Republic of Mining

Canadian miners caught in the middle – by Jason Fekete (Vancouver Sun – October 11, 2013)

October 15, 2013

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

Spying allegations latest issue facing companies working in Latin America

Allegations of Canada spying on Brazil’s mines and energy ministry could prove the latest political and economic headache for Canadian extractive companies already encountering problems operating in Latin America.

Federal government documents obtained by Postmedia News under access to information laws show Canadian companies – trying to improve a bruised reputation – face increasing political uncertainty and challenges earning “social licence” in Latin American countries such as Brazil, Chile and Mexico, even before the latest spying allegations.

The Canadian government is being accused at home and abroad of industrial espionage, following allegations the supersecret Communications Security Establishment Canada targeted the metadata of emails and phone calls to and from the Brazilian ministry of mines and energy.

Questions are also mounting about what specific information Canadian security agencies and federal officials have been sharing with Canadian energy companies during secret meetings.

Legislation to protect Chile’s glaciers and water supplies worries important mining industry – by Associated Press (Washington Post – October 09, 2013)

October 15, 2013

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

SANTIAGO, Chile — Just how to define a glacier is at the heart of a Chilean congressional battle that could determine the future of mining in the world’s largest copper-producing country.

The revival of legislation to ban mining in glacial areas is spawning debate among miners, farmers and environmentalists about how to protect both vital water supplies and Chile’s mining industry. If the bill passes, mining experts fear it could shutter multibillion-dollar mining projects and slow investment.

The key will be in the fine print of whether the final bill defines glaciers as including frozen areas around them, too, and whether the protections would apply retroactively to mines already operating next to glaciers.

“If it passes as a law with tough conditions, it could harm not only the operation of current projects but also future projects,” said Juan Carlos Guajardo, head of the Chilean mining think tank CESCO. “Depending on the conditions, the scenarios would make mining activity very difficult in high mountain areas.”

Ontario jobs driven to Quebec – by John R. Hunt (North Bay Nugget – October 12, 2013)

October 15, 2013

http://www.nugget.ca/

This has been a very badly kept secret. Ontario has been losing thousands of man-hours of work and natural resources worth thousands and probably millions of dollars. Highway 11 is being pounded daily by a flotilla of trucks and in both Latchford and Temagami there have been concerns about pedestrian and traffic safety.

It is known that the trucks are carrying mine concentrates from Sudbury to be refined in Noranda, Que.

There appears to have been a total news blackout. One might have expected the unions to be howling and protesting. But little or nothing has hit the headlines. Perhaps everyone is scared of the big mining companies.

All this may change Thursday evening when the Latchford town council will consider resolutions directed to Ontario government departments. They will point out that Hwy. 11 is the town’s Main Street. The heavy traffic is wearing down the recently renovated pavement and that the trucks often appear to be traveling in convoys of eight to nine vehicles which makes life very difficult for pedestrians and automobile drivers.

Water Insecurity a Key Threat to the Development of Global Mining – by Lauren Power (Future Directions International – October 9, 2013)

October 15, 2013

http://www.futuredirections.org.au/

Pressure for platinum miners in South Africa to halve their water consumption is symptomatic of a growing global risk to resource development posed by water shortages and conflict over water supplies available for mines.

Background

The South African Government recently requested that platinum miners in the country’s North West province cut their water use by half, in response to a drought that is threatening water supplies in the region. Throughout the world, mining activities are being challenged by water issues involving the availability of supplies for operational use, community conflict over available resources and the environmental consequences of water contamination.

Water issues are creating threefold operational, regulatory and reputational risk for miners, who are increasingly identifying water shortages as a top ranking issue in risk analysis. The availability of water is a considerable factor, affecting both growth and productivity; shortages in supply could prove a threat to new developments in some areas.

Water shortage threatens mining – by Lucky Biyase (Business Day – October 13, 2013)

October 15, 2013

http://www.bdlive.co.za/ [South Africa]

TROUBLED mining companies in the Rustenburg platinum belt are facing another crisis — drought.

This may add to problems besetting companies trapped in the middle of rivalry between the National Union of Mineworkers and the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union.

The water affairs department and North West’s provincial government have both warned of a drought in the mineral-rich province.

South Africa supplies nearly 60% of the world’s platinum and rhodium and 30% of palladium. The department has warned mining companies, among them Glencore, Anglo American and Lonmin, to restrict water use.

Lonmin’s executive vice-president for process and sustainability, Natascha Viljoen, said: “We are working with the Madibeng local municipality to explore opportunities to re-use water. Our current external source of water is Rand Water and the Buffelspoort canal scheme, and the rest is internal.”

Age of the water wars – by Brahma Chellaney (Globe and Mail – October 9, 2013)

October 15, 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.

In an increasingly parched world, shared water resources are becoming an instrument of power, fostering competition within and between nations. The struggle is escalating political tensions and exacerbating effects on ecosystems. This week’s Budapest World Water Summit is the latest initiative to search for ways to mitigate the pressing challenges.

Consider some sobering facts: Bottled water at the grocery store is more expensive than crude oil on the spot market. More people own or use a cellphone than have access to sanitation services.

Unclean water is the greatest killer on the globe, yet a fifth of humankind still lacks easy access to potable water. More than half of the global population lives under water stress – a figure projected to increase to two-thirds during the next decade.

Access to natural resources has been a key factor, historically, in war and peace. Water, however, is very different from other natural resources. A person cannot live without water.

CHINA, ZAMBIA, AND A CLASH IN A COAL MINE – by ALEXIS OKEOWO (New Yorker Magazine – October 10, 2013)

October 11, 2013

http://www.newyorker.com/

Alexis Okeowo received support for the reporting in this post from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

Twelve hundred Zambians gathered on a sunny morning in August of 2012 to protest at Collum Coal Mine, which is located in a rural southern province and, at the time, was owned by five Chinese brothers. They were angry about the working conditions in the mine: Collum had been cited several times by Zambia’s government for labor violations, and miners said that they felt unsafe working there. They were also upset about annual wage increases that they said amounted to only a single Zambian kwacha—the equivalent of twenty cents.

The miners learned that a Chinese foreman had brought outside workers to replace them during the protest, according to one of the protesting miners, twenty-eight-year-old Robert Mundike. Mundike and his co-workers confronted the foreman at one of the mine’s shafts and assaulted him. Then, according to Mundike, they beat up more Chinese workers, along with Zambian miners who were still working even though the protesters had told them not to.

The group—which included not only Collum miners but also their relatives and former workers who said they were owed wages—was becoming restless. They reached another mine shaft, near a cluster of houses where several Chinese supervisors lived. Five Chinese men ran from the settlement, past the coal-carrying conveyor belt and a rock crusher and into the mine, Danny Sikatari, who works as a mine foreman but who did not participate in the protest, told me.

Canada, Brazil and how snoops are threatening free trade [mining espionage] – by Erica Alini (MacLean’s Magazine – October 10, 2013)

October 11, 2013

http://www2.macleans.ca/?cid=navlogo

What really happened

Was a top-secret slideshow suggesting that Canada’s intelligence targeted Brazil’s Mines and Energy Ministry a “war game”? A fake? A completely hypothetical “paper exercise,” as Ray Boisvert, former head of counter-terrorism at CSIS, has been telling the media since the latest Snowden leak unexpectedly thrust Ottawa at the centre of a political and diplomatic spying scandal?

“I don’t buy that for a minute,” says Wesley Wark, a professor at the University of Ottawa and one of Canada’s leading experts on national security and intelligence. The slides, which surfaced for the first time in a Brazilian TV documentary last Sunday, detail “the beginning of an intelligence targeting effort” by the Communications Security Establishment Canada on Brazil’s Mines and Energy Ministry, according to Wark. Jeffrey Carr, founder and CEO of Seattle-based cyber security firm Taia Global, gave Econowatch much the same assessment: The slides are no simulation.

So that takes care of the first question that this bizarre Brazilian affair raises: There is one answer out there being spun by former Canadian intelligence officials and a different one give by authoritative, independent experts. It’s up to you to decide which you want to believe, but in this post, I’m going with the latter.

Mining a blockbuster – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – October 11, 2013)

October 11, 2013

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.

Robert Friedland is going Hollywood.

The billionaire mining mogul has purchased a Hollywood film studio to make movies, but he’s not ditching his bread and butter any time soon. Friedland’s goal is to produce films that highlight the importance of mining and underscore the urgency of finding new ore bodies to satisfy the globe’s growing appetite for metals.

“It’s remarkable how many people who live in urban environments don’t understand the supply chain,” Friedland said during an Oct. 9 talk at Laurentian University in Sudbury. “They don’t understand that if you walk in the room to turn on a light switch, somewhere a generator has to kick in and provide that power; there’s no storage of electricity in the grid.”

Friedland, the chairman and founder of Ivanhoe Capital Corp. and executive chairman and founder of Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., gave the inaugural lecture in a series presented by the Goodman School of Mines.

CEMI, SNOLAB team up to interpret mining data – by Heidi Ulrichsen (Sudbury Northern Life – October 11, 2013)

October 11, 2013

http://www.northernlife.ca/

A facility which will collect data from underground sensors will help mines improve safety and efficiency, according to an executive at the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI).

With the help of a $750,000 investment from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, CEMI is setting up the Mining Observatory Data Control Centre (MODCC) in the SNOLAB surface building at Vale’s Creighton Mine.

Damien Duff, vice-president of geoscience and geotechnical research and development at CEMI, explains that most mine equipment – everything from load haul dump machines to ventilation systems – already contains sophisticated sensors.

There’s also sensors in the rock itself collecting data about seismicity. MODCC will harness this information so that mines can be operated or designed differently to maximize safety and efficiency, he said.

“So if we get that data collected, integrated and then analyzed through some kind of sophisticated data analysis and then a sharing process, imagine the value we can derive from it,” Duff said.

It’s off to court for Cliffs – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – October 11, 2013)

October 11, 2013

Cliffs Natural Resources is heading to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to appeal a ruling that denied the Ohio miner access to its Ring of Fire chromite deposit.

In September, the Ontario Mining and Lands Commissioner ruled against the company which was seeking a road easement atop the mining claims of KWG Resources, a development partner and a rival in the James Bay region.

This week, Toronto-based KWG announced that Cliffs had served them with a notice to appeal.

Bill Boor, Cliffs vice-president of global ferroalloys, said last month they were unlikely to launch an appeal given the length of time it would take to get a hearing and in believing a real solution resided with the Ontario government.

This week, Boor said they decided to exercise that option within the 30-day appeal window, but he’s not hopeful anything will be resolved anytime soon. “We decided to do it but I don’t think it’s the solution.”

NEWS RELEASE: Super Pit Push: B.C.’s Copper Mountain Mine Lifts Neighbouring Property

October 11, 2013

Oct 11, 2013 (ACCESSWIRE via COMTEX) — SOURCE: VantageWire.com — The copper scene in British Columbia took on a major change when the Copper Mountain Mine started production in June of 2011. Five billion pounds of copper reserves and over 20 years of mine life left will do that.

Today, the project owned by Copper Mountain Mining [TSX: CUM] and Mitsubishi Materials Corporation is producing at 36,000 tpd at a cut-off grade of 0.12% copper. To get to this point, Copper Mountain has drilled more than 1000 holes. As part of the deal, partner Mitsubishi (that owns 25%) now buys all of the concentrate that comes from the operation.

The Copper Mountain Mine and the work that went into it have proven that BC’s grades are capable of international levels of production. The province can handle more output, and the Princeton region that is host to the operation has plenty left to offer. Given the prospects in development in the areas near the mine, a bird’s eye view of the projects on the horizon highlight the potential the province truly has.

Directly adjacent to Copper Mountain’s “super pit” is junior Anglo-Canadian Mining Corp. [TSX.V: URA]. With it’s fully owned and highly prospective Princeton copper-gold property, Anglo-Canadian is in the land of the giants in striking distance from a future takeover bid. The 2200-hectare property is in good standing for Anglo-Canadian until 2023.

Aglukkaq will have final say on controversial Fish Lake mine in B.C. Interior – by Gloria Galloway (Globe and Mail – October 11, 2013)

October 11, 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.

OTTAWA — In one of her first tests as Environment Minister, Leona Aglukkaq will give thumbs up or down to a proposed mine in British Columbia that is a new version of a plan tossed out as ecologically disastrous by a former Conservative minister.

Chiefs from Tsilhqot’in First Nations say they have no doubt that a federal environmental assessment panel, which is weeks away from delivering a verdict on the New Prosperity mine at Fish Lake in the B.C. Interior, will reject it out of hand.

They say the plan for the billion-dollar gold-and-copper pit that Taseko Mines Ltd. wants to dig near the lake the Tsilhqot’in call Teztan Biny – a small body of water they consider culturally and spiritually sacred – is just as bad as the earlier version thrown out in 2010 by former environment minister Jim Prentice.

Representatives from environmental groups who sat in on the panel’s hearings this summer say they are cautiously optimistic it is preparing to say no to the mine. Scientists from Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Fisheries and Oceans, as well officials from B.C.’s provincial ministries, expressed significant concerns about the project.

Federal government prepares $24-million oilsands advertising blitz – by Alex Boutilier (Ottawa Citizen – October 10, 2013)

October 11, 2013

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

OTTAWA – The federal Conservatives hope to counter “intense and sustained public relations campaigns” against Alberta’s oilsands with a $24-million international advertising blitz.

The two-year ad campaign will target political and business leaders, as well as media organizations and domestic political advocates in the United States, Europe and Asia. According to a request for proposals issued by Natural Resources Canada, the government believes domestic and international campaigns against the oilsands are partly to blame for proposed regulations that “unfairly target the oil sands” in the U.S. and Europe.

The document specifically references California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, Section 526 of the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act, and Europe’s Fuel Quality Directive as proposals based on “preconceived notions about the oil sands that are not supported by science.”

“Canada has been, and continues to be, the target of intense and sustained public relations campaigns by domestic and international organizations, criticizing our domestic natural resource development policies and companies engaged in resource developments,” the NRCan document reads.

Exclusive: Glencore, Vale in talks over Canadian nickel tie-up – sources – by Clara Ferreira-Marques and Euan Rocha (Rueters U.S. – October 11, 2013)

October 11, 2013

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON/TORONTO – (Reuters) – Glencore Xstrata (GLEN.L) and Vale (VALE5.SA) have revived talks over a potential combination of the mining groups’ nickel operations in Canada’s Sudbury basin, in an effort to cut costs as prices for the metal languish, sources familiar with the situation said.

The discussions are still at an early stage but have revived hopes of a long-debated Sudbury tie-up, with the companies considering a number of options for their mining and processing operations in the area, the sources said.

Depending on the details of a potential deal, several of the sources said a tie-up could mean substantial savings for both mining heavyweights, if all or part of their mining, milling and even smelting operations are brought together.

In 2006, a proposed merger of Falconbridge and Inco – the then-players in Sudbury, but later taken over by Xstrata and Brazil’s Vale (VALE5.SA), respectively – expected annual synergies and cost savings of about $550 million.

The sources said talks restarted after Glencore completed its acquisition of Xstrata earlier this year. Discussions have progressed against the backdrop of a nickel price that has fallen by around a fifth since January to around four-year lows, weighed down by over-supply.