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Deep-sea mining could make ‘largest footprint of any single human activity on the planet’ – by Kevin Douglas Grant (Global Post – December 19, 2013)

 http://www.globalpost.com/

Honolulu, Hawaii is emerging as a hub for a race to extract billions of dollars worth of minerals from the ocean floor. Modern technologies like cell phones, laptops, wind turbines and hybrid vehicles all require rare minerals, often difficult and expensive to extract from the earth.

As demand for these kinds of products surges globally and more accessible deposits of those minerals are depleted, Civil Beat reported Wednesday, countries around the world are flocking to Hawaii to explore a vast undersea area believed to contain massive mineral deposits worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

The area is called the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone, and organizations from countries including Japan, Great Britain, Russia, South Korea, China, France, Germany and the US are now using Honolulu as a departure point for exploration. Though the zone is just one of several in the sights of deep-sea mineral industry pioneers, researchers involved believe it holds great promise.

Their expeditions are mapping parts of the zone about 500 miles southeast of Hawaii, which covers a total estimated area of 6 million total square miles.

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Jakarta mired deep in mining mess – by John McBeth (The Straits Times/Jakarta Post – January 20, 2014)

http://www.thejakartapost.com/

Giving with one hand and taking with the other, the Indonesian government has effectively enforced a blanket ban on mineral ore exports in a bizarre, nationalist-driven decision-making process that will cost the country billions and put tens of thousands out of work.

While value-added is an understandable goal for a country blessed with so many natural resources, the implementation of the signature policy has been bedevilled by weak leadership, poor conceptualising, political grandstanding and bureaucratic ineptitude.

Miners are now threatening to head to international arbitration, with copper giants Freeport Indonesia and Newmont Nusa Tenggara facing the prospect of shutting down 65 per cent of their production – a huge chunk of the US$10 billion Indonesia makes each year from mineral exports.

The move to process all mineral ore onshore within five years was foreshadowed in the 2009 Mining Law, but only given clarity – and teeth – in a ministerial regulation issued belatedly in July 2012, which laid out the required purity levels for each individual mineral.

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Anishinabek seek mining capacity – by Marlene Bilous (Anishinabek News – January 20, 2014)

http://anishinabeknews.ca/

Anishinabek First Nations involved in mining issues are united in expressing their need for increased capacity at the local level in order to handle the increased paper burden caused by new mining regulations.

“Why is MNDM (Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines) not providing our five First Nations — as designated with high mining needs by MNDM — with a person for each of us?” Regional Grand Chief Peter Collins asked at October’s mining workshop for Northern Superior communities. “We have issues with the short notice period for claim staking and the very short response period for exploration plans and exploration permits.

“We are short of capacity at present and bogged down with paperwork and need at least one person for each First Nation in order to process all this extra paperwork required by the new mining regulations. We have a shortfall as there is mining exploration happening all across the territory. Furthermore, how do the other communities get on this list as many of the Northern Superior First Nations deal with mining?”

Participants at mining workshops in the four Anishinabek Nation regions all echoed the need for increased capacity at the First Nation level in order to protect Anishinabek and treaty rights and respond to the strict timelines required by Ontario’s new mining regulations.

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Osisko harsh in its formal rejection of Goldcorp’s hostile bid – by Bertrand Marotte (Globe and Mail – January 20, 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.

MONTREAL — Osisko Mining Corp. has unveiled a lengthy and harshly worded formal rejection of Goldcorp. Inc.’s hostile $2.6-billion bid for its smaller rival.

Montreal-based Osisko’s board of directors is unanimously recommending that shareholders reject the offer Vancouver-based Goldcorp launched on Jan. 14, calling it “financially inadequate” and saying it “significantly undervalues” Osisko’s main asset, the Canadian Malartic gold mine in northwestern Quebec.

Osisko also says the timing of Goldcorp’s offer is opportunistic because it is just before Canadian Malartic enters what Osisko expects to be its most productive years.

Goldcorp is offering a “meagre 15%” premium based on the closing prices of Osisko and Goldcorp on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Jan. 10, one that is “substantially below the premiums paid in other relevant metals and mining transactions,” Osisko said in a news release Monday.

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RPT-INTERVIEW-Chile’s environment lawyers say they’re just warming up – by Alexandra Ulmer and Fabian Cambero (Reuters India – January 20, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO, Jan 17 (Reuters) – Chile’s leading environmental lawyers, who have helped stall around $30 billion in mining and energy projects, say the battle is only just beginning – and copper investments are poised to come under increasing fire this year.

In a significant shift for business-friendly Chile, empowered social groups are successfully suing massive projects over threats to glaciers, health, indigenous rights and biodiversity.

Power projects have so far fared the worse, but Santiago-based lawyers Alvaro Toro and Lorenzo Soto say many communities are now turning up the heat on mining in the world’s top copper producer.

“This year is going to be very conflictive,” Alvaro Toro, a lawyer with environmental NGO OLCA, told Reuters in his tiny office, just a block from the headquarters of world No.1 copper miner, Codelco.

“Projects are increasingly being set up in fragile places. People’s opposition is completely rational,” he said on Friday.

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Early-stage explorers and prospect generators tapped for performance in 2014 – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – January 20, 2014)

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

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Despite the thorny down-market the junior exploration sector has been dealing with over the past 18 months, several companies have been rewarded for their performances. The problem was, however, that the industry has not delivered a lot of performance, Sprott US Holdings chairperson Rick Rule told investors on Sunday at the 2014 Vancouver Resource Investment Conference.

He pointed to examples during this period such as Reservoir Minerals, which is developing a portfolio of metals and mineral exploration projects in Europe and Africa, whose share price had risen from C$0.26 a share, to more than C$5 apiece in three years – that is a 625% gain; and Africa Oil, which is exploring for oil in the East African Rift Basin system, which had appreciated from C$0.80 a share, to more than $9 apiece.

“That’s performance,” Rule said. He noted that during 2013, the global stock charts spelled an unmitigated disaster for the junior exploration sector, when graphs slanted from the top left corner to the bottom right. This year, the stock chart for the market as a whole was going sideways.

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UPDATE 2-S.Africa minister warns on economy as mines face strike threat – by David Dolan (Reuters India – January 20, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

JOHANNESBURG, Jan 20 (Reuters) – South Africa’s ailing economy cannot afford more mine labour unrest, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Monday, as the platinum industry’s main trade union served notice on the world’s top three producers that it planned to strike this week.

A series of sometimes violent strikes in the factory and mining sectors constrained growth to a sluggish 2 percent in 2013, hampering efforts by President Jacob Zuma’s government to create badly needed jobs as it braces for elections this year.

The African National Congress has swept elections since overturning white minority rule in 1994, but the party Zuma now heads faces growing criticism that it has failed to lift millions of blacks out of poverty during 20 years in power.

Platinum producers Anglo American Platinum, Lonmin and Impala Platinum said they had received notice from the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) to strike in 48 hours, setting the stage for another crippling wave of unrest.

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Neil Young and his fellow oil sands critics have yet to propose a single credible alternative – by Michael Den Tandt (National Post – January 20, 2014)

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

Neil Young is probably no more, and no less, a moral coward than the next person. But he is a moral coward.

That’s because — like most of the rest of us — he declines to face the logical consequences of his beliefs. He fails to extend. The failure to extend is endemic in the broadening debate about sources of energy, their cost and follow-on effects. It reduces this debate, for the most part, to hyperbolic babble, in which combatants trade volleys like medieval theologians arguing whether angels have mass.

Does Young have the right to use his celebrity to stick it to Big Oil? Clearly he does. As Stephen Maher of Postmedia News has pointed out, this is a poet’s classic role — to act as goad, inciter and rabble-rouser. Artists are like Shakespearean court jesters. They get away with saying things no one else will or can, and they should. But let us, for a moment, talk turkey about the politics of oil, and energy, and the related moral choices that we each make.

As many have noted previously, fossil fuels are not going away, in our lifetime. The International Energy Agency predicted in its World Energy Outlook 2013 that global energy demand will grow by a third between now and 2035, with emerging economies accounting for 90% of net new demand.

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Sliding loonie may ease pressure on Canadian miners – by Alisha Hiyate (Mining Markets – January 10, 2014)

http://www.miningmarkets.ca/

For the past year, the Canadian dollar has been weakening – falling from above parity with the greenback at the beginning of 2013 to its current price of US91.5¢. The loonie has lost 2.4% of its value this week alone, and Goldman Sachs predicted last year that it would reach US88¢ within a year.

For Canadian miners with operations in Canada, there’s an upside and a downside to a weaker loonie, says Jürgen Beier, national mining leader at professional services firm Deloitte Canada.

On the upside, because all commodities are priced in U.S. dollars, they will get more Canadian dollars for every ounce of gold or pound of copper they sell, Beier says. (For example if they sell an ounce of gold for US$1,240 they will get C$1,355 per oz. at the current exchange rate)

“So there will be a revenue increase from a Canadian dollar perspective — if they report in Canadian dollars,” Beier says. At the same time, the cost of imported commodities, equipment, or anything else priced in U.S. dollars that miners need to operate is going to rise.

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Call for greater State participation in mining could lead to conflicts of interest – by Leandi Kolver (MiningWeekly.com – January 17, 2014)

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

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Should the State play a larger role in South Africa’s mining sector, as envisaged by the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) 2014 election manifesto and the ‘State Intervention in the Minerals Sector’ (Sims) report, the establishment of an independent regulator would be essential to prevent conflicts of interest, Webber Wentzel head of Africa mining and energy projects Peter Leon said.

In his yearly January 8 statement, ANC and State President Jacob Zuma indicated that the ANC was moving ahead with measures to strengthen the State mining company and to ensure increased beneficiation for industrialisation. This statement was echoed in the ANC’s election manifesto, which stated that “the role of the State-owned mining company will be strengthened”.

Leon told Mining Weekly Online that, while the manifesto did not deal with the issue of the State-owned mining company in detail, the Sims document explained that the State would play a key role by ensuring the compulsory beneficiation of “strategic” minerals at “competitive” and “affordable” prices, and that a more direct role would be played by the State mining company through the “development of strategic minerals” and “supporting, where appropriate, vertically integrated value chains that strengthen strategic industries”.

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Alberta-shot Discovery Channel miniseries, Klondike, mixes history and melodrama – by Eric Volmers (Calgary Herald – January 16, 2014)

 

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

Given its rugged nature, it’s not surprising that much of the chatter around the Discovery Channel’s Klondike has dealt with the more physical aspects involved in filming the six-hour miniseries last year in Alberta.

Actors climbed mountains, plunged into rivers, dodged (fake) avalanches, fought and shot each other and generally did their best to look gaunt, desperate and dishevelled when sloshing in the muck of a recreated Dawson City of the 1890s.

But star Richard Madden insists there was a more scholarly side to the shoot. In fact, to hear the 27-year-old Scottish actor talk about it, the set could become positively nerdy when it came to comparing notes on their characters.

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Canada: Substantial Amendments To The Quebec Mining Act Come Into Force – by Jean-Philippe Buteau, Amy Gauthier, Pierre-Christian Labeau, François Lévesque and Jean Piette (Mondaq.com – January 17, 2014)

http://www.mondaq.com/

Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP

The Quebec Mining Act has been substantially amended and modernized by Bill 70, which the Quebec National Assembly adopted on December 9, 2013. This fourth attempt to update Quebec’s mining legislation follows on the heels of the defeat of Bill 43 and that of Bills 79 and 14 in previous legislative sessions. The amended Act came into force on December 10, 2013, saving a few sections which will come into force at a later date.

Key amendments

Aboriginal communities

The Act now contains three provisions that relate specifically to aboriginal communities, including a provision that the Minister is to draw up an aboriginal community consultation policy specific to the mining sector. The Act also states that it is to be construed in a manner consistent with the obligation to consult aboriginal communities and requires the Minister to consult aboriginal communities separately if the circumstances so warrant. What those circumstances might be, however, has not been clarified.

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Miners Chopping $10 Billion Search Bodes Next Price Boom – by Elisabeth Behrmann and Rebecca Keenan (Bloomberg News – January 17, 2014)

 http://www.businessweek.com/

Mining companies are extending massive cuts in exploration budgets for a second year, setting up the next price boom as China continues its relentless pursuit of metals and energy.

Exploration spending plunged by 30 percent or $10 billion last year, squeezing budgets to search for minerals and sustain supplies, according to MinEx Consulting Pty, whose clients include BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP), the world’s biggest miner. Payments may drop another 10 percent this year for geologists, drilling exploratory holes and analyzing mineral specks to unearth the next copper, iron ore or gold El Dorado, MinEx said.

Investors in mining companies and metals may welcome the cuts because they’ll help propel a rebound in prices. Platinum, aluminum, silver, nickel, zinc, lead and uranium all are forecast to rise by 2017, according to the median of analyst estimates compiled Jan. 16 by Bloomberg. The losers will be buyers of cans, cars and all the goods made from metals.

Mining companies are extending massive cuts in exploration budgets for a second year, setting up the next price boom as China continues its relentless pursuit of metals and energy.

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COLUMN-China moves to cut coal use look bearish for imports, may not be – by Clyde Russell (Reuters India – January 17, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

Clyde Russell is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own.

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Jan 17 (Reuters) – Coal miners in Australia and Indonesia could be forgiven for feeling depressed, given the plethora of news coming out from top buyer China on how it intends to cut demand for the dirty fuel.

In the past few days China’s National Energy Administration has set a target of lowering coal’s share of energy use to below 65 percent in 2014 from last year’s 65.7 percent, three years ahead of initial plans. Beijing’s mayor has urged an “all-out effort” to tackle air pollution, pledging to cut coal use by 2.5 million tonnes a year in his polluted city.

In neighbouring Hebei province, the country’s biggest steel-making region, authorities have said they will block new projects, punish officials in areas of high pollution, and cut steel output and coal use by 15 million tonnes each this year.

This all sounds bearish for coal, and the gloom of miners that export to China could be deepened by signs that domestic supply in the biggest producer and user of the fuel is rising.

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Canadian nickel producers hope to benefit from Indonesia’s export ban – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – January 17, 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.

Indonesia’s ban on raw mineral exports has the potential to rejuvenate a nickel industry that is suffering from a plunge in metal prices.

The ban, which started on Sunday, has pushed nickel prices up on fears that there will be a shortage of the silvery white metal used to make stainless steel. That would help Canadian producers Sherritt International Corp., Lundin Mining Corp. and First Quantum Minerals Ltd.

Toronto-based Sherritt, which runs the Moa nickel mine in Cuba and is developing a giant nickel mine in Madagascar, could see benefits immediately. “Any improvement in the nickel prices will go straight to our revenue,” said Sherritt’s chief executive officer David Pathe.

Shares of Sherritt and other producers gained about 5 per cent on Thursday. Shares of tiny Canadian nickel companies First Nickel Inc. and Royal Nickel Corp. also made gains.

Although nickel is trading at two-month highs of $6.50 (U.S.) a pound, the metal is down 70 per cent from its record high of $24 reached in 2007 when supplies were scarce.

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