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Ontario’s Ring of Fire project – by Mark Kennedy (Postmedia News – January 2, 2013)

http://o.canada.com/

For video, click here: http://www.canada.com/business/First+Nations+determined+benefits+Ontario+Ring+Fire+project/9343179/story.html#ooid=F4bnlkajpiqxHSi9HVBCDaGNBssqfwfc

OTTAWA — First Nations peoples refuse to be “marginalized” and will demand their share of the riches associated with a proposed mineral development project in northern Ontario, says Bob Rae.

The former senior politician, now chief negotiator for the Matawa Tribal Council, told Postmedia News in an interview that the so-called Ring of Fire project has great potential for both the Canadian economy and for indigenous peoples in the region.

He stressed that two critical issues are on the table if the minerals are to be dug out of the ground: First Nations must be comfortable with the long-term environmental impact; and must see improvements to their education and training and have a share of mineral royalties.

“We’re seeing a much greater determination on the part of First Nations to benefit directly from any development,” said Rae, who quit politics last summer to take on his new task.

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U.S. issues warning over Bakken-sourced oil – by Grant Robertson (Globe and Mail – January 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.

Washington has issued a warning that crude oil originating from the Bakken region is more explosive than traditional oil, marking the first time since the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster that the U.S. government has acknowledged the dangers of shipping such volatile crude on trains.

The warning comes three days after a train carrying Bakken oil derailed in rural North Dakota, causing massive explosions and forcing evacuations. It was the third fiery oil train accident in less than six months, beginning with the derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Que., on July 6 that killed 47 people and gutted the town.

The U.S. Department of Transportation said it is conducting tests on oil from the Bakken region, which straddles North Dakota and parts of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and is preparing to make changes to the way the rail and oil industries operate. In particular, the regulator will require crude producers and shippers to “degasify” risky oil before shipping it, which would mean stripping out highly combustible gases such as hydrogen sulfide, before shipping.

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Fiery North Dakota train derailment fuels oil-shipping fears – by Grant Robertson (Globe and Mail – December 31, 2013)

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.

Dense columns of black smoke rose from the North Dakota plains after a train carrying more than 100 cars of crude oil derailed and exploded in a massive fireball Monday, forcing officials to evacuate residents of a nearby town.

The derailment, which caused a roiling ball of flame that could be seen more than a kilometre away, is the third major incident involving an oil-laden train in less than six months, starting with the deadly derailment in Lac-Mégantic, Que., this summer, which killed 47 people and destroyed much of the town.

Similar to the Lac-Mégantic disaster, the train that derailed Monday was carrying crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken fields. The cargo exploded after the train collided with another train carrying soy beans, which had gone off the tracks. Residents in nearby Casselton, N.D., reported seeing flames shooting more than 30 metres in the air, and hearing at least six loud explosions. As crews battled the blaze Monday night, authorities were ordering residents to stay indoors to avoid the toxic fumes, and were preparing to evacuate at least 300 people.

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Canada’s mining executives hope for better after a dismal 2013 – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – January 1 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.

2013 was a bad year for mining companies in Canada and around the world. Metal prices fell, companies slashed costs, projects were suspended and executives continued to lose their jobs. To top it off, China’s slowing economy cast a pall over the sector.

Below are the mining industry’s pivotal moments from its dismal year.

1. Russian potash producer OAO Uralkali sent the crop nutrient industry into a tailspin when it broke up one of the world’s two marketing alliances that sold potash to global markets. Before the breakup, Uralkali and its Belarus potash rival and a North American alliance (which includes Canada’s Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan) controlled 70 per cent of the potash market and had enormous sway over prices. Now fertilizer prices are depressed and buyers have delayed making potash purchases as they wait for prices to fall further.

2. Too much nickel in the market and not enough demand sent prices of the silvery-white metal down about 20 per cent in 2013.

Now, Indonesia’s coming ban on raw mineral exports has the potential to be a game changer.

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Steel consortium slashes Afghan ore plant plan – by Krishna N Das and Jessica Donati (Reuters India – December 31, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

NEW DELHI/KABUL – (Reuters) – An Indian consortium has slashed a planned $10.8 billion iron ore investment in Afghanistan by 80 percent because it has been unable to get funding for the project.

The consortium has proposed new terms which would see just 130.57 billion rupees invested, according to figures released on Tuesday in India’s steel ministry year-end report.

Led by state-owned Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) (SAIL.NS), the group was forced to renegotiate the terms of the deal with the Afghan government after India’s finance ministry refused to fund the project.

The original proposal called for investment in three iron ore blocks at Hajigak in Afghanistan and in a 6 million-tonne-per-year (MTPA) steel plant.

But the finance ministry told the consortium, according to an official involved, to draw up a fresh viability study. Under the new proposed terms, the size of the plant would fall to 1.2 MTPA.

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2013 News Story: Bittersweet victory for mine safety – by Harold Carmichael (Sudbury Star – December 31, 2013)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The $1-million fine against Vale the largest occupational health and safety related fine issued by an Ontario court and the province’s decision to conduct a mining review together constitute The Sudbury Star’s top news story of 2013. Both stand to have a significant impact on the city’s defining industry.

On June 8, 2011, Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, were working on the 3,000-foot level of Stobie Mine when they were overcome by a 350-tonne run of muck consisting of rock and water.

Vale pleaded guilty to three charges admitting to failure to take reasonable precautions to prevent water accumulation in the mine, which was determined to have played a role in the run of muck.

“The fine and the announcement of a review are the most significant legal developments relating to mine safety we’ve seen in this province for decades,” said Sudbury Star Managing Editor Brian MacLeod. “The persistent efforts of people in the community undoubtedly played a role in forcing the labour ministry to proceed with a review of mining practices.”

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End of the gold rush – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – December 31, 2013)

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.

Interest in gold melting with its first annual price decline since 2000.

Stock markets are gaining, and people are optimistic about the economy, which means one other thing: the bad news bears are sniffing around gold. After 12 consecutive years of the price going like gangbusters, the shine has started to come off the precious metal. It has tumbled 30 per cent this year, and its prospects in the near term aren’t, well, golden.

Battered bullion is headed for its first annual price decline since 2000, signaling what some say is the end of the gold rush that saw the price surge six-fold and an unprecedented mining super-cycle.

“To me, it’s like the sound of a huge spaceship coming down,” says Matthew Hart, author of Gold: The Race for the World’s Most Seductive Metal. Though exploration and mine construction have pretty much dried up amid the metals-market downturn, Hart says the fickle yet fascinating commodity continues to capture the world’s imagination.

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Ring of Fire debacle shows why big mineral discoveries can be worth so little – by Peter Koven (National Post – December 27, 2013)

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

The headline from Queen’s Park was loud and clear: Thousands of jobs coming to Northern Ontario, the provincial government announced in a breathless press release back in May of 2012.

The statement went on to explain that U.S. miner Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. will spend US$3.3-billion to develop a chromite mine and related infrastructure in the Ring of Fire, a vast mineral discovery in the remote James Bay Lowlands. This investment would lead to a “new generation of prosperity” in the North, the government claimed.

“When you read it, it sounded like the mine was about to open,” said Progressive Conservative MPP Norm Miller, the party’s mining critic. Of course, it wasn’t exactly right. What Cliffs actually said is that the Chromite project was moving on to the feasibility study phase, and the company had preliminary agreements with the government on certain aspects of it.

The rest of the story is well known. Talks with the province stalled after Dalton McGuinty resigned as premier. Chromite prices dropped. Cliffs lost a key infrastructure ruling from Ontario’s mining and land commissioner. And five weeks ago, the company suspended all work on the project.

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Doorway to opportunity: B.C. coal town hopes for revival – by Brent Jang (Globe and Mail – December 27, 2013)

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.

TUMBLER RIDGE, B.C – Inside the Dinosaur Discovery Gallery in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., a set of two large doors symbolize past pain and future optimism for the coal industry in northeastern British Columbia and the region’s ties to Asia.

After years in storage, the doors finally went on display this past summer, with the entrance handles together forming the Quintette coal project’s logo. The Quintette mine opened in 1982 and supplied Japanese steel mills, but it closed in 2000 amid low coal prices.

The local economy seemed so depressed that the mine’s owner, Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd., donated the doors for museum purposes because the company’s executives thought the closing would be permanent and no longer needed for the glass office building on Quintette’s sprawling site near Tumbler Ridge.

“These doors originally were worth roughly $100,000 and they are quite heavy,” said Richard McCrea, curator at the Peace Region Paleontology Research Centre, which houses the gallery. He marvels at the thick aluminum doors, featuring a pewter exterior with artwork that depicts trucks at an open-pit mine in British Columbia and blast furnaces used for steel making in Asia.

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Last U.S. Lead Smelter Closes Toxic History in Ore-Rich Missouri – by Tim Jones (Bloomberg News – December 23, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

When the St. Joseph Lead Co. finished work on its 350-foot smoke stack in 1892, the mining company’s pact with tiny Herculaneum, Missouri, was sealed. The town would enjoy more than a century of good-paying jobs while the plant belched sulfur-laced emissions.

Three decades after discovering the town’s blessing was life-threatening, its toxic partnership ends next week when the largest and last lead smelter in the U.S. shuts down.

The Dec. 31 closing of the smelter on the west bank of the Mississippi River, south of St. Louis, marks the end of an era in a region that has supplied most of the nation’s lead since the 1700s. Almost always, the roads and rails from the mines in southeast Missouri’s lead belt ran to Herculaneum.

“Never thought it would go away,” said Herculaneum Mayor Bill Haggard, nodding toward the smelter whose stack is now 550 feet tall, about the height of the Washington Monument. While lead mining continues in Missouri, the halt of smelting echoes the economics that contributed to the decline of high-sulfur coal excavation in the Midwest.

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TNM’s 2013 Mining Persons of the Year: Fission’s Ross McElroy and Dev Randhawa – by John Cumming (Northern Miner – December 23, 2013)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry. Editor John Cumming MSc (Geol) is one of the country’s most well respected mining journalists.  jcumming@northernminer.com

Since the days of the Manhattan project, there have been three conventional rules for finding uranium mineralization in Saskatchewan: it occurs in the Athabasca basin, usually in the lowest sandstone unit that’s in contact with the basement rock; the best place to look is in the eastern part of the basin; and the shallow stuff has all been found, so you need to go deeper into the basin to find more.

Well, the new Patterson Lake South ultra-high-grade uranium discovery by joint-venture partners Fission Uranium (TSXV: FCU; US-OTC: FCUUF) and Alpha Minerals turns all that conventional wisdom on its head: the deposit is 8 km outside the southwestern edge of the basin in a relatively unexplored area, and it lies almost at surface, covered only by glacial overburden and a shallow lake.

And for this, we are awarding our 2013 “Mining Persons of the Year” to Fission president and COO Ross McElroy, the technical point man on the discovery, and Fission chairman and CEO Dev Randhawa, who has ably guided the company through not one, but two major corporate overhauls in a single year.

Ross McElroy is a veteran geologist with an uncanny ability to place himself at the heart of the discovery of high-grade Canadian mineral deposits.

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Colossus shocks market with cancelled financing, low resource estimate – by Peter Koven (National Post – December 24, 2013)

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

TORONTO – A Canadian miner on the brink of financial collapse has surprised investors by releasing a shockingly low resource estimate for its flagship gold project.

Late Friday night, Colossus Minerals Inc. unveiled potentially fatal news to the market: that a desperation financing agreement with Arias Resources Capital Management has fallen apart. The Toronto-based miner, which has a small interest payment due on Dec. 31, warned it may not be able to raise capital to carry on business past that date.

Finding that money may not become any easier after what Colossus reported on Monday.

The company released a mineral resource estimate for its Serra Pelada project in Brazil that identified a miniscule 274,000 ounces of gold. Given that Colossus has raised more than $380-million for development of Serra Pelada, and the mine is close to production, this resource figure is absurdly low. Investors figured Colossus possessed millions of ounces at Serra Pelada, a past-producing property.

According to experts, that is likely the case.

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Where Arctic camels once roamed, coal mining can wait – by CBC News North (December 24, 2013)

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

A coal exploration project proposing to tread the same ground as the ancient fossil forests on Nunavut’s Ellesmere Island has been temporarily put on the shelf.

Canada Coal has delayed its exploration program on Ellesmere Island for at least a year, and withdrawn its application to Nunavut regulators, saying it needs more time to address a host of concerns raised by people in nearby Grise Fiord and scientists across Canada and the U.S. Canada Coal’s active exploration licenses cover more than 7000 square kilometres, mostly on Ellesmere’s Fosheim Peninsula. The company had proposed to set up a 20 to 30-person field camp next summer in order to map and drill for coal the region.

However, the project was controversial. The Fosheim Peninsula is a renowned source of unique fossils, including alligators, turtles and primates that lived on the Arctic Island 50 million years ago, as well as beavers and horses that occupied the site just a few million years ago.

“Frankly, when you discover something new, something people have never seen before, or something that really fills in an important piece of a puzzle, it’s a thrill,” says Jim Basinger, a paleontologist at the University of Saskatchewan.

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Americans’ appetite for bling on fire as gold prices sink – by Frank Tang (Reuters U.S. – December 23, 2013)

 http://www.reuters.com/

NEW YORK – (Reuters) – Tumbling gold prices, growing consumer confidence and aggressive discounting by retailers have Americans flocking to jewelers’ counters this holiday shopping season.

The U.S. gold jewelry industry is on track for its highest sales for the fourth quarter since 2010 and its first annual increase in gold sales in more than a decade, precious metal consultant Thomson Reuters GFMS has estimated.

“I always look for the price of gold in the news and pay attention to discounts and deals,” John Mora Gonzalez, a 31-year-old mechanic in New York, said after purchasing a necklace for his wife for Christmas. Mora had spotted J.C. Penney Co Inc’s 20-percent discount on fine jewelry, and paid $40 for a 10-karat gold necklace.

Gold prices have plunged almost a third this year, halting a 12-year run of gains. Bullion lost favor with institutional and retail investors as they braced for the U.S. Federal Reserve to reduce its monthly $85 billion bond-buying program, moving funds to equities and other riskier assets.

Renewed consumer appetite for gold is unlikely to counteract the lack of investment dollars and reverse the downward trend for prices.

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