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NEWS RELEASE: Ontario Mining Association – Interest in global mine rescue event expands

This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association (OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.

The interest from around the world in the sixth International Mine Rescue Body (IMRB) conference being hosted in Ontario this Fall continues to expand. Registration for the event has now surpassed 200 delegates from 22 different nations — both numbers are higher than originally anticipated.

The symposium portion of the event will be held in Niagara Falls from October 5 to 10, 2013 and the field trip component will be held in Sudbury from October 10 to 13. The IMRB conference is being hosted by the Canadian Association of Chief Inspectors of Mines, Canadian mine rescue organizations – including Ontario’s — and the Canadian mining industry in general. Several Ontario Mining Association members are participating in and supporting the conference and field trip.

“We have 37 presentations covering a wide range of mine rescue topics from every corner of the world,” reports Alex Gryska, Director Mine Rescue for Workplace Safety North in Ontario. He advises that people can still participate in the symposium and field trips through the late registration route.

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Uruguay Prepares for Iron Rush – by Inés Acosta (Inter Press Service – August 26, 2013)

http://www.ipsnews.net/

The legal framework for large-scale mining is being prepared in Uruguay, a country where mining has never played an important role in the economy but which could become the world’s eighth largest producer of iron ore.

MONTEVIDEO, Aug 26 2013 (IPS) – A bill that would regulate large-scale mining operations is making its way through Uruguay’s two houses of parliament, despite a lack of political consensus and vocal opposition from environmental organisations and other sectors of civil society.

The proposed legislation, submitted by the executive branch and backed by the ruling Frente Amplio (FA) or Broad Front coalition, declares that large-scale mining would serve the “public interest”. But critics charge that the bill was drafted to serve the interests of the Aratirí project planned by the Indian mining group Zamin Ferrous, aimed at the production of 18 million tons of iron ore annually, with a promised investment of three billion dollars.

Opposition to these plans by environmentalists, farmers and other residents of the areas that would be affected by the mining operations is becoming increasingly louder. In the last demonstration against large-scale mining in Uruguay, held on May 10, more than 10,000 participants marched down 18 de Julio Avenue, the main thoroughfare in downtown Montevideo.

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Australia’s new government aims to re-boot mining boom – by James Grubel (Reuters U.S. – September 8, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

CANBERRA – (Reuters) – Australia’s incoming conservative government promised to re-boot a stalled mining boom and revive an appetite for investment on Sunday after leader Tony Abbott swept into office on a platform to scrap a mining tax and run a stable administration.

Abbott’s Liberal-National Party coalition ended six years of often turbulent Labor Party rule and three years of minority government, winning a majority of more than 30 seats in the 150-seat parliament at Saturday’s national elections. It was Labor’s worst result since 1934.

Abbott, a former student boxer, Rhodes scholar and trainee priest, began his first day as prime minister elect with a dawn bike ride with friends around his home on Sydney’s northern beaches, before meeting government and ministry officials. “People expect the day after an election an incoming government will be getting down to business. That’s what I’ll be doing today,” Abbott told reporters.

Abbott, who was backed by media owner Rupert Murdoch and his Australian newspapers, takes office as Australia’s economy adjusts to the end of a mining investment boom, with slowing government revenues and rising unemployment.

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From potash powerbroker to Minsk prison, the cost of crossing Belarus – by Polina Devitt (Reuters Canada – September 8, 2013)

http://ca.reuters.com/

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Vladislav Baumgertner has the fluent English, Western business degrees and meteoric career that typify Russia’s young executive elite, but the boss of Uralkali, the world’s largest potash producer, is now more in need of Soviet-era survival skills.

For two weeks Baumgertner, 41, has been held in a dank Stalin-era Belarusian cell, facing up to 10 years in jail on charges of abusing power and seeking gain at the expense of Belarus while chairman of a joint venture cartel, Belarusian Potash Company (BPC), which until last month controlled Russian and Belarusian exports of the fertilizer ingredient.

Belarus, which has long bridled at what it believes is Uralkali’s aim to take over its own producer Belaruskali, was angered by Uralkali’s abrupt exit from BPC last month, a move likely to lower prices, hit a key source of hard currency and hurt Belarus’s rickety economy.

The Belarusian Investigative Committee has not provided details on the charge, though among comments it made at the time of Baumgertner’s arrest are allegations that he and others at BPC provided discounts on product to some buyers without telling the Belarusians, redirected ships to take Uralkali product instead of Belaruskali’s, and cancelled some BPC contracts, promising partners a Uralkali alternative at lower prices.

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Wisconsin governor, Chippewas battle over open pit mine plan – by Carol Pogash (U.S.A. Today – September 8, 2013)

http://www.usatoday.com/

ODAHAN, Wis. — While laughing children bob in kayaks along the sandy shores of Lake Superior, their somber parents hunch over picnic tables talking about their wild rice, their water, their fish and their way of life. Members of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians worry about what is to become of their lake, a life source for their people.

Gov. Scott Walker, his fellow Republicans and the governor’s onetime enemies, labor unions, are championing a $1.5 billion open pit mine planned for the Bad River watershed, six miles from the reservation in the pristine Penokee Hills of northern Wisconsin.

On Aug. 30, six Chippewa tribes of Lake Superior sent President Obama a letter requesting the Department of the Interior prepare litigation to protect the wetlands, fisheries, waters and wildlife from mining. The mining area is honeycombed with 70 miles of rivers and streams that flow north into Lake Superior, which the tribes say would be threatened.

This March, Walker signed a bill streamlining the approval process and easing environmental regulations for the proposed open pit iron ore mine, in which wide swaths of earth are removed to extract minerals. The issue playing out in Wisconsin is being repeated elsewhere.

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Australia’s glittering investments from China are not all gold – by Sarah Turner (U.S.A. Today – August 20, 2013)

http://www.usatoday.com/

SYDNEY, Australia – Massive investment from China in Australian coal, gas and metals was once something the Australian government highlighted as proof of exemplary economic stewardship. No longer.

The money that China and others have poured into the mineral fields of Western Australia and Queensland have made mine owners and miners wealthier. But it has also hurt longtime industries that rely on tourism and exports.

After an amazing 22 consecutive years of stable economic growth, Australians are experiencing a financial downturn. And some of the blame is being leveled on the political class that now runs from the Chinese model it once celebrated.

“The China resources boom is over,” said newly reinstated Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, whose party forced out their prime minster, Julia Gillard, because polls showed she would be trounced by the conservatives in national elections in September.

“The time has come for us to adjust to the new challenges,” Rudd said. “New challenges in productivity. New challenges also in the diversification of our economy.”

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Old Economies Rise as Growing Markets Begin to Falter – by Nathaniel Popper (New York Time – August 14, 2013)

http://www.nytimes.com/

The balance of world economic growth is tipping in another direction. Just as economists have begun lowering their forecasts for China and many other developing economies, the American economy is bouncing back. Japan appears to have turned a corner and is ending almost two decades of grinding deflation. Economic data out of Europe on Wednesday provided the first solid indication that many countries in the euro zone may be escaping the clutches of recession.

The gross domestic product of the 17-nation euro zone grew at an annualized rate of about 1.2 percent in the second quarter. It is certainly not clear, based on only three months of data, that Europe’s recession has ended. But it is further evidence that the older engines of growth are revving into gear as the most recent sources of growth have been slowing down.

“The general proposition for much of the last generation has been that emerging markets grow faster. That’s what’s changed,” said Neal Soss, the chief economist at Credit Suisse. “The acceleration such as it is happening is in the first-world economy rather than the emerging markets.”

The growth of the BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — has raised living standards in those nations and in others in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

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BURIED SECRETS: How an Israeli billionaire wrested control of one of Africa’s biggest prizes – by Patrick Radden Keefe (The New Yorker – July 8, 2013)

http://www.newyorker.com/

One of the world’s largest known deposits of untapped iron ore is buried inside a great, forested mountain range in the tiny West African republic of Guinea. In the country’s southeast highlands, far from any city or major roads, the Simandou Mountains stretch for seventy miles, looming over the jungle floor like a giant dinosaur spine. Some of the peaks have nicknames that were bestowed by geologists and miners who have worked in the area; one is Iron Maiden, another Metallica.

Iron ore is the raw material that, once smelted, becomes steel, and the ore at Simandou is unusually rich, meaning that it can be fed into blast furnaces with minimal processing. During the past decade, as glittering mega-cities rose across China, the global price of iron soared, and investors began seeking new sources of ore. The red earth that dusts the lush vegetation around Simandou and marbles the mountain rock is worth a fortune.

Mining iron ore is complicated and requires a huge amount of capital. Simandou lies four hundred miles from the coast, in jungle so impassable that the first drill rigs had to be transported to the mountaintops with helicopters. The site has barely been developed—no ore has been excavated. Shipping it to China and other markets will require not only the construction of a mine but the building of a railroad line sturdy enough to support freight cars laden with ore. It will also be necessary to have access to a deepwater port, which Guinea lacks.

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Shawn Ryan’s new Yukon vision – by Gwen Preston (Northern Miner – September 4, 2013)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry. 

DAWSON CITY, YUKON — Shawn Ryan could have retired. Ryan and his wife, Cathy Wood, are the Yukon prospecting team whose dedicated soil sampling led Underworld Resources to the million-ounce-plus White Gold deposit in 2009, a discovery that sparked a new Yukon gold rush. They also get credit for Kaminak Gold’s (TSXV: KAM; US-OTC: KMKGF) Coffee project, already at 3.2 million oz. and growing, and have at least another dozen soil anomalies on option to explorers across the White Gold district.

After years of scraping by on government grants and prospecting contracts, Ryan and Wood made it to the big leagues when Kinross Gold (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC) acquired Underworld for $138 million. With that payday, plus a steady stream of option payments, the team could easily have stepped back from the grind and enjoyed their just rewards.

Instead, Ryan and Wood spent the last 18 months figuring out how to make exploring for gold in the Yukon less expensive and more reliable. “I could see the crash coming and I could see there was so much money being wasted up here,” Ryan says in an interview in Dawson City. “So we took a step back and thought, ‘If we’re going to keep this momentum alive, we need to add something new — we need to figure out some simple new tools that will increase drilling confidence without costing millions.”

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EXPLORING for GOLD: Lac Seul holds shares in junior explorer AurCrest Gold; Webequie part owner of Cyr Drilling – by Bryan Phelan (Onotassiniik – Fall 2013)

 Onotassiniik is Wawatay’s new mining quarterly.

Ian Brodie-Brown’s first contact with Lac Seul First Nation stood out. Then CEO of Tribute Minerals, a junior exploration company, Brodie-Brown hadn’t just sent a letter to the band. He had sent it voluntarily. “He was the first guy that I’d ever seen – the first company representative – approach a First Nation without being told to by the Crown,” recalls Chris Angeconeb, Lac Seul’s lands and resources co-ordinator at the time.

The introductory letter arrived almost seven years ago. Exploring for base metals at Confederation Lake, in Lac Seul’s traditional territory, Tribute was “basically trying to drum up support for a micro-mine with small output; a little underground project,” Angeconeb says.

Brodie-Brown says he expected new provincial rules for mineral exploration and consultation with First Nations would come eventually (regulations for exploration plans and permits, under a modernized Mining Act, finally took effect this spring). Instead of waiting, “We just decided to take a proactive role,” he says.

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Potash prices head for 20 pct drop after cartel disintegrates – by Ron Bousso (Reuters U.S. – September 6, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Sept 5 (Reuters) – Potash prices are poised to drop some 20 percent after the surprise breakup of the world’s largest producer cartel sent buyers and sellers scrambling to establish new valuations, traders said.

Global trade in the material – one of three nutrients vital for agriculture – remains largely on ice after Russia’s Uralkali in July quit the partnership Belarusian Potash Co (BPC), which together with a rival North American cartel controlled some 70 percent of the market.

Belarus’ retaliatory arrest of Uralkali’s chief executive Vladislav Baumgertner in Minsk last week further highlighted the deep rift between the Russian and Belarusian producers.

“As a cartel, producers were able to cut supplies in order to control prices. As competitors, producers will reduce prices rapidly to gain business,” an industry source said.

BPC co-founder Belaruskali appears to be particularly keen to secure new supply deals after the split left it with limited global trading infrastructure, which had been dominated by its Russian partner, traders and industry sources said.

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Glencore to vaunt successes of $46 billion Xstrata deal one year on – by Clara Ferreira-Marques (Reuters India – September 6, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Almost a year after winning the battle for Xstrata, Glencore (GLEN.L) is set to show investors evidence of early successes, with costs to come down more than targeted, asset sales in hand and key staff retained.

Glencore Xstrata, which has yet to shed a reputation for opacity, will bring its entire management team to London on Tuesday to outline progress after four months in control of Xstrata, following the $46 billion takeover that became the mining sector’s largest to date.

In its first major presentation on the deal since it was completed, analysts expect the trading and mining conglomerate to impress with tougher cost cutting targets. These are likely to include a significant improvement on the $500 million per year synergy goal provided at the time of the acquisition.

That covered only marketing benefits – not costs to be squeezed out of Xstrata’s mines – and Glencore has already said it expects a final number “materially in excess” of that. Analysts at RBC Capital Markets said this week they expected marketing synergies of $600 million – as more Xstrata products go through the Glencore trading machine.

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Obama blaming Canada for Keystone delay is just more fence-sitting – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – September 6, 2013)

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

As the latest, realistic decision point on whether the Keystone XL pipeline gets a United States permit slips toward the spring of 2014, the new excuse bandied about is that the delay is Canada’s fault because it has failed to deliver greenhouse gas regulations for the oil and gas industry.

It’s an excuse that needs to be exposed for what it is: a continuation of the U.S. administration’s leadership by avoidance on a grossly mishandled project.

Indications are that Canada will be well on its way to implementing regulations for oil producers by next spring that will be more stringent than anything Obama has been able to deliver in his own country.

The regulations will put Canada’s oil and gas industry at a disadvantage versus U.S. oil producers and all other suppliers of oil to the United States, yet the odds are Obama will still sit on the fence because he will by then be facing mid-term elections in November 2014, when he will need the support of his insatiable green base.

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So-called ‘Dutch Disease’ has actually left Canada’s economy much stronger, economist says – by Jen Gerson (National Post – September 6, 2013)

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

A Quebec-based economist is trying to squelch the “Dutch Disease” theory long touted by New Democratic Party leader Thomas Mulcair, claiming the phenomenon has actually left Canada’s economy much stronger.

“The increase in commodity prices is a good news story for Canada. It means there is increased world demand for something Canada produces,” said Stephen Gordon, author of a report released Thursday by the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.

“What happened is that we shifted workers away from a declining sector and into an expanding sector. That’s exactly what you’d expect, and it’s what you’d want because it results in higher wages.”

The economic premise of Dutch Disease has long pinned the decline of central Canada’s manufacturing sector to growing oil production in Alberta.

The term is an economic shorthand that describes the hollowing out of a country’s manufacturing sector after the discovery of natural resources; the subsequent increase in the value of currency makes exporting manufactured goods uncompetitive.

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Feathers fly as officials cry fowl on fed’s Chicken gold miners raid – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – September 6, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Did the EPA need to send in a federal-state SWAT-type team to enforce the Clean Water Act in Alaska’s Fortymile Mining District? Alaska officials say, “No!”

RENO (MINEWEB) – Outraged by what his office called a “needless show of force,” Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell Thursday ordered an investigation into the practices of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation’s Environmental Crimes Unit and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Criminal Investigation Division after armed government agents, wearing body armor, swooped in on 30 placer gold mining operations along the Fortymile River near Chicken, Alaska.

“With a mere last minute notification to our DEC commissioner, Alaska’s attorney general, and the Department of Public Safety, the EPA, BLM and a DEC investigator took it upon themselves to swoop in on unsuspecting miners in remote Alaska,” said Parnell. “This level of intrusion and intimidation of Alaskans is absolutely unacceptable. I will not tolerate any state agency’s participation in this sort of reckless conduct.”

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