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New uranium royalty incentives will encourage development in Saskatchewan – by Tony Playter (Regina Leader Post – May 25, 2013)

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

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In an effort to encourage new investments in uranium mining, the provincial government made changes to its uranium royalty structure earlier this year.

Tim McMillan, Minister Responsible for Energy and Resources, said the new royalty structure now recognizes actual costs incurred in development and mining.

“The old uranium royalty structure, which was put in place in 2001, presented a number of challenges,” said McMillan. “It was based on assumed costs and over the last 13 years we have seen the cost of construction far exceed assumptions that were put in the old model.”

The old royalty system had a very negative effect on mining in Saskatchewan. Over the years, many development and mine projects have been placed on hold because the structure would not recognize certain actual costs.

“We corrected that system, which was no longer reflecting the true costs of building a new mine or bringing new projects forward,” said McMillan.

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International Minerals Innovation Institute – by Robyn Tocker (Regina Leader Post – May 25, 2013)

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

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In Saskatoon, a unique, non-profit institute funded by Saskatchewan’s mining industry and government that brings “market pull” to the design of education and training (E&T) programs and research and development (R&D) projects has been developed. International Minerals Innovation Institute (IMII) “is focused on enhancing mining technology, processing technology, environment and safety management, exploration, social license and policy research, and economics of global commodities,” said Rodney Orr, executive director of IMII.

The goals are simple: to support the attraction and retention of educated and skilled people; facilitate research and development; and provide leadership and capacity-building in the development of programs, technical certificate and undergraduate and post-graduate programs. IMII has already begun their work to meet the mining industry’s needs by entering into an agreement with the University of Saskatchewan to provide $1.68 million over a three-year period for the start-up costs of developing Mining Option classes for engineering students and to explore the delivery of an undergraduate mining engineering degree.

IMII was designed to fill the gap for skill development through industry-driven education and training programs and R&D within [the Saskatchewan] mineral industry. It is a unique approach.

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SIMSA – promoting Saskatchewan solutions to the global resource industry – by Tony Playter (Regina Leader Post – May 25, 2013)

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

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The Saskatchewan Industrial and Mining Supply Association (SIMSA) is a new organization representing Saskatchewan based companies that provide goods and services to mining, oil and gas, and industrial projects.

With Saskatchewan’s strong resource base and growing economy, SIMSA – which was officially launched at the 2013 Saskatchewan Mining Supply Chain Forum – will play an important role in providing world-class opportunities and solutions to members of the industry. SIMSA assists its members by promoting the capabilities and capacity of its members who represent Saskatchewan industrial manufacturers and service suppliers.

“Our mandate is to represent the interests and concerns of our members who are Saskatchewan industrial equipment and service suppliers,” said Tom Foster, chairman of SIMSA’s board of directors. “We look to promote our members and create lasting partnerships within the industry and other associations.”

SIMSA will also promote its members and their services to global companies working in Saskatchewan as well as globally. The organization will also provide one voice when reviewing new policies and regulations that may affect their members.

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[Timmins] Hollinger pit project ‘on track’ – by Benjamin Aubé (Timmins Daily Press – May 28, 2013)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Representatives from Goldcorp gave Timmins city council a tiny glimpse into the future of the Hollinger Mine open-pit project on Monday.

A handful of conceptual renderings of eventual Hollinger Lake were presented by general manager Marc Lauzier and mine superintendent Paul Miller as part of the report.

But the news everyone at council really wanted to hear was that the goals surrounding the Hollinger Project haven’t changed, despite nervous times in the gold market.

“I’m not going to lie to you, there’s a lot of questions around the community about what’s going on, with the price of gold declining,” said Lauzier. “Of course, it’s been steadily around $1,380, $1,400, $1,350 (per ounce), so people have been worried about that.

“I had a conference call with our COO and our VP of operations on Friday night, and I’m proud to report that after that call, we remain committed to doing this project,” he said. “We’re committed to returning it for safe public use, however, we’re going to do so in a fiscally responsible manner because we have to. Nothing’s changed, really. We’re going to keep our guys employed until we get our permit.

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Company hopes to usher in new era of Yellowknife gold mining – by CBC News North (May 27, 2013)

http://www.cbc.ca/north/

TerraX Minerals exploring same gold belt Giant Mine is located on

A junior exploration company — TerraX Minerals — hopes to bring a new era of gold mining to Yellowknife. The last gold mine close to the city shut down almost a decade ago, and exploration in the Yellowknife gold belt has been stagnant, until now.

In February, TerraX has acquired a site along the lucrative belt, located about 15 kilometres from Yellowknife. The Northbelt site is about 13 kilometres in length and 36 square kilometres in size, and sits just north the Giant Mine. It once belonged to Royal Oak, the last company to run Giant Mine.

“It’s the most promising expansion of mineralization that was mined in the past,” said company president Joe Campbell. TerraX Minerals is starting a small exploration program this summer. It’s doing geological surveys and combing through old drilling records.

But down the road, a big hurdle could be selling a project that neighbours one of the most toxic mine sites in Canada. The federal government is spending almost a billion dollars to clean up the Giant Mine and store 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide, dust produced during gold production.

“Anyone that mentions gold mining in Yellowknife is obviously going to associate it with the gold mining that occurred in the past, and therefore the question that will come out is, ‘is this going to be another environmental disaster in 40 years like Giant’,” said Campbell.

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Excerpt from “An Insider’s Guide to the Mining Sector: An in-depth study of gold and mining shares”– by Michael Coulson

To order a copy of An Insider’s Guide to the Mining Sector, please click here: http://www.harriman-house.com/book/view/66/investing/michael-coulson/an-insiders-guide-to-the-mining-sector/

United Kingdom: Little mining activity left

One of the most interesting business developments in recent years has been the relocation to and re-incorporation in the UK of a number of major mining companies. This has meant that four of the largest mining companies in the world – Rio Tinto, Anglo American, Xstrata and BHP Billiton – have UK incorporation; all are part of the FTSE100 share index. It is important to appreciate, however, that any UK mining operations that these companies have are very small. Indeed, mining in the UK is itself confined to speciality minerals such as china clay, sand and gravel and a rapidly contracting (though once powerful) coal mining industry.

The financial attractions of London

Therefore, with little mining activity in the UK the reasons for the presence of these companies in London is primarily financial. The banking system is seen as sophisticated and experienced in financing mining developments. Operating as a UK company means that the cost of capital can be much lower than in countries like South Africa. The historic links between the City of London and the mining industry mean that there is understanding of the risks and rewards of financing mining companies.

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Gold Bets Cut to Five-Year Low as Prices Whipsawed: Commodities – by Tony C. Dreibus (Bloomberg News – May 27, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Hedge funds are the least bullish on gold in more than five years as speculation about the pace of money printing by central banks whipsawed prices, driving volatility to a 17-month high.

Money managers cut their net-long position by 9 percent to 35,686 futures and options as of May 21, the lowest since July 2007, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. Holdings of short contracts rose 6.7 percent to a record 79,416. Net-bullish wagers across 18 U.S.-traded commodities slid 2.1 percent, as investors became more bearish on coffee and wheat.

Gold’s 60-day historical volatility touched the highest since December 2011 last week and a gauge of price swings for the SPDR Gold Trust, the biggest bullion-backed exchange-traded fund, surged 73 percent this year. Bullion see-sawed as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke testified before Congress on May 22. Two days later, Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said he’s done enough to spur growth.

“Gold has so many drivers that it leads to a lot of getting pushed around by one thing or another,” said Dan Denbow, a fund manager at the $1 billion USAA Precious Metals & Minerals Fund in San Antonio. “It makes it impossible to determine a direction.”

May Returns

Futures dropped 5.4 percent in May, poised for a second monthly decline. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index of 24 commodities fell 0.1 percent and the MSCI All-Country World of equities also declined 0.1 percent. A Bank of America Corp. Index shows Treasuries lost 1.3 percent.

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Why everyone wants a piece of the Arctic – by by Luiza Ch. Savage (MacLean’s Magazine – May 27, 2013)

http://www2.macleans.ca/

In temperature and politics, the Arctic has never been hotter. As other nations try to get in on the action, Canada is gearing up for a fight.

Ólafur Grímsson, the jovial, globe-trotting president of Iceland, likes to tell the story of his first state visit to Russia 11 years ago, when he asked to meet with Vladimir Putin to talk about the Arctic. The snow-haired Icelander was told that such esoteric matters would be best discussed with local authorities in Kamchatka and Murmansk, thousands of miles from the Kremlin. These days, says Grímsson with a chuckle, Putin himself gives speeches at Arctic conferences—and sends emissaries to Iceland to personally invite Grímsson to attend.

In temperature and in geopolitics, the Arctic has never been hotter. The ice cap is melting rapidly; new shipping lanes are opening up, as are previously inaccessible reserves of oil, gas and minerals. It is estimated that one-fifth of the world’s petroleum reserves lie in the Arctic. Whether these riches will be developed and transported, under what conditions and by whom, are high-stakes questions that are growing in urgency for governments and industry around the world.

Some projections say a nearly ice-free Arctic Ocean could occur by mid-century. “For the first time in human history we will witness the creation of a new ocean,” Grímsson told a conference in Washington last month. And the rest of the world wants in. Last summer, a Chinese-owned icebreaker, the Snow Dragon, sailed from Shanghai to Iceland. The purpose of that expedition was ostensibly to research how the melting of the sea ice creates extreme weather patterns in China. But China is also building cargo ships to sail across a polar route this decade using the ice-free summer months, cutting the distance to Europe and America.

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20K trees to be planted at old Sudbury mine site – by CBC Radio Sudbury (May 23, 2013)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/

It will be decades — if not a century — before the program is complete, city environmental planner says

The City of Greater Sudbury is ready for another season of tree planting — and this year it is getting a significant boost. It announced Tuesday that 20,000 trees donated by CN Rail and a non-profit group called Tree Canada will be planted.

During the announcement the city gave helicopter tours of a former Inco smelter site in Coniston that was devastated by mining. This is where the new trees will find their home.

‘Tremendous amount of work left’

A representative with Tree Canada said she can see how much the city has changed. “I just feel like the world’s going to be OK when I come up this way,” said Debra Beattie, who also grew up in Sudbury.

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Future mines will be technology driven, [South African] Minister tells union – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – May 27, 2013)

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

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Technological innovations would drive the mines of the future, which would need to be run by young people with the appropriate skills, Minerals Minister Susan Shabangu told South Africa’s biggest mining union at the weekend.

Urging the central executive committee of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) to rise to the new challenge, Shabangu denigrated the current migrant labour system of recruitment as unsustainable, against the changed background of large numbers of unemployed young people now living on the doorsteps of many mines.

“The mines of the future will have to be modelled differently to those that have characterised this industry for the past 136 years. These mines will inevitably have to accommodate young people who will need to operate them, armed with the appropriate skills, technological knowledge and training.

“There’s no doubt that the mining industry of the future will be driven by technological innovations and research and development, and I’m sure NUM will rise to this challenge,” Shabangu said.

The headwinds from a fragile world economy had conspired to make the mining sector a difficult economic terrain, not just for workers and business, but also for government as regulator and policy maker.

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Language credentials turned upside-down in HD Mining case – Globe and Mail Editorial (May 27, 2013)

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.

The Federal Court of Canada’s judgment last week in the HD Mining case was something of a pyrrhic victory for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program as it now stands. The topsy-turvy upshot is that suitable Canadian miners could not be found for a coal mine near Tumbler Ridge, B.C., in large measure because the predominant language at the mine is Mandarin, which the Chinese government recognizes as China’s national language.

Justice Russel Zinn of the Federal Court upheld a labour market opinion issued by William MacLean, an officer of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, in which he had found that the hiring of 201 Chinese workers at the coal mine would have “a neutral or positive effect on the labour market in Canada.” That opinion enabled HD Mining International Ltd., a Chinese-controlled company, to hire the foreign workers. The Construction and Specialized Workers’ Union and the International Union of Operating Engineers challenged that opinion in court.

Given the list of factors that it was Mr. MacLean’s duty to consider, his conclusion was right. But because the language of that particular workplace is Mandarin, most English-speaking miners in northeastern British Columbia would not be able to communicate with their fellow employees in HD Mining’s Murray River project.

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Mine find drenched in prehistory – by Kyle Gennings (Timmins Daily Press – May 27, 2013)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Timmins residents got the chance to see what discovery here has scientists worldwide all abuzz. It is billion-year-old water found 2.4 kilometres underground within the Kidd Mine that has caused such a stir.

A sample of it was exhibited in a jar at Timmins Square Saturday as part of Glencore-Xstrata Kidd Operations’ display for Mining Week.

In 2011, while drilling at the most extreme levels of the Kidd Mine, geologists discovered what is estimated to be billion-year-old water, which attracted attention from national media, scientists and NASA.

“We are looking at a sample of water that was collected at the 8,000 level,” said Pete Calloway, chief geologist for Kidd Mine. “The general thought right now is that this is extremely old water. We aren’t sure how old quite yet, we are leaving it up to the professors at the University of Toronto to make that determination.”

Calloway can draw his own conclusions about the nature of the water, but he’ll let the brains at the university draw the official conclusions. “What we believe is that this water has been trapped within the fractures of the mine and it could be as old as the mine, (mineral formation) which is 2.7 billion years old,” said Calloway. “As we do our work underground and drill the ore body to find out things like grade, tonnage and so on, so that we can plan the mine around the drill holes, we were coming into micro fractures and different faults throughout the mine which in turn liberated the water into the drill hole.”

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RPT-Disruptions tighten copper supply, surplus narrows – by Melanie Burton and Eric Onstad (Reuters U.s. – May 26, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

SINGAPORE/LONDON, May 24 (Reuters) – A series of copper mine shutdowns and supply logjams has prompted some analysts to scale down forecasts for a market surplus, but it would take more disruptions to swing the market into a deficit.

“People are making adjustments, we certainly are. At the beginning of the year we were pencilling in a 300,000 tonne surplus. That’s probably going to be pegged back by half or so,” analyst Robin Bhar at Societe Generale in London said.

“Demand is down as well, so one offsets the other. I don’t think we’ll have a deficit market again but certainly a more balanced market.”

The forecast surplus has weighed on benchmark copper prices , which have shed 13 percent since touching a peak in February of $8,346 a tonne for the year so far.

The global market for refined copper was expected to have a 98,500 tonne surplus this year and 305,000 tonnes in 2014, based on the average forecast of 18 analysts polled by Reuters in April. The 2013 estimate was already scaled back from a 127,000 tonne surplus forecast in January.

Those April forecasts came shortly after a rockslide at Rio Tinto’s Bingham Canyon copper mine, which the company said would reduce production by about 100,000 tonnes.

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Saskatchewan mining companies contribute to their communities – by Carol Rogers And Barb Flynn (Regina Leader-Post – May 25, 2013)

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

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Saskatchewan’s mining corporations are drilling into more than just the earth. Many are becoming involved in and giving back to their communities. They are doing this in a variety of ways including by introducing educational programs, providing employment opportunities, ensuring employee safety both on and after leaving the job, and addressing child hunger as a way of promoting a healthy education and lifestyle. Here is a look at some of the ways that companies are investing in local communities.

AREVA

AREVA Resources Canada is entering an exciting phase of growth in 2013. Not only is AREVA restarting the mill at McClean Lake this summer, they are also upgrading and expanding it so they can process all the ore from the nearby Cigar Lake mine.

The key to their success? Hiring a significant number of employees to ensure they are ready for this growth and development. In 2012, AREVA launched a major recruitment campaign focused on gaining employees from northern Saskatchewan.

Because it is a competitive market with many projects underway in the province, AREVA understands that they need an innovative approach to attract and retain talent.

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Sudbury Laurentian’s Ned Goodman School of Mines – by Dominic Giroux, President, Laurentian University (May 15, 2013)

Bruce Jago, Excutive Director of Laurentian’s Ned Goodman School of Mines; Ned Goodman, President and CEO of Dundee Corporation; Dominic Giroux, Laurentian University President

Dominic Giroux, Laurentian University President

http://www.laurentian.ca/content/goodman-school-of-mines

This speech was given by Dominic Giroux, during the Goodman School of Mines Cocktail Reception at the King Edward Hotel, Toronto, Ontario on May 15, 2013

Good evening – bienvenue – aanii, boozhoo. Thank you all for being here, to share in this special occasion. And thank you to our gracious host, Ned Goodman.

I will keep my remarks relatively short. My role tonight is to give you a snapshot of Laurentian University. And that’s exactly why I say “relatively short”, because when I start talking about Laurentian University or what I like to call the “academic resort of Ontario” – 750 acres surrounded by 5 lakes, a golf course, and a supervised beach – I can truly go on for hours.

We are one of the fastest growing universities in Canada: we’ve grown from six to ten thousand students in the past decade, while increasing our average entry grade.

We’re very proud of our small class sizes. What makes the student’s experience unique at Laurentian is this proximity, this interaction, with faculty. 17% of our students are enrolled in French language programs and 10% of our students are aboriginal students—an important and growing proportion of our student population).

We’re proud of the fact that our research intensity has been growing annually. We’re among the top 3 in Canada in terms of total sponsored research, largely due to our award-winning research centers and our exceptional faculty.

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