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Iron ore rally boosts miners – by Peter Ker and Brian Robins (Sydney Morning Herald – November 6, 2013)

http://www.smh.com.au/

The four-month rally in iron ore stocks shows no sign of abating, with some miners hitting their highest share prices in more than a year this week.

Shares in BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto were on Monday fetching their highest prices since February and March respectively, while Fortescue Metals Group has not been this valuable since May 2012.

The strong rally in the sector has come after a four-month period that was supposed to be its weakest of 2013, yet saw the benchmark iron ore price refuse to slip below $US130 per tonne.

A further rise in the benchmark price to $US135 per tonne over the past 48 hours fuelled further buying on Tuesday, and pushed Fortescue shares to $5.53 for the first time in 18 months.

Fortescue shares have rallied so strongly since they were below $3 in late June that Deutsche analyst Paul Young downgraded the stock to a sell last week on the basis that it had become over-valued, particularly when compared with BHP and Rio.

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China to further open its mining industry – by Du Juan (Xinhuanet – November 4, 2013)

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/

BEIJING, Nov. 4 (Xinhuanet) — China will further open its mining sector to overseas investors and encourage them to participate in resource exploration and utilization and the development of shale gas, said a senior official on Sunday.

“The Chinese government has attached great importance to the mining industry’s contribution to the country’s economic growth,” said Jiang Daming, minister for land and resources, at the 2013 China Mining Expo in Tianjin.

He said the establishment of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone signifies that China has stepped into a new stage of openness.

The government will simplify the approval process and management of mining resources, with the aim of improving the convenience and efficiency of investment in the sector, according to Jiang.

At present, social capital accounts for up to 70 percent of mining exploration investments in China, as investors have grown increasingly diversified.

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Logging plan would deepen the tragedy at Grassy Narrows – by Simon Fobister (Toronto Star – November 3, 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.

Simon Fobister Chief of Grassy Narrows Band

Forty years ago, Ontario devastated the community of Grassy Narrows by dumping mercury into its river system. If the province goes ahead with its logging plan, it will do it again.

Premier Kathleen Wynne came to our community in the summer of 2012 and said she wanted to rebuild Ontario’s relationship with Grassy Narrows. She said that this time she wanted to “get it right.” Instead, her officials have continued to unilaterally pursue clearcut logging plans for our homeland.

These plans were and continue to be developed without our participation, knowledge and consent. We are frustrated that these processes are conducted entirely outside of the five-year-long process we have undertaken in good faith with Ontario to reach a mutually agreeable resolution to these issues.

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High energy rates could jeopardize mining: NDP – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life – November 04, 2013)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Energy makes up to 30 per cent of the costs for mining operations in the province

Ontario’s power rates jeopardize the future of the province’s mining sector, said Michael Mantha, the NDP’s critic for northern development and mines.

Mantha, the MPP for Algoma-Manitoulin, said the province needs to ensure the mining sector has more long-term predictability for hydro costs.

“We need to focus on programs that will have a greater impact,” he said. The provincial government has a number of programs in place to provide competitive energy rates to heavy industry, including the Industrial Accelerator Program, the Industrial Electricity Incentive, changes to the Global Adjustment and the Northern Industrial Electricity Rate.

Electricity is the second highest operating cost for Ontario’s mining industry, after labour. According to the Ontario Mining Association, 15 to 30 per cent of the costs associated with a typical mine in the province are tied to energy.

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Betting on end to glut, miners hunt for new zinc deposits – by James Regan (Reuters U.S. – November 4, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY – (Reuters) – A global hunt is on to find new deposits of zinc as China buys more of the metal to rust-proof new cars and coat steel used to build bridges and skyscrapers.

Multinationals such as Swiss-based Glencore Xstrata (GLEN.L), Belgium’s Nyrstar (NYR.BR) and China’s MMG (1208.HK) are funding new mines from Africa to the Yukon on expectations that an oversupply of zinc will turn into a deficit.

Along with mining veterans such as former Newmont (NEM.N) head Pierre Lassonde, who holds a stake in Canada’s Foran Mining (FOM.V), they are also investing just as ageing mines accounting for a tenth of world consumption start to shut.

Even old workings are being rehabilitated, including silver-zinc mines built by Hunt brothers Nelson and William in Canada in the 1970s. The Texan duo famously hoarded silver to corner the market and control global prices, only to go bust when silver prices crashed in 1980.

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Ottawa is in a box over New Prosperity mine – by Justine Hunter (Globe and Mail – November 4, 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.

VICTORIA — The B.C. government has not been subtle in pushing Ottawa to approve the New Prosperity mine.

In a case of gold fever, the province has shrugged off two damning federal environment reviews in the pursuit of what is believed to be one of the largest undeveloped copper-gold deposits in Canada.

The province’s environmental review gave Prosperity the go-ahead. When the first federal review concluded the mine would have a “high-magnitude, long-term and irreversible effect” on the environment, B.C. Mines Minister Bill Bennett dismissed the impact on a “tiny little pothole of a lake.” And when Ottawa rejected the original project, Premier Christy Clark set it at the top of her federal-provincial agenda when she advocated for New Prosperity at her first meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

All of this political pressure from British Columbia still may not be enough for the federal government to say “yes”. Like Ms. Clark’s B.C. Liberals, the federal Conservative government is keen on resource extraction, and this proposal would live up to its name for those in line to profit.

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UPDATE 1-China’s gold consumption to cool after surge this year -producer – by Judy Hua and David Stanway (Reuters India – November 4, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

TIANJIN, China, Nov 4 (Reuters) – China’s gold consumption is expected to climb to more than 1,000 tonnes this year, though the trend is not sustainable and could drop below this level from 2014, the country’s biggest gold producer said on Monday.

Meanwhile, gold output this year from China, the world’s top producer, is set to climb about 7 percent to another record high of 430 tonnes, Du Haiqing, vice general manager at China Gold Group Corp, said at an industry conference held in the northern city of Tianjin.

Gold demand from China has surged by more than half in the first six months of the year as sliding prices of the precious metal lured buyers, reinforcing expectations that China will overtake India as the top consumer this year.

Gold consumption in 2012 was 832.18 tonnes, according to data from the China Gold Association. Demand growth has dramatically outpaced production, causing imports from Hong Kong to surge and hover at more than 100 tonnes for five straight months up to September.

But this year’s consumption was “abnormal”, as a sharp drop in prices in April has sparked a buying frenzy, said Du.

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Stornoway’s Renard mine: Quebec’s diamond in the rough looks to make history – by Nicolas Van Praet (National Post – November 2, 2013)

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

NEAR THE OTISH MOUNTAINS, QUE. – Matt Manson remembers being cold. And thinking about divine retribution.

It was November 2006 and the wounds were still raw from Stornoway Diamond Corp.’s unsolicited takeover of Ashton Mining, part of a $200-million play that also saw Stornoway buy Contact Diamond. As president of the newly consolidated company, Mr. Manson had just finished visiting its flagship asset — the Renard diamond project in northern Quebec — for the first time when a snowstorm closed in.

He jumped into a helicopter and the pilot flew him at low altitude two hours south to Témiscamie, an aircraft refuelling and logistics station with no permanent residents. Huddled against the side of a shed and waiting for a truck to take him to Chibougamau, he found himself completely alone.

“I’m sitting there, shivering away against the wall, getting covered in snow for about three hours and thinking ‘Here’s my punishment’,” recalls Mr. Manson, now Stornoway’s president and chief executive. “‘We went hostile and now I’m being punished. The gods were paying me [back]’.”

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Barrick investors cool to stock sale, push for board revamp – Boyd Erman and Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – November 2, 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.

Pressure is mounting on Barrick Gold Corp. to speed up changes in its boardroom, with some large investors demanding the company improve its governance before subscribing to the $3-billion (U.S) stock offering the gold miner launched to pay down its debt.

The banks underwriting the deal pushed hard to sell the 163.5 million shares on Friday, the day after the transaction was announced.

But by late in the day, the stock was not fully sold. Barrick shares closed at $18.02 on the New York Stock Exchange, 1.8 per cent below the offering price of $18.35.

The offering faces a number of hurdles. It is one of the largest stock sales in Canadian history, and Barrick’s share price has been in a long decline. On top of that, the price of gold fell Thursday and Friday.

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Poland, Wedded to Coal, Spurns Europe on Clean Energy Targets – by Danny Hakim and Mateusz (New York Times – October 31, 2013)

http://www.nytimes.com/

BELCHATOW, Poland — They call it Poland’s biggest hole in the ground. The coal mine here is more than eight-and-a-half miles long, nearly two miles wide and as deep in parts as three football fields. Enough coal comes out of it to fuel Europe’s largest coal-fired utility plant, whose chimneys loom in the distance.

“The entire world population could fit in this hole,” Tomasz Tarnowski, an administrator here, said in a bit of proud hyperbole as he led a group of reporters on a walk near a towering mound of brown coal about halfway into the mine.

Poland is Europe’s coal colossus. More than 88 percent of its electricity comes from coal. Belchatow is one of its huge sources and the largest carbon emitter in Europe. (There’s no “belch” in Belchatow — it is pronounced bel-HOT-oof.)

This month, a United Nations conference on climate change will be held in Poland, a location many environmental activists consider the least appropriate choice they could imagine. And while the European Union has mapped out ambitious clean-energy goals intended to reduce the greenhouse gases linked to global warming, Poland has been its fossil-fuels holdout.

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Local firms test new Ring of Fire technology – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – November 2, 2013)

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

Research is being conducted at a Sudbury facility to develop a new, less expensive method of processing chromite ore from the Ring of Fire and turning it into ferrochrome.

KWG Resources Ltd. has filed a patent application while work is being done to commercialize a method of using natural gas, rather than an electric arc furnace, to power a ferrochrome processing plant.

Moe Lavigne, vice-president of exploration and development for KWG, said his company is aiming to reduce the cost of producing ferrochrome from the chromite it will mine from the Black Horse deposit it has an 80% share in in the Ring of Fire.

If you factored in current electricity prices, two to three times higher in Ontario than some provinces, electric arc furnaces and road transportation, “there’s a very strong chance … the Ring of Fire won’t be economical at all,” said Lavigne.

Cliffs Natural Resources hopes to develop its Ring of Fire Black Thor deposit and ship some of its material to a smelter it plans to construct in Capreol.

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Taseko Prosperity Mine Environmental Study Predicts Death Of Fish Lake – by Vivian Luk (Canadian Press/Huffington Post – November 1, 2013)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

VANCOUVER – Those for and against the controversial proposal for the billion-dollar New Prosperity Mine in British Columbia are drawing much different conclusions from their interpretation of a federal environmental review for the site.

The study by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, released late Thursday, concluded the open pit gold and copper mine proposed by Taseko (TSX:TKO) in B.C.’s central Interior would pose “several severely adverse environmental effects” on water quality, fish and fish habitat in a lake considered sacred by the area’s First Nations.

The project would likely pollute Fish Lake, known as Teztan Biny to First Nations, and endanger the aboriginal way of life and cultural identity, the report said.

This is the second time the federal review panel has rejected the project. The original proposal for the site southwest of Williams Lake was approved by the provincial government, but rejected by the federal government in 2010 because the plan was to drain the lake for use as a tailings pond.

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Rio Tinto in Mozambique withdraws expatriate families over safety – by Manuel Mucari (Reuters U.K. – November 1, 2013)

http://uk.reuters.com/

MAPUTO – (Reuters) – Mining company Rio Tinto is withdrawing expatriate employees’ families from Mozambique for their safety in a sign that an upsurge in kidnappings and violence is worrying investors.

Other major companies developing big coal and gas reserves in the former Portuguese colony, Brazil’s Vale, U.S. oil company Anadarko and Italian oil and gas group Eni, said they were closely following political developments there, after clashes between the government army and opposition Renamo guerrillas.

London-listed Rio Tinto, which mines and exports coal from northwest Tete province, said in a statement it was arranging to send home the families of foreign employees.

It announced the move a day after tens of thousands of Mozambicans marched in the capital Maputo and two other cities to protest against the threat of armed conflict and a recent spate of kidnappings by criminals.

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Miners urged to modernise CSR communications – by Simon Rees (MiningWeekly.com – November 1, 2013)

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

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Mining companies that fail to engage with social media or other online platforms face the risk of increased criticism, scrutiny and protest by opposition groups, speakers told delegates at the Risk Mitigation & CSR Seminar in Toronto on October 17.

Many companies are also failing to successfully broadcast the benefits accrued by project stakeholders and, in doing so, are not realising the full value inherent in their CSR programmes.

TURN ON, TUNE IN AND TWEET

HigherEye Trade & Consulting president and CEO Radcliffe Dockery emphasised how perception can quickly dictate a narrative. This includes the impact of protests. “Perception is reality … Protests that gather steam [can] create a new reality,” he warned.

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Vale’s Earnings Surge on Output – by Francezka Nangoy (Jakarta Globe – November 1, 2013)

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/

Vale Indonesia, the country’s biggest nickel miner, posted a 64 percent increase in profit in the first nine months of this year on the back of rising production and improving operations.

In a statement released on Thursday, the company said that its net income jumped to $47.28 million in the January-September period from $28.94 million in the corresponding period last year. Revenue rose to $721.07 million from $693.69 million.

Vale said in the statement that its success in improving its cost competitiveness helped its financial performance “even in these challenging market conditions.”

The company, controlled by Brazilian iron ore giant Vale, is currently shifting to fueling its dryers with coal rather than the more expensive high-sulphur fuel oil. The conversion began in the middle of the third quarter. Vale consumed 608,058 barrels of HSFO at an average cost of $99.65 per barrel throughout the quarter.

That compares with 679,306 barrels of consumption in the second quarter at $100.76 average cost per barrel.

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