. Grassy Narrows is the home of the longest running First Nations blockade in Canada. Its original Slant Lake blockade site, about 100 km north of Kenora, Ontario, started on December 2, 2002.

Judy DaSilva is a member of Grassy Narrows First Nation and has been on the forefront right from the start. “As a mom, I’ll do whatever I can to protect the forests, pretty much the other moms around here have the same mindset,” said DaSilva a mother of five with concern for the future generations.

In 2002, DaSilva was tired of seeing mercury debilitate her people, watching logging trucks pass by her home and took action.

Last year, DaSilva won a Michael Sattler Peace Prize from the German Mennonite Peace Committee for her non-violent direct-action approach in the blockade at Grassy Narrows traditional territory, within the Treaty 3 region. Logging halted for over 11 years, but in the past few months things are picking up once again.

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