Twitter
Boston-Bay-Mines-Announcement

If Ottawa won’t, Ontario must [Experimental Lakes Area] – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (April 8, 2013)

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

The Experimental Lakes Area may be down, but surely — surely — it’s not out. The federal government last week formally closed the unique freshwater research station, located near Kenora. In doing so, it will save a whopping $2 million a year (actually, they’ll save less than that, because much of that $2 million is made up via user fees).

The casualty — aside from the growing political price the Conservatives are paying — is invaluable scientific research into, essentially, the effects of human activities on freshwater ecosystems. That research is vital. It’s incredibly important that we know, exactly, what effects our activities have on the natural world, the fresh water we consume, and the animals and plants that live in and around it.

It is appalling that the federal government would choose to close such a valuable and important facility, ignoring informed pleas and warnings from the global scientific community. The ELA plays too important a role in scientific research to be shuttered and forgotten.

The timing, however, may be good. The Ontario government is in its annual budget mode. That budget has yet to be tabled, but may we suggest it contain some money earmarked for the takeover and continued operation of the Experimental Lakes Area?

We’re not the only ones in favour of such a move. Environment North vice-president Graham Saunders made the case directly to the province last Wednesday, urging the Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs to in turn urge the Ontario government take the ELA’s reins.

Read more

Wanted: vision and the latest oil sands extraction methods – by Konrad Yakabuski (Globe and Mail – April 6, 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.

At 83, Clement Bowman hasn’t lost any of his vision. We’re not talking about his eyesight, but rather his dogged determination to see potential where others only see pitfalls. It’s not hard to see why Peter Lougheed tapped Mr. Bowman as the first head of the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority in 1975.

The late Alberta premier, who also came by the vision thing naturally, had founded AOSTRA a year earlier with what seemed like an impossible mission. All but a small proportion of oil sands bitumen was buried too deep to extract using existing strip-mining techniques. The big oil companies, clueless about how to get at the resource, were turning their backs on their leases.

True visionaries such as Mr. Bowman never let the negative groupthink get them down. With an initial $100-million from the Alberta Heritage Fund, AOSTRA took the lead in developing the now-universal steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) technology that unlocked the oil sands’ potential and brought Big Oil rushing back. Mr. Bowman got the Order of Canada, Alberta got filthy rich and the world took notice.

Fast-forward to the present and the two biggest challenges threatening the resource. Unless Canada can dramatically reduce carbon emissions from the oil sands and squeeze more value from raw bitumen, we risk environmental blacklisting and technological underdevelopment.

Read more

OMA NEWS RELEASE: Powering for the future: New company connects benefits to communities, mining company and the environment

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.

Ontario Mining Association member Goldcorp and 13 First Nations in Northwestern Ontario have formed a partnership to create Wataynikaneyap Power. This new electricity company plans to develop a transmission line to connect remote First Nations to the provincial grid and provide more reliable power to communities and companies already linked to Ontario’s electrical network.

“We have partnered with Goldcorp to establish Wataynikaneyap Power with the goal of First Nations eventually owning 100% of this important infrastructure that will better serve our communities,” said Margaret Kenequanash, representing the 13 First Nations partners in Wataynikaneyap Power. “I look forward to the day we can connect our communities to the provincial power grid – it is safe, reliable and provides cleaner energy.”

“Wataynikaneyap Power is an example of how industry and First Nations can work together on projects that are good for the economy and the environment while benefitting communities in the region for years to come,” said Gil Lawson, Mine Manager for Goldcorp’s Musselwhite Operation. Goldcorp plans to facilitate the completion of phase one of the project and leave the Wataynikaneyap Power partnership once a long-term transmission partner is on board.

Read more

Report puts pressure on Cliffs’ WA mines – by Matt Chambers (The Australian – April 05, 2013)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

US-BASED Cliffs Natural Resources of Cleveland has dismissed suggestions a looming US iron ore supply glut will force it into the $US1.75 billion ($1.67bn) sale of its Koolyanobbing iron ore mines in Western Australia to pay down debt.

In an extraordinarily bearish report from the US last week, Credit Suisse analyst Nathan Littlewood slashed his target price on Cliffs from $US30 to $US10, claiming the company was likely to need to consider selling assets or a multi-billion-dollar equity raising.

“We see the Asia-Pacific iron ore business as the most marketable asset in Cliffs’ portfolio and the most likely to be sold,” Mr Littlewood said.

“The recent Posco bid for Arrium tells us that there is interest from Asian steel mills in Australian iron ore outside of the Pilbara.” Posco walked away from a bid for Arrium, the former OneSteel, late last year when the target would not engage at the offer price.

In 2011, Cliffs agreed to sell its mined-out Cockatoo Island iron ore mine in the Kimberley region of Western Australia to Pluton Resources, leaving as its remaining asset the Koolyanobbing operation, which exports about 11 million tonnes of ore a year from near Esperance.

Read more

Webequie dives into trades training – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – April 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. Ian Ross is the editor of Northern Ontario Business ianross@nob.on.ca.

Peter Pagnutti is spending 12 weeks introducing an enthusiastic class of First Nation students to the skilled trades, but the Cambrian College instructor readily admits the whole experience has been as equally rewarding for him.

“There’s not a day goes by where I don’t strike up a conversation with one of them and they teach me something,” particularly in feeding Pagnutti’s abiding interest in natural remedies.

Sudbury’s Cambrian College is providing hands-on learning to 15 students from Webequie through an introduction to the trades course geared toward eventually graduating heavy equipment mechanics.

The remote community of Webequie in the James Bay lowlands is the closest settlement to the Ring of Fire, the area of Ontario’s next great mining camp.

Last winter, the Ontario government announced $3.1 million in training funds to prepare residents for future job opportunities in six First Nation communities in the Far North, including Webequie.

Read more

COLUMN-Time for Australia to decide if it wants oil refining – by Clyde Russell (Reuters India – April 5, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, April 5 (Reuters) – Is Australia prepared to see all its ageing oil refineries closed down in the face of Asian competition or should the industry be deemed strategic and eligible for government protection?

That’s the question that should be asked after Thursday’s announcement by Royal Dutch Shell that it would close its Geelong refinery in Victoria state and convert it to an import terminal if a buyer couldn’t be found.

Given the parlous state of Australia’s refining industry, it seems closure and conversion is a far more likely outcome for the 55-year-old plant, which can process 120,000 barrels per day (bpd).

If it does close, Geelong will be the fourth refinery to shut since 2003, reducing Australia’s capacity by about 40 percent to just 408,600 bpd by 2015. The country consumed about 1 million bpd of crude in 2011, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy.

This means that if Geelong does close, domestic refineries will be able to meet only 40 percent of 2011 demand levels, and likely considerably less of 2015 demand as consumption is expanding given the heavy use of diesel in remote mining operations.

Read more

Africa’s rise pays out dividends for democracy – by Pascal Fletcher (Reuters India – April 5, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

JOHANNESBURG – (Reuters) – Africa is rising not only on the growth charts of economists. The continent that was a byword for poverty, chaos and bloodshed only a few decades ago, providing a media feast of famines and wars, is slowly but steadily notching up gains on the democracy scorecard too.

Last month’s generally peaceful Kenyan presidential election – and the Supreme Court process that confirmed Uhuru Kenyatta’s narrow win – confounded pundits’ predictions that East Africa’s biggest economy would tumble back into the same inter-tribal violence which bloodied a 2007 vote.

The Kenyan ballot, following a line of hotly-contested but broadly smooth elections last year in Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ghana, has bolstered what many see as a spreading embrace of multi-party democracy in Africa.

Combined with better economic management by many governments and a fast-growing population of young workers and consumers, this improving political maturity will underpin expected GDP growth for Sub-Saharan Africa of five percent or more this year.

“If you peel back ‘Africa Rising’, it is not just growth rates,” said John Stremlau, Vice President for Peace Programs at the Atlanta-based Carter Center and a veteran observer of African elections, including the most recent Kenyan one.

Read more

FedNor cuts will be ‘devastating’: Mulcair – by Sebastien Perth (Sudbury Star – April 5, 2013)

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

NDP leader accuses Tony Clement of ‘word games’ and calls Cliffs’ approach to Ring of Fire ‘really stupid’

The Conservatives are lying when they call cuts to FedNor “efficiencies,” federal NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said Thursday during a visit to Sudbury.

Mulcair talked about Conservative spending cuts, Liberal party polling numbers and the Ring of Fire development during a media scrum at NORCAT offices on Maley Drive.

Mulcair accused Tony Clement, the minister for FedNor, of playing word games, in a dispute over the FedNor budget. The NDP says the department’s budget will be slashed from $81 million in 2012-13 to $60.3 million in 2014-15. In a release, Clement said the cuts won’t affect FedNor’s ability to deliver programs– a claim Mulcair challenged.

“Unfortunately, the Conservatives’ cuts, the planned cuts of tens of millions of dollars from the budget of FedNor, will have a devastating effect in the whole region, particularly in centres of excellence,” he said. “(The cuts will be) 20% this year and 25% next year — those are the actual cuts to FedNor.”

“If Tony Clement says anything otherwise, he’s not telling the truth. This is not a matter of ‘he said, she said’ — these are facts, they are printed on a piece of paper.”

Read more

Tragic lesson in [mine] safety – by Ron Grech (Timmins Daily Press – April 5, 2013)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – By sharing her family’s pain, Lisa Kadosa hopes others can learn from it and avoid a similar tragedy. Kadosa’s father was killed in a mining accident in Sudbury seven years ago. She believes workplace fatalities are frequently the result of avoidable shortcuts.

“We do it all the time. We skip little steps because we think we are invincible. I think by seeing that this does happen, and having a real person up there with tears in their eyes because they’re having to deal with this, can make people really think the next time they’re going to overlook a step.”

Kadosa was one of the keynote speakers at the third-annual Health and Safety Conference put on by the Timmins Regional Labour-Management Joint Health & Safety Committee at the Timmins Inn & Suites Thursday.

Since her father’s death, Kadosa has travelled across country, frequently invited to speak at workplace safety conferences. Kadosa’s father, Robert Nesbitt, was killed at the 2,600 level underground at the Vale Inco Stobie Mine in 2006.

What made his death particularly perplexing was the fact it was the result of what was then a common practice. “Nobody expected a common practice to kill somebody who had been doing the same job for 37 years,” she said.

“There is a sling you use to attach a portable stand to the bucket in a scoop when you transport it from your different sites. That sling is to be removed before you use it.

Read more

Minerals beneficiation a key ‘pillar’ of SA’s reindustrialisation push – by Terence Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – April 4, 2013)

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

Trade and Industry Minister Dr Rob Davies has described minerals beneficiation as the “first pillar” on which South Africa’s reindustrialisation should be built and has reported that his department is working with the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) and others to integrate beneficiation-supporting regulatory instruments into the amended Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA).

Speaking at the launch of the fifth iteration of South Africa’s Industrial Policy Action Plan (Ipap), Davies said the aim was to ensure that more value was added to domestic mineral products ahead of export, so as to extract greater economic value and employment from the country’s remaining mineral resources, estimated to be worth $2.5-trillion.

But he also saw the potential to create access to industrial minerals as South Africa’s “new long-term competitive advantage” for a domestic manufacturing sector that no longer benefited from access to the world’s cheapest electricity.

“By access to industrial minerals, we don’t mean that you can buy it at the London Metal Exchange price, or at an import-parity price. We mean that it must be available in the form that is required for downstream manufacturing and also at a price which is competitive,” he explained.

Read more

COSIA searches for environmental breakthroughs in the oil sands – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – April 5, 2013)

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

It’s been a year since the CEOs of 12 major oil sands companies pledged in Calgary to set aside historic rivalries and collaborate to accelerate the pace of environmental improvement through a new organization, Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA).

Over that period, the backlash against development of the Alberta-based resource has intensified, feeding off regulatory processes for new export pipelines like Keystone XL and Northern Gateway, and incidents seen as contradicting the oil sands sector’s promise of responsible development like last week’s pipeline spill in Arkansas.

But Dan Wicklum, COSIA’s chief executive officer, said the environmental wins are beginning and the structure is in place for major breakthroughs.

“I have a trite saying: as scientists and engineers, we have a difficult time scheduling our breakthroughs,” Mr. Wicklum said in an interview. “But the ambition is high. When you look at the projects that we have in the pipeline, the potential is very real.”

The question is whether they are happening fast enough, are significant enough, the improvements are quantifiable, and will be well enough communicated to satisfy oil sands critics and policy makers on the cusp of major decisions in Canada, the United States and Europe this year that could either frustrate or allow further development.

Read more

Japan eyeing billions in LNG investments in Western Canada – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – April 5, 2013)

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

VANCOUVER – Japan is prepared to invest billions directly in natural gas infrastructure in Western Canada as part of a plan to secure massive supplies of liquefied natural gas to replace nuclear power, a top government advisor said Thursday.

The plan, a new model for Japan, could intensify the race by Asian countries to lock down Western Canada’s energy resources and infrastructure, which so far has been led by China.

Tokyo-based Tadashi Maeda, managing executive officer of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, said Japan is ready to start discussions with private and government entities in Canada to support construction of pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals to serve the Japanese market exclusively.

“The Japanese government is [prepared to make] a strategic investment for the purpose of developing a commodity market for natural gas, a more transparent and flexible market,” Mr. Maeda said on the sidelines of the Pacific Energy Summit, the platform picked by Japan to announce the plan. “So we are going to make some strategic investments to fill the gap of the infrastructure needs.

“The pipelines and export terminals are imperative. Therefore if it is needed, we are going to bring some capital to cover the cost of the infrastructure.”

Read more

Northern Ontario First Nations ask Minister to defer new mining rules – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – April 4, 2013)

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

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – A group of First Nations residing in the north of Ontario this week asked Ontario’s Minister of Northern Development and Mines Michael Gravelle to delay implementing new mining rules that came into effect on Monday, claiming that the new regulations had not gone through a proper consultation process.

The new mining regulations were part of a modernised Mining Act that was passed in 2009 to promote mineral exploration and development in a manner that recognised Aboriginal and treaty rights, was more respectful of private landowners and minimised the impact of mineral exploration and development on the environment.

The Anishinabek Nation, which represented 39 member communities and about 55 000 people in the mineral-rich north of the province, was calling for the establishment of a bilateral table on mining and a meeting with the Minister.

Grand council chief Patrick Madahbee has asked Minister Gravelle to postpone the mandatory implementation of the new mining regulations, saying the Anishinabek Nation was looking for a chance for its leadership to meet with their citizens to discuss concerns with regulations that “did not go through a proper consultation process”.

The Anishinabek Nation had concerns about the recognition of treaty rights, resource revenue sharing, environmental stewardship and the local capacity to permit First Nations to meet demands of the new regulations.

Read more

Pentagon orders an about-face on REEs – by Shane Lasley (North of 60 Mining News – March 31, 2013)

 http://www.petroleumnews.com/miningnewsnorth/index.shtml

Department of Defense reverses its public stance on rare earths, recommends building a US$130M stockpile of the strategic minerals

About face; forward; march! The U.S. Department of Defense recently issued this order in the field of rare earth elements.

The unique properties of REEs – a group of 17 previously obscure metals that include scandium, yttrium and the 15 lanthanides – are key ingredients in a number of military applications such as guided missiles, lasers, radar systems, night vision equipment and battlefield communications.

China is estimated to supply between 90 and 95 percent of the world’s rare earth oxides, according to a September 2012 report penned by Congressional Research Service.

Though these Sino-mined elements are key ingredients to much of the U.S. Military’s advanced weapons systems, Pentagon officials have never considered REEs rare enough to need a stockpile of them.

“I wouldn’t run out and buy a bunch of rare earths,” DoD Industrial Policy Director Brett Lambert proclaimed during a defense conference held in New York late in 2010.

Read more

Press Release: Strategic Materials Advisory Council Cautions DoD against Stockpiling Chinese Rare Earths

http://www.strategicmaterials.org/

Strategic Materials Advisory Council – Thu, Mar 21, 2013 2:27 PM EDT

WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)– The Strategic Materials Advisory Council today cautioned the Department of Defense to avoid the risky mitigation strategy of stockpiling strategic and critical materials from China. The Department of Defense recently completed its biannual “Strategic and Critical Materials 2013 Report on Stockpile Requirements,” which recommended stockpiling $120.43 million of heavy rare earth elements — materials produced only in China.

“The root cause of these material shortages is our ongoing dependence on Chinese suppliers,” said Council Executive Director Jeff Green. “While it is encouraging that DoD acknowledges these risks, we urge DoD to move from theoretical studies to the only appropriate and permanent solution — the creation and nurturing of a U.S. based rare earth supply chain.”

This rare earth stockpile recommendation represents over one-third of a $319.74 million stockpiling plan to mitigate a $1.2 billion shortfall of 23 strategic and critical materials. This encouraging recommendation contrasts dramatically with previous Department of Defense assessments that asserted domestic sources could meet all military requirements by 2013, except for yttrium, and that substitution would be a viable approach to risk mitigation for heavy rare earths.

Green added, “It is equally encouraging that the Department is acknowledging the increased acquisition cost and engineering challenges posed by substitution strategies. However the U.S. must not rely on research projects and substitution alone to close the current supply gap.

Read more