Republic of Mining

B.C. to review environment assessment process – by Vivian Luk (Canadian Press/Global Toronto – January 27, 2014)

January 27, 2014

VANCOUVER – British Columbia Premier Christy Clark has ordered a review of the province’s environmental assessment process, saying the current system has become too cumbersome.

However, Clark revealed few details about the evaluation project she’s handed over to Environment Minister Mary Polak to undertake.

The premier made the announcement at a mineral exploration convention in Vancouver on Monday, in the middle of a speech about extending a $10-million tax credit program to B.C.’s mining industry for another year.

She said environmental reviews of major projects are crucial, and while the current process is rigorous and transparent, the province’s environmental assessment office can “do better.”

“In my view, it is better to do the hard and rigorous work at the front end and get it right, than to endure decades of questions and debate in acrimony about why and how it was done,” Clark said.

Ontario serves up miner with Statement of Defence – Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – January 27, 2014)

January 27, 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.

The Ontario government says it’s not liable for any damages incurred by a Sudbury-based junior miner after a dispute between the company and First Nation forced it to abandon exploration work in northwestern Ontario.

The province submitted its Statement of Defence with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Jan. 21 in response to a $110-million lawsuit filed against the Crown last October by Northern Superior Resources (NSR).

The company accuses the government of failing in its legal duty to consult with the Sachigo Lake First Nation after a series of disagreements with the band caused the company to suspend exploration on a promising gold property in late 2011.

In an 18-page document outlining its position and version of the chain of events, the government calls the company’s claims for compensation “exaggerated, excessive, remote” and said they should be dismissed.

Boutique investment dealers in Canada struggle to survive – by Barbara Secter (Ottawa Citizen – January 27, 2014)

January 27, 2014

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

Mid-sized investment dealers were riding high in 2007, feasting on healthy markets and booming commodity prices that drove underwriting, trading and acquisitions.

But today, the approximately 180 smaller or boutique firms in Canada are struggling with chronic weak business conditions in an increasingly tough competitive landscape.

The Investment Industry Association of Canada and other industry watchers have been warning for a couple of years that many of Canada’s smaller firms are on precarious ground and many could cease to exist without a significant recovery in the small-cap trading and underwriting business.

“The traditional model of the independent firms relying on trading and corporate finance is broken, at least for the moment,” says John Turner, a partner who heads to global mining practice at Toronto law firm Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP. On Monday, Stonecap Securities Inc. was swallowed up by Edgecrest Capital, a relatively new player in the industry.

Opinion: Exploration developing into strong catalyst for B.C. economy – by Gavin Dirom (Vancouver Sun – January 26, 2014)

January 27, 2014

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

Gavin C. Dirom is president and chief executive officer of the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia.

Although most metal prices remain at or near 10-year averages, over the last two years there has been a major downturn in the venture capital market. With virtually no access to venture capital, the strength, resiliency and experience of the industry were put to the test, and not surprisingly, the resilient mineral exploration and development industry rose to the challenge in 2013.

For many mineral explorers, particularly the junior companies, last year was about building strategic partnerships, entering into joint venture agreements, raising private equity and successfully exploring — not just here in B.C. — but around the world.

There was an estimated 29 per cent drop in global exploration spending for the year 2013. And the majority of respondents to a fall Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia survey reported a decline in their exploration spending. But the industry is well acquainted with the cyclical nature of the business, and many AME BC members have been taking this opportunity to prepare for the next upswing in the markets.

While most have made changes to their exploration programs and reduced spending for the short term, it rarely dampens their optimism for the future.

Antam and Vale Receive Green Light on Processed Mineral Exports – by Rangga Prakoso (Jakarta Globe – January 27, 2014)

January 27, 2014

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/

Antam and Vale Indonesia — two of the biggest nickel producers in the country — have secured a recommendation letter to export their processed mineral products, almost two weeks after the government enforced a ban on ore shipments.

“Vale and Antam don’t have any problems. The others simply have not submitted their respective proposals to the government, which is why I am calling on other miners to do so,” said Susilo Siswoutomo, vice minister at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, on Friday.

Susilo said the government has given Antam approval to export around 17,000 metric tons of ferronickel annually, while Vale is allowed 75,000 tons of nickel matte per year. He did not say whether Antam will be allowed to export its nickel ore.

The vice minister also confirmed the government’s intention to set a “maximum production limit” for minerals to ensure that newly-built smelters in Indonesia can be fed with adequate resources.

HISTORY: Photographers immortalized Porcupine Gold Rush – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – January 25, 2014)

January 27, 2014

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

Karen Bachmann is the director/curator of the Timmins Museum and a local author.

TIMMINS – The Porcupine Gold Rush was immortalized in pictures, thanks to early photographers who made their way into the gold camps.

While some prospectors like Charles Auer took photos of his early trek into the Porcupine, it is the work of two professional photographers that come to mind when we look at those early shots. Henry Peters (postmaster, town councillor and photographer) was one of those men. Arthur Tomkinson was the other.

It is Mr. Tomkinson who interests me today because of a recent donation made to the Timmins Museum by Bob Guenette – but more about that later. Thanks to the body of work created by Art Tomkinson, we have a good pictorial history of the Porcupine going back to its start. So, who was this gentleman?

A.K. Tomkinson was born in 1888 into a family of foundry workers in Askam, a village on the west coast of England in the county of Cumbria. When he was about 16 years old, he emigrated with his family to Galt, Ont., where he got a job in a brass foundry.

Harper Collides With Native Canadians’ Natural Resources Claims – by Jeremy van Loon (Bloomberg News – January 27, 2014)

January 27, 2014

http://www.businessweek.com/

Back in the spring of 2012, while walking in the deep woods of northern Ontario, Sonny Gagnon stumbled across a collection of surveying equipment among the towering spruce trees. Gagnon is chief of the Aroland aboriginal tribe, a band of 450 people living in a village of ramshackle houses surrounded by swampy muskeg. He tracks everything that goes on in his community. And the surveying tools weren’t supposed to be there.

“I was ticked off,” he says, after learning that the equipment belonged to a subcontractor of Cleveland-based mining company Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. (CLF:US)

It turned out Cliffs had plans to mine for chromite to the north of the Aroland reserve and to build a road through the territory to transport truckloads of the mineral to a railhead, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its March issue.

“They weren’t consulting us on what they were doing on the land,” Gagnon says. “I told them to leave and that we didn’t want them back.”

Gagnon and his native band then set up a roadblock to monitor traffic. Cliffs suspended plans for the mine in November, citing in a statement the “risks” associated with its ability to transport the ore for processing.

As smelters weigh cost, Indonesia’s ore export ban may backfire – by Fergus Jensen and Melanie Burton (Reuters India – January 27, 2014)

January 27, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

JAKARTA/SYDNEY – Jan 27 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s ban on exports of key mineral ores – unless they are processed in the country – risks backfiring as weaker commodity prices mean it is not cost-effective to invest in expensive smelters and refineries.

The ban, which came into effect on Jan. 12, was unveiled in 2009 as a commodities boom began to froth and Jakarta sought to extract more value from its mineral resources. But metals prices and margins have since fallen, leading to oversupply and less need for building more processing capacity.

Worried about the impact on its current account deficit and a sagging rupiah currency, Jakarta tried to ease the ban last month only to be blocked by parliament. This month, it issued exemptions to allow shipments of copper, zinc, lead, manganese and iron ore concentrate, leaving nickel and bauxite – key ingredients in making steel and aluminium – the main targets.

Companies considering building alumina refineries are moving slowly as they weigh the big investments required amid caution over Indonesia’s policy flip-flops.

A 1 million-tonnes-a-year alumina refinery in Indonesia would cost around $1.5 billion to build.

Gold stocks best performing market sector so far this year – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – January 27, 2014)

January 27, 2014

http://www.mineweb.com/

Hong Kong based Financial Services Group, REORIENT, is decidedly bullish on gold, and on gold stocks in particular, and has set out its reasoning in a new sales commentary.

LONDON (MINEWEB) – Investors in gold equities have had little cheer in the past couple of years – indeed the period has seen a sell-off not experienced in the sector since the Bre-X fraud exposure of 1996, which had a huge downside impact on gold stocks, particularly in the junior gold sector. But so far this year – admittedly it is very early days yet – gold stocks have proven to be the sector to be in and while the major global stock indices have drifted downwards so far many gold stocks have risen by up to 30% or more.

Is this the signal the market has been waiting for to get back into what has to have been the most oversold stock market sector of the past two years?

Hong Kong based Global Financial Services specialist, the REORIENT Group, certainly thinks this is the case and is distinctly bullish on the gold stock market sector. In a note the Group puts forward a number of factors which it sees as distinctly bullish for gold stocks – and they may well have a strong point here with all of these:

Rio Tinto details blueprint for indigenous jobs – by Patricia Karvelas (The Australian – January 27, 2014)

January 27, 2014

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

MINING giant Rio Tinto has told Tony Abbott’s indigenous jobs review that enormous changes must be made to get Aborigines into jobs.

These include providing incentives for the nation’s best teachers to relocate to remote Australia and changing rules that make it attractive to stay on welfare in order to receive cheaper housing.

Rio Tinto Australia managing director David Peever, who has been appointed to the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, has written to the indigenous jobs review headed by mining magnate Andrew Forrest to present a blueprint for change.

Rio Tino has been under scrutiny after it decided to wind down its Gove alumina refinery in Arnhem Land, devastating a 1500-strong workforce that includes many indigenous employees, after telling Australian governments there was no point in further negotiations to save the plant.

Rio says in the third quarter of last year, the company employed approximately 1650 indigenous people in permanent roles across its Australian operations, representing 7.3 per cent of the total workforce.

Moving goods poses hurdle – Editorial (Saskatoon StarPhoenix – January 25, 2014)

January 27, 2014

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

Grain is stuck in farmers’ bins, Ontario’s Ring of Fire can’t be developed for lack of a means to reach markets, Canada’s Arctic doesn’t have the icebreaking or patrol capacity to monitor through-traffic much less ship out its own resources, and the American and Canadian transportation safety boards are warning that oil must not be shipped in tanker cars deemed dangerous since the 1990s.

In spite of a decade of determined efforts to transform its economy back to resource sales, Canada is increasingly looking like a Third World nation when it comes to getting those products to market. Not only is there a dearth of infrastructure to handle the volume, but there’s neither a workable plan to get that infrastructure in place nor a commitment to transfer the risks of the inadequacy to users rather than innocent bystanders.

As the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board reported this week, the “staggering” increase in the transportation of crude oil over North America’s rail systems has created a “significant risk for loss of life and damage to communities and the environment,” along the routes.

That risk was manifest in the deaths of 47 people in Lac-Megantic last year when 60 of the 63 Class 111 tankers in a runaway train spewed their deadly cargo of Bakken crude onto a fiery inferno that consumed the heart of the town and contaminated a nearby lake and river.

Exploration companies cautiously optimistic about 2014 prospects – by Derrick Penner (Vancouver Sun – January 24, 2014)

January 27, 2014

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

Higher mineral prices and higher demand needed to boost financing, officials say

Imperial Metals Corp.’s plans to open its $500-million Red Chris copper/gold mine in British Columbia’s far northwest in early June is one of the bigger reasons for optimism in the mining sector for 2014.

That, coupled with a bounce in resource stocks since the start of the year and the continuing advance of high-profile development projects such as Pretium Resources Inc.’s now famous Brucejack gold deposit, make B.C.’s prospectors more hopeful the industry is making a turnaround.

“It’s a pretty bullish year,” said Gavin Dirom, CEO of the Association for Mineral Exploration B.C. “There’s a sense that the worst is behind us. You couldn’t get much worse than 2013, in terms of trying to attract venture capital.” The new mine is particularly important, he said.

Located 80 km south of Dease Lake, Red Chris will become the second new greenfield mine to open in as many years, following Thomson Creek Metals Inc.’s Mount Milligan mine, which started commercial production last fall.

Yukon Government Opens Vast Wilderness to Mining – by Tom Clynes (National Geographic – January 24, 2014)

January 27, 2014

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

Indigenous leaders, conservation groups vow legal challenge.

Canada’s Yukon Territory announced on Tuesday that it has opened one of the largest unbroken wilderness areas in North America to mining and mineral exploration.

The government’s decree stunned indigenous leaders, who support a 2011 plan developed under Yukon land claims treaties that would have maintained the wilderness character of 80 percent of the area, which is known as the Peel watershed region. The government’s new plan all but reverses that figure, opening some 71 percent of the watershed to mining.

The Yukon features some of Canada’s highest peaks and largest glaciers, as well as tremendous expanses of lake-dotted tundra, boreal forests, and wetlands. (See “Yukon: Canada’s Wild West” in the February issue of National Geographic magazine.) It’s also rich in wildlife, with extreme seasonal shifts that beckon vast herds of caribou and other animals into motion. Larger than California but with only 37,000 inhabitants, the territory has been mostly empty of humans since the Klondike Stampede ended in the 1890s.

In recent years a new gold rush has brought a spike in population and prosperity to towns like Whitehorse and Dawson.

Andrew Forrest strikes cheap coal deal to end Pakistan slavery – by Dennis Shanahan (The Australian – January 23, 2014)

January 27, 2014

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

AUSTRALIAN mining billionaire and philanthropist, Andrew Forrest, has struck an informal deal with Pakistan to do away with more than two million slaves in return for a chance to convert billions of tonnes of cheap coal into much needed energy.

Using Australian technology developed at Western Australia’s Curtin University, Mr Forrest has signed an agreement with the Pakistani State of Punjab to test the feasibility of turning currently uneconomic lignite coal directly into diesel for use in the energy-starved region.

In a linked agreement with Mr Forrest’s Walk Free Foundation, aimed at ending slavery, Pakistan has agreed to introduce laws to cut the practice of slavery through indenture, debt or inheritance.

Mr Forrest, attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said the agreement was an exciting development which could eliminate slavery in Pakistan and completely transform the Pakistani economy which was dependent on expensive foreign oil imports.

”The goal is energy independence for the Punjab and the eradication of slavery in all of the Punjab, a province of 100 million,” Mr Forrest said.

Ring of Fire Interview with KWG Resources’ Frank Smeenk and Bold Ventures’ Richard Nemis – by George Tsiolis (January 24, 2014)

January 24, 2014

http://www.kwgresources.com/ http://www.boldventuresinc.com/ http://agoracom.com/ Frank Smeenk, President and CEO of KWG Resources and Richard Nemis, President & CEO of Bold Ventures join George Tsiolis, Founder of AGORACOM to discuss exploration and development initiatives in the Ring Of Fire.