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40 of Canada’s finest miners: Little change among top performers – by Marilyn Scales (Canadian Mining Journal – August 8, 2013)

Marilyn Scales is a field editor for the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication. She is one of Canada’s most senior mining commentators.

Last year, 2012, almost all commodity prices softened, and that fact is reflected in the fortunes of Canada’s Top 40 mining companies. Gross revenues, the number on which we base our ranking, grew little if at all.

However, the most successful companies will weather the industry’s cyclical downturns. Note the 10 companies that lead our list. Nine of them remain among the top 10. The exception is Cameco that fell from 10th to 11th, trading places with Yamana Gold.

The other nine miners among this year’s top 10 were among the top 10 last year. With one exception they held the same positions as last year – Teck jumped up one to 3rd, pushing Suncor down to 4th.

The list is again headed by Agrium ($16.69 billion) that mines potash at Vanscoy, Sask., and phosphate at Kapuskasing, Ont. Mining is not the company’s only business; it is a retail supplier of agricultural products and services throughout the Americas and Australia. The world needs to eat, and its appetite for fertilizer appears to be strong.

Again in second place is Barrick Gold ($14.55 billion). Long the largest gold miner in the world in terms of market capitalization, Barrick has been under pressure from both the lackluster gold price and skyrocketing development costs.

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BHP Billiton CEO, Andrew MacKenzie Speech to the Asia Society on August 7, 2013

http://www.bhpbilliton.com/home/Pages/default.aspx

For a detailed interview of BHP Billiton CEO Andrew MacKenzie by Australia Broadcasting Corporation, click here: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3820498.htm

I am delighted that so many of our shareholders and friends from business, government, the media and elsewhere have joined us today. Welcome to you all.

I would also like to mention two individuals in the audience. First, one of BHP Billiton’s longest serving employees – Eric Gray. Eric is a maintenance supervisor at our Illawarra coal operations and is celebrating 45 years with the company. And second, Martin Ferguson, who needs no introduction. A special welcome to you both.

I am honoured to lead this tremendous, Australian company and pleased to be making my first Australian speech here in Melbourne; a city my wife, Liz, and I are delighted to now call home. We recently purchased a house in Richmond and I have adopted St Kilda as my AFL team. Richmond, anyway, has proved to be a terrific choice.

Melbourne is a city with a rich mining history, a history of which BHP Billiton is proud to be a part. Our global headquarters have been in Melbourne since 1885 and next month we will relocate to Collins Street, where our company first began.

Now speaking of our history, one of my fellow Scots, George McCulloch, was vital to BHP’s formation in the late 19th century as manager of the Mt Gipps station in New South Wales. George organised a group of pioneers to sink the first shaft at Broken Hill, which led to the development of BHP’s first and famous ‘Big Mine’.

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Potash Corp. Says Uralkali-Belarus Dispute Won’t Last – by Christopher Donville (Bloomberg News – August 8, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., the largest North American producer of its namesake fertilizer, said it doesn’t expect a dispute between two producers in the former Soviet Union to last and that forecasts of a price slump are overdone.

Chief Executive Officer Bill Doyle said yesterday the duration of the disagreement between Russia’s OAO Uralkali and its Belarusian rival will be “shorter rather than longer.”

The comments were his first since Uralkali last week quit Belarusian Potash Co., a marketing venture with Belaruskali. Shares of potash producers around the world plunged after the Russian producer said it will start selling the crop nutrient freely in the market for the first time in eight years.

“Logic tends to prevail,” Doyle said in a interview broadcast live on the company’s website. “I don’t find too many people who self-destruct intentionally.”

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NEWS RELEASE: Ontario Mining sector safety statistics indicate improved performance

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.

While statistics can’t always tell the whole story, recent numbers indicate Ontario’s mining sector is making further progress on the safety front. For the first three months of 2013, the provincial mining sector had a lost time injury frequency of 0.2 per 200,000 hours worked. This compares with a rate of 0.4 for the first three months of 2012 – a 50% improvement.

This new level of safety performance by the sector was achieved by more than 18,300 men and women working more than 9.3 million hours at mine sites across the province during the quarter. For the same period in 2013, a total medical aid frequency of 4.4 per 200,000 hours worked was achieved compared with a rate of 4.8 for the first three months of 2012 – an 8.3% improvement.

For all of 2012, mining’s lost time injury rate was 0.5, a gain from 0.6 per 200,000 hours worked in 2011. The industry’s previous best lost time injury rate over a quarterly, or yearly, period was 0.4. The industry’s total medical injury rate for all of 2012 was 5.5, which was up slightly from 5.3 in 2011. In 2012, approximately 18,700 employees at mine sites in Ontario worked a total of more than 38.3 million hours.

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COLUMN-U.S. cracks apart London’s commodity market omerta – by John Kemp (Reuters U.S. – August 8, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own.

Aug 8 (Reuters) – “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” might well have been the motto for Britain’s commodity market regulators in recent years.

In too many instances, light-touch self-regulation by the exchanges, overseen by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), now reincarnated as the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), has degenerated into ineffective or no regulation.

But the cosy relationship among brokers, exchanges and official regulators in London is being blown apart by more aggressive oversight from the United States.

On July 23, the Senate Banking Committee put a spotlight on the physical trading operations of the major commodity-dealing banks with a hearing on whether they should be allowed to control power plants, warehouses and oil refineries. Prodded by the committee and U.S. banking regulators, JPMorgan has indicated it will reduce its presence in physical trading.

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Potash Corp chief plays down price plunge – by Peter Koven (National Post – August 8, 2013)

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

As Bill Doyle sees it, last week’s shocking turn of events in the potash industry is nothing to worry about. “I would just urge people to take a deep breath, relax, and everything’s going to be just fine,” the chief executive of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. said in a unique question-and-answer webcast on Wednesday.

Mr. Doyle is eager to put shareholders’ minds at ease following the stunning news that Russian producer OAO Uralkali has broken up a cartel-like trading company and plans to max out its potash production to seize market share. It made the move after its partner Belaruskali sold product outside their arrangement.

Investors assumed that the days in which potash producers withheld production to maintain high prices are now coming to an end. But Mr. Doyle disagrees completely.

He said that there have been numerous spats like this one in the past between the Russians and Belarusians, and all of them were eventually resolved.

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UPDATE 2-Vale profit dives on FX charge; cost-cutting continues – by Jeb Blount (Reuters U.S. – August 7, 2013)

 http://www.reuters.com/

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Brazilian miner Vale SA said on Wednesday its second-quarter profit plunged after the company recorded a surprise $2.78 billion in foreign exchange losses on currency derivatives and debt, one of its worst bottom-line results in a decade.

In the three months ending June 30, net income fell 84 percent to $424 million, compared with a profit of $2.6 billion in the year-ago quarter, Vale said in a statement. The result was below market expectations. The average estimate of 18 analysts surveyed by Reuters was for profit to fall 7.63 percent to $2.46 billion.

Vale said the losses resulted from extraordinary, one-time, non-cash, financial charges that do not reflect its improved operational results. The Rio de Janeiro-based company is the world’s largest iron ore producer, No. 2 nickel miner, and a major producer of copper and fertilizers.

While a stronger dollar led to financial losses and lower profit, it also helped Chief Executive Murilo Ferreira to cut $736 million from the cost of salaries, research, equipment, construction and other goods and services.

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[Timmins] City to collect own data on open pit – by Benjamin Aubé (Timmins Daily Press – August 8, 2013)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – It’s another sign that the Hollinger Mine will soon be coming back to life, courtesy of Goldcorp/Porcupine Gold Mines.

As Timmins residents well know, with renewed activity at the historic gold mine will come daily blasts and the bustle of trucking and transporting its precious resources.

A big part of the success of the Hollinger open-pit project will depend on the company keeping noise, vibrations, dust levels and emissions to a minimum so as not to disturb the properties and daily lives of neighbouring residents.

Timmins city council ensured measures will be taken to monitor such levels, entering into an eight-year agreement with Aercoustics. The contract will give the city its own set of information regarding the mine’s activities.

“They will provide us with our own monitoring equipment so we can compare that information to the information collected by Goldcorp,” explained city head of public works and engineering Luc Duval.

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Modest growth forecast for Sudbury – by Laura Shantora Nelles (Sudbury Star – August 8, 2013)

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

Greater Sudbury’s economy is set to grow this year by a modest 1.2%, and the city can expect slow but steady growth over the next five years, a Conference Board of Canada report said Wednesday.

In its five-year forecast, the Conference Board predicted Sudbury’s unemployment rate will dip to 5.7% in 2017. In June, the unemployment rate was 7.5%. Conference Board economist Jane McIntrye said increased production in mining and non-residential construction sectors will help boost growth in Greater Sudbury.

“The opening of the Clarabelle and Totten mines, as well as the water sports centre and the addition to Dynamic Earth, (along with) road construction and those type of projects, will contribute to growth on the non-residential side.”

The board said housing will begin to pick up next year. Sudbury’s residential housing starts were down 9.9% in 2012 from 2011, due to a steady decrease in population over the last five years.

McIntyre said the city’s population is expected to remain about the same, which should help get the housing market back on track next year.

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Calls for spring bear hunt resume – by Bryan Meadows (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – August 8, 2013)

Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

A Thunder Bay-based conservation group is calling for a return of the spring bear hunt after a city man was attacked by a black bear in Sandbar Provincial Park on the weekend.

The Northwestern Ontario Sportsmen’s Alliance says that hunting bears in the spring would help the animals develop a greater fear of humans, and not consider them as food.

Executive director John Kaplanis said Wednesday that “NOSA is extremely worried that while the Ministry of Natural Resources is well aware of the increase in aggressive bear activity and predatory type bear attacks on humans, little is being done to regulate this sort of bear behaviour.

“The concern is that black bears are learning to regard humans as prey, much the same as other vulnerable prey sources such as moose calves,” he said.

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Sudbury PC candidate backs mine safety call (Sudbury Star – August 8, 2013)

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

The Progressive Conservative candidate for Sudbury said Wednesday she supports a call for a public inquiry into mine safety in Ontario. In a release, Paula Peroni said she can relate to the issue in a very personal way. “My father worked for Inco (now Vale) and was very severely injured in 1978, which almost cost him his life,” Peroni said.

She criticized the governing Liberals, who have refused to call an inquiry, despite pressure from the Steelworkers union and a Sudbury-based lobby groups, MINES — Mining Inquiry Needs Ever yone’s Support.

The Steelworkers have been calling for an inquiry since the deaths of two Sudbury miners, Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, at Vale’s Stobie Mine, in 2011. They were killed when they were buried by tonnes of rock and water.

A Steelworkers investigation concluded the deaths could have been prevented. Local 6500 of the Steelworkers represent production workers at Vale’s Sudbury operations.

Vale is facing nine charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, and one of its supervisors is facing six charges under the act after a Labour ministry investigation into the deaths.

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Africa’s potash pioneers hope to thrive even if price drops – by Clara Ferreira-Marques and Aaron Maasho (Reuters U.K. – August 7, 2013)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON/ADDIS ABABA, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Africa’s nascent potash industry, often enjoying low costs and shallow deposits while standing to benefit from fast growth in local demand, expects to withstand an expected drop in the crop nutrient’s prices better than emerging rivals.

The collapse last week of one of two global potash cartels is expected to take about 25 percent off prices, prompting questions over the future of projects such as BHP Billiton’s $14 billion Jansen and the K+S Legacy mine – both in Canada. Shares of small explorers and miners have been battered and financing, already tough, has become tougher.

But companies exploring Africa’s emerging potash regions – the Republic of Congo to the west and Ethopia and Eritrea to the east – say a price drop could benefit those with lower costs and high ore grades, if it means output cuts in established mining regions.

Lower prices could also increase demand for potash in emerging markets and notably in Africa, where food consumption patterns are changing as population growth and increased urbanisation alter diets and boost demand for grain.

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Ring of Fire minister in town Aug. 16 – by Darren MacDonald (Sudbury Northern Life – August 07, 2013)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

The new man in charge of FedNor and the Ring of Fire portfolio is making his first trip as a cabinet minister to Sudbury next week. Kenora MP Greg Rickford was appointed to the posts when Prime Minister Stephen Harper shuffled his cabinet last month. He replaced longtime FedNor Minister Tony Clement.

Rickford will speak at the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce’s President’s Series Luncheon, which runs noon to 2 p.m. at Bryston’s on the Park in Copper Cliff. Jonathan Laderoute, the chamber’s policy and communications manger, said Rickford’s office hasn’t revealed many details of what the minister wants to talk about.

“But it goes without saying he’s going to talk about the Ring of Fire and how that impacts the province and the country as a whole,” Laderoute said. “But other than that, they’re playing their cards pretty close to their chest. We’ll have to wait and see.”

The Ring of Fire is a massive chromite discovery in northwestern Ontario, much of which is owned by Cliffs Natural Resources. The U.S.-based company announced last year that it would build a smelter near Capreol to process the ore, but problems coming to an agreement with the province over hydro rates and reaching deals with local First Nations led Cliffs to put those plans on hold.

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Mushkegowuk launches lawsuit on treaty promises – by Lenny Carpenter (Wawatay News – August 7, 2013)

http://wawataynews.ca/

During a conference on Treaty 9 held in Kashechewan First Nation in 1987, respected Elder James Wesley of Attawapiskat recalled words of a man who was present when treaty commissioners met with First Nations in 1905.

“Henry Reuben says he was sitting there and saw them writing the important things,” Wesley is quoted as saying at the time. “There was someone there that did the writing. So this is what is lost. Maybe one day it will show up.”

Eight years later, the diaries of the three commissioners were discovered and, according to Mushkegowuk Council, verify what Elders have been saying all along: the commissioners made oral promises that are not reflected in the treaty. The diaries serve as the key piece of evidence in a lawsuit being launched by Mushkegowuk against the Ontario and Canadian government.

A statement of claim sent to the Ontario Superior Court on July 4 by Mushkegowuk Council asserts that the governments of Ontario and Canada have “no power or right under Treaty 9 to unilaterally restrict or extinguish” the harvesting rights of the Mushkegowuk people by authorizing resource companies to develop on their traditional territory.

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Web portal aims at educating First Nations youth in mining – by Lenny Carpenter (Wawatay News – August 6, 2013)

http://wawataynews.ca/

An online web portal aimed at helping First Nations youth explore the world of mining was launched on July 25.
Learning2mine.ca is an interactive web portal developed by Oshki-Pimache-O-Win Education & Training Institute that provides information on the mining industry and careers.

Rosie Mosquito, Oshki’s executive director, said the portal was developed with the upcoming mining opportunities within the Ring of Fire in mind as First Nations stand to benefit from such opportunities.

“With all the mining opportunities that will become available in the north, we want to see First Nations people employed as engineers, environmental technicians, project managers, geophysicists, and in administration,” Mosquito said. “This new portal encourages young people to prepare for a career in the mining industry and most importantly provides them guidance in how to get started.”

Learning2Mine.ca features a mining game called Waaniike, where the player explores the land and discovers resources and artifacts using mining gear and equipment. The game combines traditional knowledge and modern mining practices and aims to build “mining literacy” in the player.

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