Republic of Mining

At Encana, days of living large are finally over – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – September 13, 2013)

September 13, 2013

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

Encana Corp.’s new CEO is promising bold action to revive what was once Canada’s largest energy producer. Doug Suttles said Thursday the company will be involved in fewer plays, bring in a new corporate structure and realign employee incentives to better match today’s low natural gas prices.

The changes signal a new era of restraint in a company whose past was all about living large, growing production and dominating its business, but that seems to be finally responding to what market is looking for from the country’s largest natural gas producer.

The stock bounced nearly 4% to close at $18.61 in Toronto, on anticipation of major asset sales, after falling 20% in the past year.

“We need to change in a big way, in a bold way,” the former BP PLC executive from Texas said at a New York conference. “Encana will be back to winning. We will get back to the Encana we have known for many years.”

Suttles, who joined Encana in June, promised to announce the strategy’s details in the coming weeks so they can be incorporated in next year’s budget.

Theirs to recover: Why Ontario’s fiscal ‘time bomb’ is still not defused – by Scott Stinson and Armina Ligaya (National Post – September 13, 2013)

September 13, 2013

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

The Chestnut Conference Centre, once a hotel but now part of a non-descript student residence in downtown Toronto, is only a short walk from Queen’s Park but worlds apart from the stately brass and wood fittings of the seat of the provincial government.

As such, it was a suitable neutral ground for the first skirmishes of The Great Ontario Labour War of 2012. It was at the Chestnut that representatives of the McGuinty government met with officials of the province’s teachers’ unions to begin what all sides knew were going to be brutal contract negotiations.

The government’s objective was simple. They were to tell the unions that there was no money — none — for salary or benefit increases. The province’s fiscal picture was bleak. These were the financial parameters that had to be met.

On the afternoon of Feb. 22, the leadership of the Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario, along with more than a dozen regional chairs, took their seats across from a small group representing the government side. A scripted statement outlining the province’s dire position was delivered. There was no new money.

New Tory platform fighting caribou ESA plan – by Ron Grech (Timmins Daily Press – September 12, 2013)

September 13, 2013

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Two key criticisms of the caribou conservation plan will be addressed by the Ontario Tories’ revamping of Endangered Species Act, says the party’s natural resources critic.

MPP Laurie Scott (PC – Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock) told The Daily Press Thursday the Progressive Conservatives will unveil a natural resources/northern development platform in Thunder Bay on Monday which outlines promised changes to the ESA.

Scott said the Tories would make it mandatory to consider the socio-economic impacts of any recommendations made under the ESA before its implementation. “Right now the legislation has it that the minister may consider socio-economic factors. We’re saying it must consider the socio-economic factors,” said Scott.

The Tories would also require that any scientific analysis used to determine recommendations would have to be posted publicly to the Environmental Registry to allow stakeholders to provide input.

While these changes would apply to the ESA as a whole, they also respond to key concerns raised by organizations like the Ontario Forest Industries Association about lack of peer-reviewed science and absence of any consideration of socio-economic impact in the caribou conservation plan.

Confederation College prepares future mining workforce – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – September 12, 2013)

September 13, 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.

Ottawa is supporting Aboriginal training in preparation for coming development in the Far North. The federal government’s Skills and Partnership Fund is allocating more than $5.9 million for employment training in the mining sector for people in the nine communities of the Matawa First Nations.

It’s part of a new Ring of Fire Aboriginal Alliance announced by Ottawa, Matawa, the Kiikenomaga Kikenjigewen Employment and Training Services (KKETS), Confederation College and Noront Resources, a junior miner working in the James Bay lowlands.

This fall, nine specialized training and six pre-trade courses will be made available for Matawa members with many delivered in their home communities and Thunder Bay.

The training programs include: mining essentials, environmental monitoring, basic line cutting, security guard, remote camp cook, remote camp support, underground common core, underground diamond drill helper and heavy equipment operator. The pre-trades programs are in carpentry, electrical, plumbing, welding, heavy duty equipment mechanic and construction craft worker.

Mine rescue wasn’t consulted after Elliot Lake mall collapse – CBC News Thunder Bay (September 12, 2013)

September 13, 2013

http://www.cbc.ca/thunderbay/

Elliot Lake rescue commander Bill Neadles tells inquiry he didn’t believe mine rescue was an option

The Elliot Lake inquiry has heard the leader of the rescue operation at the collapsed mall never called Ontario mine rescue to see if they could help.

When the community was told the rescue at the mall was over — because the building was too unstable — the idea of calling mine rescue was raised by area residents.

Heavy urban search and rescue commander Bill Neadles was in charge of the operation at the mall. During testimony on Thursday, he told the inquiry he didn’t believe mine rescue was an option.

“A mine is one set of skills and expertise and risks,” he said. “A structural collapse is a total separate discipline and it would be my opinion that they wouldn’t have the training and ability to do anything.”

But Neadles also said he didn’t know a lot about mine rescue and didn’t check to see if that was the case. The inquiry will hear more about whether mine rescue could have helped at the mall.

Rail over road [Ring of Fire] – by Jamie Smith (tbnewswatch.com – September 12, 2013)

September 13, 2013

http://www.tbnewswatch.com/

A decision on a lifeline into the Ring of Fire has left one company feeling vindicated and another disappointed.

Surrounded by muskeg, claims in the proposed mining area are nearly inaccessible by land. But nature left a narrow strip of sand ridges, averaging 100 metres wide, from Exton all the way to the South end of the mineral deposits heralded as a massive economic boom for the region.

Those ridges were staked in 2009 by KWG Resources for a proposed railway. In 2012 Cliffs Natural Resources applied for 122 easements to build its proposed road around the same strip of land.

On Tuesday Ontario’s Mining and Lands Commissioner dismissed those applications after a week of hearings in February. Cliffs’ environmental director Jason Aagenes said the company is disappointed.

“We view the North-South road as a key component to our project and the Ring of Fire in general,” he said. But KWG’s vice-president of exploration and development, Moe Lavinge, said it proves what his company has said all along.

NEWS RELEASE: GCA comments on Ring of Fire right of way decision

September 12, 2013

NORTH BAY, ON, Sept. 12, 2013 /CNW/ – The General Chairperson’s Association (GCA) representing unionized employees at Ontario Northland is pleased with this week’s decision by the Ontario Mining and Lands Commissioner to dismiss the application by Cliffs Natural Resources for an easement to allow that company to build an all-weather road over mining claims staked by KWG Resources.

“The GCA believes the best, most cost efficient and environmentally responsible manner to provide transportation into and out of the Ring of Fire development for all stakeholders is a railway. A private, provincially funded $700M + road is in no one’s best interest, least of all taxpayers” said GCA spokesperson Brian Kelly

In the fall of 2012, the GCA unveiled a high level proposal that would, in consultation with the Government of Ontario, Government of Canada and First Nations create a new federal crown corporation that would see all ONTC assets including its telecom division ONTERA transferred. This new crown corporation would provide an expanded and revitalized, integrated transportation and communication system across the north while having the ability to obtain financing to design and build a railway into the Ring of Fire that would ship thousands of tons per day of chromite, nickel, other minerals and finished products to markets around the world.

How Mark Cutifani plans to reshape Anglo American – by Charlotte Mathews (Financial Mail – September 12, 2013)

September 12, 2013

http://www.fm.co.za/

Sculpting new shapes

New Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani says its new strategy will capitalise on future shortages of food, water, energy and the commodities needed for infrastructure development. Charlotte Mathews assesses the challenges faced by the miner.

Big mining companies are groping for their hangover remedies after the long commodities supercycle party. Anglo American had less fun than the rest but still got the hangover. Between 2001 and 2008 BHP Billiton’s share price on the JSE rose almost 10 times — to R300. Anglo American’s rose fivefold to R550. Now Billiton’s share price is R303 and Anglo’s is R255.

The supercycle was a theory put forward in 2004 by Chip Goodyear, then CEO of Billiton. He argued that as China and India played catch-up with the rest of the world in infrastructural development, demand for commodities would stay “stronger for longer” for at least a decade or more.

In fact the supercycle lasted only another two years. A 10-year graph of “Dr Copper”, a proxy for demand for industrial metals, shows prices flattened from mid-2006 and, apart from the dip after September 2008, have tracked sideways ever since. To some analysts, this represents only a “mid cycle correction”.

Dissolution of an industry cartel leaves Potash Corp shareholders wishing ‘icon’ had sold – by Andrew Coyne (National Post – September 11, 2013)

September 12, 2013

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

Three years ago, when Australia’s BHP Billiton came bidding for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., opponents of the deal had all of the arguments. A majority of the company’s shareholders may have lived outside Canada, along with its CEO, but nevertheless this was a Canadian icon, a “national champion,” or, if you really wanted to get hard-headed about it, a “strategic asset.”

Why would anyone want to sell a company that controlled 53% of the world’s potash reserves? Why, that is, other than the $130 a share —nearly $40 billion in total — that BHP was offering. But what was such a pittance if it meant pulling PotashCorp out of the Canadian-led global potash cartel, on which the vastly inflated world price of potash depended? Surely any idiot could see the folly in that. And in time, enough idiots did: The federal government, egged on by the government of Saskatchewan, blocked the sale.

At the time, blinkered ideologues like me expressed concern that, in the name of preventing one foreign-owned company from taking over another foreign-owned company, and for the sake of preserving “our” control of a resource that would remain as much owned, taxed and regulated by the province after the sale as before, PotashCorp’s shareholders — including the 49% who were Canadian — had been deprived of the capital gain they could legitimately have expected on the sale.

In response: Mining essential to keep the economy running – by Arthur E. Englund (Duluth News Tribune – September 12, 2013)

May 4, 2015September 12, 2013

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

As a 56-year member of the Society of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, I feel a response is necessary to the Aug. 23 commentary, “What the metals-mining lobbyist left out of column speaks volumes.” The commentary opposing copper-nickel mining near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, without realizing it, actually cited the need for these mines. By enumerating the number of visitors to Ely (700,000 per year), the number of Boundary Waters visitors (250,000 per year) and the number of deer hunters in Minnesota (600,000) the column actually endorsed the need.

How do all of those visitors and hunters get to those recreational areas? Most likely they go in their cars and trucks and not by horse and buggy. And of course, as most everyone knows, a large amount of Earth-based minerals goes into the manufacturing of those vehicles — and it takes mined petroleum to fuel them.

The Society of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers has as its slogan, “If it can’t be grown, it has to be mined.” This is an irrefutable fact. Test it for yourself. It is not an assumption like the opponents’ that rivers and waters will be polluted by the proposed mines. Regulations and restrictions developed over years in conjunction with the latest available science and technology will provide necessary safeguards to prevent pollution.

Prophecy Platinum looks to cut costs on Sudbury-area mine – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – September 11, 2013)

September 12, 2013

A Vancouver-based junior miner will make a production decision next year on whether to restart a mothballed open pit base metals mine near Sudbury.

Management at Prophecy Platinum are in the midst of re-examining an old feasibility study and the operating and milling costs for the Shakespeare Mine to determine if the economics make it worthwhile to proceed with the project. The nickel-copper-platinum group metals project is located 70 km west of Sudbury near the town of Webbwood.

“It’s a good asset for us; it’s just sitting in the ground parked in neutral,” said John Sagman, Phophecy’s senior vice-president and chief operating officer. The company intends to wrap up feasibility later this year and and make a decision by the second quarter of 2014.

“From our perspective it’s not a metal price issue, it’s an operating cost issue,” said Sagman. Phophecy, which acquired the mine following a merger with Ursa Major Minerals last year, is looking to carve between 20 and 25 per cent in mining, transportation and milling costs.

Media agenda: China buys newsrooms, influence in Africa – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – September 12, 2013)

September 12, 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.

NAIROBI — When one of South Africa’s biggest newspaper chains was sold last month, an odd name was buried in the list of new owners: China International Television Corp.

A major stake in a South African newspaper group might seem an unusual acquisition for Chinese state television, but it was no mystery to anyone who has watched the rapid expansion of China’s media empire across Africa.

From newspapers and magazines to satellite television and radio stations, China is investing heavily in African media. It’s part of a long-term campaign to bolster Beijing’s “soft power” – not just through diplomacy, but also through foreign aid, business links, scholarships, training programs, academic institutes and the media.

Its investments have allowed China to promote its own media agenda in Africa, using a formula of upbeat business and cultural stories and a deferential pro-government tone, while ignoring human-rights issues and the backlash against China’s own growing power.

In Ontario, electricity bills are reason to weep – by Konrad Yakauski (Globe and Mail – September 12, 2013)

September 12, 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.

If you live in Ontario, deciphering your electricity bill is like trying to crack the encryption on a BlackBerry. It might tax even the professional snoopers at the U.S. National Security Agency.

It’s not as simple as multiplying the amount of power you use each month by the market price per kilowatt-hour. Beyond your “electricity” charge, there’s a “delivery” charge, a “regulatory” charge, a “debt retirement” charge and an Orwellian-sounding “clean energy benefit.”

And there’s a twisted political saga behind each one of them. If you manage to unbundle it all, you’ll discover that the market value of the power you consume accounts for only a tiny portion of your bill. Most of the rest of what you fork out goes to pay for decades of bungled energy policy-making. And pay you will, for years to come.

Indeed, the most important charge is the one that doesn’t directly appear on most people’s monthly statements. It’s called the “global adjustment” fee and it’s tacked on to your electricity charge to cover the government’s cost of buying above-market-priced wind, solar, nuclear and gas-fired power from private operators.

Zimbabwe to develop economy with “new friends” like China – by MacDonald Dzirutwe (Reuters India – September 11, 2013)

September 12, 2013

http://in.reuters.com/

HARARE, Sept 11 (Reuters) – Zimbabwe will increase economic ties with friendly countries like China to develop its economy as Western nations maintain their sanctions after President Robert Mugabe’s re-election, the new finance minister said on Wednesday.

Mugabe, Africa’s oldest leader at 89 who won a fresh five-year term in a July 31 vote his opponents say was rigged, on Wednesday swore in his cabinet, including Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa who was named on Tuesday.

Pointing to multiple flaws in last month’s election cited by domestic vote observers, Western governments, especially the United States, have questioned the credibility of the outcome and are considering whether to prolong sanctions against Mugabe.

However, African election observers broadly endorsed the voting and its result as peaceful and free.

Chinamasa told reporters the ZANU-PF party government had accepted the reality that the West would not remove financial and travel sanctions on Mugabe and his senior allies and would not release any direct financial assistance.

Gabriel threatens Romania with billion-dollar lawsuit – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – September 12, 2013)

September 12, 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.

ROME — Canada’s Gabriel Resources Ltd. is issuing a stern ultimatum to the Romanian government: Approve the Rosia Montana gold mine or face a lawsuit for billions of dollars.

The strategy marks a stunning reversal for the Toronto Stock Exchange-listed company, which until recently had expected the government would approve a draft law that would allow the $1-billion (U.S.) mining development in Romania’s Transylvania to go ahead.

Then, on Monday, Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta said parliament would likely reject the draft law, a move that would kill Europe’s largest gold project. Gabriel shares went into freefall. The same day, Gabriel said it would “assess all possible actions open to it, including the formal notification of its intentions to commence litigation for multiple breaches of international investment treaties.”

On Wednesday, Gabriel chief executive officer Jonathan Henry vowed that the legal action would go ahead if the government does kill the mining project, and attached a big number to it.