Republic of Mining

White River First Nation wants staking ban on its land (CBC News North – January 10, 2014)

January 13, 2014

http://www.cbc.ca/north/

Lobbying for same treatment as Ross River Dena Council

Yukon’s White River First Nation is calling for an immediate ban on mineral staking within its traditional territory. The First Nation wants the same treatment that is being extended to the Ross River Dena Council.

A temporary ban on staking went into effect in the Ross River area since the end of December 2013, while consultations continue between the government and the First Nations.

That was in response to a 2012 court ruling, later upheld despite a Yukon government appeal, which ruled in favour of a challenge by the Ross River Dena Council, who sought to be consulted before staking takes place.

In December 2013, the Yukon government also made changes to the Yukon Quartz and Placer Mining Acts to comply with the decision, but for now, those changes only apply to Ross River.

Goldcorp to spend US$570-million on Éléonore mine – by Robert Gibbens (Montreal Gazette – January 10, 2014)

January 13, 2014

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

Goldcorp Inc. said it is spending US$570 million this year on its Éléonore mine in Quebec’s James Bay region to get it into initial production of 40,000 to 60,000 ounces in the final quarter.

The new mine has a total capital cost of $1.8 billion to $1.9 billion, up from the last estimate of $1.75 billion, and targets average annual output of 600,000 ounces, Goldcorp CEO Chuck Jeannes said Thursday. (All figures are in US dollars.)

“We’re counting on strong cash flow from our other gold mines, including Red Lake in Ontario, with 2014 output of 440,0000-480,000 ounces, and Penasquito in Mexico with 530,000-560,000 ounces, to provide the liquidity to fund Éléonore and our other projects requiring total capital spending of $2.3 billion to $2.5 billion,” he said in a quarterly update.

Also, Goldcorp has a $2-billion undrawn credit facility available, he added. Overall, Goldcorp expects to produce 3 million to 3.15 million ounces in 2014, up 13 per cent to 18 per cent from 2013, and targets 3.5 million to 3.8 million ounces in 2018.

NEWS RELEASE: Edmund J. Longyear to Be Inducted into International Mining Technology Hall of Fame

January 13, 2014

SALT LAKE CITY — Jan. 9, 2014 — Boart Longyear (www.BoartLongyear.com), the world’s leading provider of integrated exploration drilling services, equipment and performance tooling, is honored to announce that Edmund J. Longyear will be inducted into the International Mining Technology Hall of Fame’s inaugural class for his role in exploration. Fourteen inductees will be honored during a gala dinner hosted at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2014.

Longyear’s influence in contract diamond drilling, geological services and shaft sinking in the early part of the 20th century served the rapidly growing U.S. iron ore mining and steel industry. This led to him winning the exploration nomination.

“Edmund truly was a pioneer in mineral exploration and drilling,” said Richard O’Brien, president and chief executive officer of Boart Longyear. “He deserves the recognition that the International Mining Technology Hall of Fame bestows upon its inductees.”

In 1890, Longyear drilled the first diamond core hole in the Mesabi Iron Range in northern Minnesota. He later formed the E.J. Longyear Company, which would eventually become Boart Longyear.

Mining equipment companies try to dig out from downturn – by Rick Barrett (Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel – January 11, 2014)

January 13, 2014

http://www.jsonline.com/

Outlook remains rocky for Joy Global, Caterpillar

If there’s a bottom to the mine shaft for Milwaukee mining equipment companies, which saw business plummet in 2013, they haven’t found it. Joy Global Inc. ended the year with net income down 30%, to $533.7 million, or $4.99 a share, and revenue down 12% to $5 billion.

Caterpillar Inc., which has its mining equipment division based in South Milwaukee, reports fourth-quarter and full-year earnings on Jan. 27. In its most recent quarter, the company said earnings plunged 44%, to $946 million, or $1.45 a share, and that revenue would be down 17% for the year.

Caterpillar shut factories and cut its workforce by some 13,000 people, including hundreds of jobs in Milwaukee and South Milwaukee, where it manufactures some of the world’s biggest mining machines.

Until 2013, rising commodity prices fueled a boom for Caterpillar, based in Peoria, Ill., and Joy Global. Then China’s economy sputtered, undercutting demand for mined materials and the machines used to extract them from the ground.

Mining, moose and consultation (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial – January 12, 2014)

January 13, 2014

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

GIVE Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug full marks for consistency. No matter what is proposed on its lands around Big Trout Lake, 375 km north of Thunder Bay, KI and its feisty chief, Donny Morris will probably oppose it. Two mining ventures — potential economic winfalls — were stopped cold and now Morris has told the Ministry of Natural Resources not to conduct an aerial moose population survey.

The band’s position is rooted in the evolving legal requirement for consultation before anything can proceed. Indeed, Morris gets credit for helping to lead this important process. First Nations must be consulted and reasonably accommodated when outside ventures like mining are proposed. And if a band wants no part of such proposals, no matter their potential to lift people out of poverty and create job training and employment, well, that is apparently its right.

No one should deny a community the courtesy of sitting down and working out rules for such things. But Morris has made such a habit of opposition that it is beginning to appear counter-productive.

Mining company Platinex was first to try to set up shop around KI. Operating under terms of the Mining Act it began exploring and there soon arose a dispute over KI’s lack of permission.

Gold: A History, a Hunt, a Fever – An easy read, but fails to address obvious problems – by Douglas Bell (Globe and Mail – January 10, 2014)

January 13, 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.

The currency of journalism is impartiality. Ideally, it is practiced without fear or favour. When conducted at the behest of an a priori agenda, it is impotent (hardcore journalists are forever sneering at those who practice “advocacy”).

As a practical matter the difference is obvious. State owned and operated media in Russia don’t afford the same species of product as the BBC. An authoritarian oligarchy rigs its “journalism” to filter out inconvenient facts. The BBC enjoys credibility precisely because the broadcaster and its news service engineers a relationship at arm’s length from the state. In this sense, it’s not a stretch to suggest that Matthew Hart’s approach in reporting the global gold rush is, in spirit, nearer Moscow than London.

Formally Hart – himself a former producer at CBC news and an esteemed print journalist – is a fluent stylist and an adventurous reporter. In South Africa, he plummets into the earth more than a mile and a half (“My stomach sailed into my ribs. My ears blocked. Air whistled through the wire mesh”) aiming to investigate what it takes to dig the stuff out.

Jack Lifton refutes WSJ article: ‘How the Great Rare-Earth Metals Crisis Vanished’ – by Jack Lifton (Investor Intel – January 12, 2014)

January 13, 2014

http://investorintel.com/

The WSJ article published on January 8, 2014 How the Great Rare-Earth Metals Crisis Vanished declares that the “rare earth crisis” is over, and as support refers to the conclusions of a “leaked” Pentagon report. It glibly declares, analyses, and dismisses, as a failure, a Chinese plot to maintain control of the production and pricing of the rare earths as having been defeated by the forces of the market and capitalism.

But the real crisis is that western end-users of rare earth enabled components have proved that if you don’t capitalize the security of supply then when the market turns in your favor you are unprepared to take advantage of it. It is in the naked greed of the stock market where the real rare earth crisis was invented, fomented, sucked dry — and forgotten. The stock market flies no national flag and its players care little for apple pie or mom.

Notwithstanding what this author states there is today no nation other than China that has in place a total domestic rare earth supply chain. Thus even if you do produce rare earths outside of China you must send them to China if you want to first refine mining concentrates and then to fabricate rare earth metals and alloys for use, for example, as magnets. In particular none whatsoever today of the “critical” heavy rare earths are produced outside of China.

FOOL’S GOLD: Panning Discovery Channel’s Klondike – by Chris Turner (Walrus Magazine – Jan/Feb 2014)

January 13, 2014

http://thewalrus.ca/

ONE DAY last spring, I made a trek to the Klondike. I had a map with a pair of cartoon trees that marked Dawson City—the Paris of the North, Canada’s own El Dorado, the booming, brawling centre of the last great gold rush. I was driving a Volkswagen station wagon with my eight-year-old daughter in the back. I brought her along to see the Klondike and to provide cover for my visit, which was unauthorized.

We drove west out of Calgary on the Trans-Canada Highway to Jumping Pound Road, turned south, briefly backtracked east, then through the gates of the CL Ranch—thankfully unbarred and thrown open—where dusty, zigzagging paths through the rolling Rocky Mountain foothills finally gave way to a broad expanse of dirt parking lot encircled by spruce trees, half-full of cars and pick-up trucks and trailers. At the far end, over a slight rise, the wood plank roofs of Dawson City came into view. We parked and strolled toward town as nonchalantly as we could. My daughter wondered if we would be arrested.

I explained that the worst they’d do is escort us off the set. It was the final day of shooting on Klondike, Discovery Channel’s first scripted drama, a six-hour miniseries based on historian Charlotte Gray’s book Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike. I had obtained a PDF of the map from an extra after Discovery representatives neglected to respond to requests for a set visit.

[Jade miners] Myanmar: Hell hath no fury like Hpakant – by Patrick Winn (Global Post – December 30, 2013)

January 13, 2014

http://www.globalpost.com/

Men seek to escape poverty in the jade mines. Instead, it’s the drug dealers and middlemen who get rich.

KACHIN STATE, Myanmar — An ancient Chinese proverb likens jade to the character of men. As the saying goes, “both are sharpened by bitter tools.” But in the jade mines south of China’s border — a wasteland known as Hpakant in Myanmar — men’s lives are not so much sharpened but shredded to bits.

“Hpakant,” said La Htoi, a 34-year-old jade broker and recovering heroin addict. “That is where Satan slowly called me to hell.”

Even by the standards of Myanmar — infamous for warfare, poverty and oppression — Hpakant is a dark and depraved place. Its once-verdant hills have been ground down into gaping quarries that produce jade of unparalleled quality. By the thousands, men descend into these stadium-sized pits hoping to emerge with an armload of jade, a ticket out of poverty.

But Myanmar’s multi-billion dollar jade industry instead funnels wealth to military-connected elites. Miners’ meager earnings are typically swallowed not only by middlemen but by potent, dirt-cheap heroin, traded with impunity in Hpakant’s bazaars. “You can see heroin sold on the roadside there like vegetables,” La Htoi said.

Discovery Channel set to launch first-ever scripted miniseries ‘Klondike’ – by Bill Brioux (Canadian Press/CTV News – January 10, 2014)

April 5, 2015January 11, 2014

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

PASADENA, Calif. — Is there gold in them thar miniseries hills?

Discovery Channel thinks so. The U.S. cable network is set to launch its first-ever scripted venture “Klondike.” The six-hour, three-night miniseries begins Jan. 20 on Discovery Canada before continuing the following Tuesday and Wednesday.

Scottish actor Richard Madden (“Game of Thrones”), Abbie Cornish (“RoboCop”), Tim Roth (“Pulp Fiction”), Sam Shepard (“August: Osage County”) and Augustus Prew (“Kick-Ass 2”) star. Ridley Scott, Paul Scheuring and David Zucker are among the executive producers. It’s all based on Charlotte Gray’s book “Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike.”

The cast and producers took questions from reporters Thursday as part of the semi-annual Television Critics Association press tour. A large, Klondike-themed casino was erected for an evening event on the back lawn of the tour hotel.

Shepard was a last-minute replacement for Chris Cooper, who had to withdraw with an illness right before production was scheduled to begin.

Sudbury basin still fertile ground for base metal producer – by Jonathan Migneault (Northern Ontario Business – January 9, 2014)

January 10, 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.

Sudbury-based Wallbridge Mining has focused its gaze toward platinum group elements (PGEs) in the Sudbury basin.

“We’re almost entirely focused on the projects that have significant potential for PGEs,” Joshua Bailey, the company’s vicepresident of exploration, told Northern Ontario Business at the 2013 Ontario Exploration and Geoscience Symposium in Sudbury.

Bailey estimates approximately 20 million ounces of platinum group elements have been discovered in the Sudbury basin over the last 20 years. PGEs, which primarily include platinum and palladium, are important components for catalytic converters in vehicles and fuel cells.

“These are elements that are basically key for keeping emissions low and keeping smog down in big cities,” Bailey said. “I think demand is pretty strong right now.” South Africa and Russia are the world’s top PGE producers, but Sudbury has turned out to be a North American leader for the metals. Bailey said Sudbury has the advantage of labour and political stability over those two jurisdictions.

Indonesia’s ban on raw minerals exports threatens nickel shake-up – by Melanie Burton (Reuters U.S. – January 10, 2014)

January 10, 2014

http://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY – Jan 10 (Reuters) – An Indonesian ban on raw minerals exports is set to hurt Chinese factories making stainless steel – used in everything from kitchenware to cars and buildings – in the biggest potential industry shake-up in more than five years.

The ban, due to come in force on Sunday, may also be a boon for battered nickel miners, dogged by prices that lost 19 percent last year and are sitting stubbornly near four-year lows.

Indonesia looks set to prohibit more than $2 billion worth of annual nickel ore and bauxite shipments as part of a plan to push miners into downstream processing and boost long-term returns from its mineral wealth.

The Southeast Asian country supplies about half the nickel ore used for stainless steel in China, the world’s biggest producer and exporter of the corrosion resistant material.

China mostly produces a lesser quality version, unlike high-end competitors in Japan, Germany and Korea, which is often used in the inside of buildings or internally in cars, where it reinforces framework.

Activist George Armoyan set for proxy fight at Sherritt after negotiations fall apart – by Peter Koven (National Post – January 10, 2014)

January 10, 2014

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

TORONTO – Activist investor George Armoyan is poised to take on Sherritt International Corp. in a proxy fight after attempts to reach a settlement with the Toronto-based miner fell apart.

Mr. Armoyan was livid on Thursday after meeting with Sherritt chairman Hap Stephen and board member Peter Gillin. In an interview following the meeting, he said the two men were unwilling to consider any of his proposals. He said he thought they could reach a compromise in which he would name one director and the two sides would jointly choose another, but that Sherritt reneged on the potential plan.

Mr. Armoyan went on to blast the entire board for allegedly enriching themselves while failing to create value for shareholders. “There’s no proper Canadian corporate governance standard that these guys meet. Nothing,” he said.

He said the directors only hold minimal shares, but are earning higher salaries than directors of some global giants. He also accused them of numerous other excesses, including buying an expensive private company jet and spending lavishly on board meetings in London.

Alcoa unit pleads guilty to Bahrain bribery – by Joe Mankak (USA Today – January 9, 2014)

January 10, 2014

http://www.usatoday.com/

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A subsidiary of Alcoa pleaded guilty Thursday and, along with the parent company, will pay a total of $384 million in penalties for bribing officials in the kingdom of Bahrain through a London-based middleman.

A company official on Thursday entered the plea on behalf of Alcoa World Alumina, which will pay $223 million in fines and criminal penalties for violating the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The law governs the conduct of American businesses abroad.

Parent company Alcoa must guarantee those payments and on Thursday also agreed to a separate $161 million civil penalty for related Securities and Exchange Commission violations. “Alcoa lacked sufficient internal controls to prevent and detect the bribes, which were improperly recorded in Alcoa’s books and records as legitimate commissions or sales to a distributor,” the SEC said in a news release.

The U.S. Justice Department said Alcoa World Alumina earned $446 million in profits by using the middleman to cut a long-term deal to sell raw materials to Aluminum Bahrain BSC, through other affiliated companies, including Alcoa of Australia.

Oil-by-rail gathers steam as new capacity comes on line – by Yadullah Hussain (National Post – January 10, 2014)

January 10, 2014

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

Canada’s first oil-sands unit train, loaded with MEG Energy Inc. crude, rolled out of Canexus Corp.’s Bruderheim, Alta. terminal just before Christmas, marking a new chapter in the country’s crude-by-rail phenomenon.

The 100,000-bpd terminal northeast of Edmonton is the first of many large-scale crude-loading terminals planned for Western Canada that will have a combined capacity of 890,000-bpd — more than the 830,00-bpd Keystone XL pipeline — as crude-by-rail terminal operators slowly embed themselves in the oil patch and expand their services to move away from being mere arbitrage plays.

The moves are viewed by some as a vote of confidence in the moving oil by rail, despite the increasing scrutiny the sector is under in the wake of numerous derailments of crude-carrying trains.

“There is no question the lack of pipeline capacity and with questions about Keystone, Trans Mountain and Northern Gateway, most people believe we are at least in a three- to five-year period of limited pipeline capacity, and therefore you will see persistent differentials that will justify rail,” said Gary Kubera, CEO of Canexus, who worries about an excess of oil-by-rail capacity.