James C. O’Rourke (Born 1939) – 2013 Canadian Mining Hall of Fame Inductee

The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame was conceived by the late Maurice R. Brown, former editor and publisher of The Northern Miner, as a way to recognize and honour the legendary mine finders and builders of a great Canadian industry. The Hall was established in 1988. For more information about the extraordinary individuals who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, please go to their home website: http://mininghalloffame.ca/

(L to R) James C. O’Rourke and Graham Farquharson

James O’Rourke began his career as a mining engineer working on a new generation of mines being developed by visionary industry leaders during the expansionary post-war decades. This rare experience set the stage for a successful career as a mine-maker, company builder and advocate of progressive industry partnerships. He exemplifies the optimistic spirit of his native British Columbia, where he played leadership roles in the development of the Quinsam coal mine, the Cassiar asbestos mine, the Huckleberry copper mine, and the Similco copper mine, later revived and expanded as Copper Mountain, among other endeavors.

In addition to building companies such as Princeton Mining and Copper Mountain Mining Corporation, he forged strong partnerships with Pacific Rim trading partners, setting a precedent for other companies and industries to follow as part of the Pacific Gateway initiative.

Read more


Pierre Lassonde (Born 1947) – 2013 Canadian Mining Hall of Fame Inductee

http://www.pendaproductions.com/ This video was produced by PENDA Productions, a full service production company specializing in Corporate Communications with a focus on Corporate Responsibility.

The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame was conceived by the late Maurice R. Brown, former editor and publisher of The Northern Miner, as a way to recognize and honour the legendary mine finders and builders of a great Canadian industry. The Hall was established in 1988. For more information about the extraordinary individuals who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, please go to their home website: http://mininghalloffame.ca/

(L to R) Pierre Lassonde and Seymour Schulich

Pierre Lassonde has long believed that a nation’s natural resources are not its commodities, but its people. He proved this true during his own exemplary career as a professional engineer, astute investor, innovative financier, etrepreneurial company builder, dedicated philanthropist, and senior statesman of Canada’s mining and investment industries. He also invested in human resources through generous contributions to universities that continue to produce enduring and incalculable returns, including a new generation of industry professionals.

Born in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Lassonde earned a degree in electrical engineering from the École Polytechnique de Montréal, followed by a MBA from the University of Utah in 1973. After a stint with Bechtel in San Francisco, he joined Beutel Goodman & Company and managed its successful gold investment fund for more than a decade. He launched Franco-Nevada Mining in 1982, after teaming up with Seymour Schulich.

Read more


Gerald W. Grandey (Born 1946) – 2013 Canadian Mining Hall of Fame Inductee

The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame was conceived by the late Maurice R. Brown, former editor and publisher of The Northern Miner, as a way to recognize and honour the legendary mine finders and builders of a great Canadian industry. The Hall was established in 1988. For more information about the extraordinary individuals who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, please go to their home website: http://mininghalloffame.ca/

(L to R) Gerald W. Grandey and Chris Twigge-Molecey

When Gerald Grandey joined Cameco Corporation in 1993, his mandate as senior vice-president of marketing and corporate development was to help the company grow beyond its core Rabbit Lake and Key Lake uranium mines in Saskatchewan. He rose to that challenge and many others after becoming president and CEO in the early 2000s. When he retired in 2011, Cameco accounted for 16% of the world’s uranium with five mines in Canada, the United States and Kazakhstan, and was an integrated nuclear energy company.

But Grandey did more than expand production and increase market capitalization by 350% to $9.6 billion from $2.1 billion. He helped Cameco become Canada’s largest industrial employer of Aboriginal people and a world leader in nuclear safety, played a pivotal role in a global nuclear disarmament agreement, and raised the profile of nuclear power as clean energy.

Read more


Charles E. Fipke (Born 1946) – 2013 Canadian Mining Hall of Fame Inductee

The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame was conceived by the late Maurice R. Brown, former editor and publisher of The Northern Miner, as a way to recognize and honour the legendary mine finders and builders of a great Canadian industry. The Hall was established in 1988. For more information about the extraordinary individuals who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, please go to their home website: http://mininghalloffame.ca/

(L to R) Charles E. Fipke and Ted Yates

Geologists and prospectors had searched for diamond deposits in North America for more than a century with only teasing hints of success until the discovery of a cluster of kimberlites in the Northwest Territories that became Ekati, Canada’s first diamond mine. This groundbreaking discovery, synonymous with the name of Charles E. (Chuck) Fipke, was the culmination of Fipke’s relentless pursuit of elusive diamond indicator minerals for hundreds of kilometres from the Mackenzie River Valley eastward to their source near Lac de Gras.

Other key contributors in his quest were his associate, geologist Stewart Blusson, economic geologist Hugo Dummett and University of Cape Town professor John Gurney. The epic success of this discovery, achieved on a shoestring budget through innovative science, sparked a staking rush, inspired other diamond discoveries and created a new industry for Canada.

Read more


Australian Iron Ore Rush – by James Coffman – (The Motley Fool – January 25, 2013)

http://beta.fool.com/

The race is on! The iron rush, in the Pilbara iron district of Western Australia, is in full force. Forget about watching the World Series, a horse race, or Monday night football. This race to increase iron ore production keeps me on the edge of my seat. The stakes are high and the profit potential is great.

There are three main players. We have two very large and very diversified companies; namely Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO) at the number one spot, BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) at the number two spot and the underdog nipping at their heals, namely Fortescue Metals Group (NASDAQOTH: FSUMF). All of the players are exposed to the rise and fall of iron ore prices as a result of the vagaries of the big Chinese steel mills and the Chinese economy. RIO and BHP have diversified mineral plays across the globe, but tend to get the largest piece of their profit pie from iron operations.

Both of the big boys have problems from other operations eating up their cash flow: RIO with its $14 billion dollar mistake in Mozambique and BHP’s inability to act in a forward looking direction. In contrast, Fortescue is a pure iron play and well situated to cash in on the current and future iron needs of China, though it sees much larger swings in its share price with changes in iron prices than its competitors.

Fortescue is motivated and determined in their pace of development. They will see the greatest rise in stock value over the next couple of years. FSUMF has just gotten out of the gate and they are the young purebred challenging the old guard resting on their laurels.

Read more


Xstrata Copper in Timmins extends support for sturgeon restoration biodiversity initiative

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 Xstrata Copper’s Kidd Operations in Timmins has committed $21,000 to the Wintergreen Fund in support of the Mattagami River Sturgeon Restoration Project. “We are committed to supporting sustainable environmental projects, such as this one, that address identified needs and bring together community partners with common goals,” said Tom Semadeni, General Manager of Xstrata Copper’s Kidd Operations.

This contribution extends Kidd Operations support of the sturgeon initiative through to 2014. The funding will be used to acquire stationary monitors, nets, transmitters and other fish monitoring equipment. Along with the financial support, Kidd Operations will continue to provide in-kind donations of helicopter and personnel time for sturgeon habitat mapping and monitoring.

The Mattagami River Sturgeon Restoration Project began in 2002 in efforts to re-establish Lake Sturgeon in the local watershed. A once large population of Lake Sturgeon had been reduced significantly due to overfishing, log drives, habitat fragmentation caused by the construction of hydro-electric dams and to a lesser degree pollution. This project’s efforts have provided valuable data on the size and location of the fish population, where they gather to breed and how the river environment can be improved to encourage reproduction.

Lake Sturgeon are descendants of a prehistoric fish going back to the Mesozoic Era (dinosaur age). The fish appear to be much the same today as 100-million-year-old fossils, which have been found.

Read more


Diamond drill CAO [Barb Courte] shares success story – by Benjamin Aubé (Timmins Daily Press – January 25, 2013)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – It is not easy for a woman to get to the top in a male-dominated industry such as mining. Barb Courte, a big name in the world of diamond drilling, spoke at the Dante Club on Thursday at a Women in Business luncheon hosted by the Timmins Chamber of Commerce.

Courte, president and CAO of Northstar Drilling Ltd. and Cobra Diamond Drilling Ltd., said heads are quick to turn when she tells people about her heavy-duty line of work.

“As women, we’re not supposed to be working in the drilling industry,” said Courte, about past experiences, which have led her to work in places like Thunder Bay, Timmins, Sweden and most recently, the Dominican Republic. “I’ll tell you, after some of the things I’ve learned about mechanical stuff and down-the-hole stuff, it’s pretty bad. I have to check if I’m still female once in awhile.”

Courte’s tale in far from conventional. After getting married to Garry, a diamond driller, she never envisioned she’d be the one to eventually call the shots. In fact, at the time, she barely knew what drilling was.

“When I met my husband, I said, ‘What do you do?’ He said, ‘I’m a diamond driller,’ and I said, ‘Oh really!”, remembered Courte, getting one of many laughs from the crowd on the afternoon.

Read more


Mining juniors in crisis – gold explorers particularly badly hit – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – January 25, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

The junior gold mining and exploration sector is currently at a very low ebb – but the better juniors will survive regardless and now provide tremendous opportunities for the savvy investor.

LONDON (MINEWEB) – Feedback from the Vancouver Resource Investment meeting last week suggests the junior mining crisis is really hitting home and unless there is a turnaround soon a significant number of junior gold explorers in particular will no longer be with us even by mid-year, and certainly not by this time next year.

A conference and exhibition primarily involving junior miners and explorers, and particularly one taking place in Vancouver where the largest proportion of North American juniors are headquartered, is an excellent venue for judging the state of the industry.

And on reviewing this year’s Cambridge House event the junior mining sector is in a precarious state at present with companies finding it difficult, if not impossible, to raise new funds to keep themselves afloat.

Stock prices are so low that new share issues are not really an option, while banks and financial institutions are just not prepared to take the risk of lending to companies in a sector that, even in good times, can prove a risky one for which to provide finance.

Read more


Fat profit margins make iron ore the apple of miners’ eyes – by James Regan (Reuters.com – January 24, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY – Jan 24 (Reuters) – Australian miners like to say iron ore is the new gold. How about the new iPhone?

Iron ore, needed to make steel, long ago replaced gold as the most profitable mineral to mine in the Australian outback. And while sales of iPhones have become a disappointment for Apple Inc, mega-mining companies such as BHP Billiton are projecting strong growth in iron ore sales for decades to come – at margins even an Apple or smartphone rival Samsung Electronics would drool over.

BHP and rivals Rio Tinto and Fortescue Metals are seeing profit margins often exceeding 100 percent on sales of hundreds of millions of tonnes of ore. Apple Inc earned gross margins of 49 to 58 percent on its U.S. iPhone sales between April 2010 and the end of March 2012, according to court filings obtained by Reuters.

Apple on Thursday missed Wall Street’s revenue forecast for the third straight quarter as iPhone sales came in below expectations, although earnings topped forecasts.

Production costs under $40 a tonne mean margins at Rio Tinto and BHP are comfortably above any of their other businesses with iron ore selling for nearly $150 a tonne, explaining why they continue to invest to expand their operations in Western Australia’s vast Pilbara iron ore belt.

Read more


Asteroid-mining race heats up as Deep Space Industries joins the fray – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – January 24, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/

By exploring the potential riches of space rocks, would-be asteroid miner DSI hope to help humanity enlarge its footprint in the final frontier.

RENO (MINEWEB) – Santa Monica, California-based Deep Space Industries (DSI) says it has launched the first commercial campaign to inspect small asteroids which pass by earth as potential mining targets.

Deep Space will build a small fleet of 55-pound FireFlies, working with NASA and other companies and groups to identify potential exploration targets.

“My smartphone has more computing power than they had on the Apollo moon missions,” said Deep Space Chairman Rick Tumlinson. “We can make amazing machines smaller, cheaper and faster than ever before.”

The company intends to send a fleet of FireFly spacecraft into space beginning in 2015 by riding-sharing on the launch of larger communications satellites.

Beginning in 2016, Deep Space aims to launch 70-pound DragonFlies for round-trip visits that bring back geological samples. The DragonFly expeditions are expect to take two to four years, depending on the target, and will return with 60 to 150 pounds of cargo.

Read more


India tries to temper the hunger for gold – by Stephanie Nolen (Globe and Mail – January 24, 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.

NEW DELHI — In the glinting showroom of the Gem Palace in the city of Jaipur, Sanjay Kasliwal surveys his family business: strings of rubies, pearls the size of grapes, collars of emeralds and, everywhere, bright yellow gold.

The Gem Palace has supplied princes, prime ministers, socialites and no small number of families preparing for weddings, for hundreds of years. But in the past decade, the price of gold has surged to unprecedented heights – fetching close to $1,700 (U.S.) an ounce on Wednesday. Yet Mr. Kasliwal’s business has not faltered.

“People have a budget, but they’ll still put it in gold,” the jeweller said. “If the price goes up, they buy 490 grams instead of 500 grams, that’s all. The Indian hunger for gold, you can’t change that.”

That hunger for gold has also warped the country’s economy. The Indian government is growing increasingly alarmed about a current account deficit in the July-to-September quarter that accounted for a record 5.4 per cent of gross domestic product. This week it raised taxes on gold imports in an attempt to curb a shopping habit that goes back centuries.

That will be no easy task. Gold purchases make a lot of sense for Indians. Inflation has run at or near 10 per cent annually, while the best rate on a savings product from a bank returns 8 per cent. The stock market has had returns far below that in recent years.

Read more


Iamgold to cut back Mali exploration activity – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – January 24, 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.

A move by Iamgold Corp. to reduce exploration activity in Mali marks the latest move by the Toronto-based company to protect itself from political risk in the region.

Iamgold has operations in Canada, South America and Africa, but half its output comes from mines in Mali, and neighbouring Burkina Faso. In Mali it is a 41-per-cent owner in the Sadiola gold mine and a 40-per-cent owner in Yatela, also a gold mine.

“Although it is business as usual at the Sadiola and Yatela mines operated by the company’s joint venture partner and which are approximately 1,300 kilometres by road from the regions of conflict, the company is reducing its exploration activity in the region at this time as a precautionary measure,” Iamgold stated in a news release on Tuesday.

The company said, however, that production at the joint venture operations had not been disrupted by the conflict in Mali, where Islamic militants have taken over a large swath of the territory.

Iamgold, one of the largest mining companies operating in Mali, has been shifting its focus away from the African continent for the past two years, selling stakes in mines in Ghana in early 2011.

Read more


Whatever happened to global warming? – by Margaret Wente (Globe and Mail – January 24, 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.

Are you freezing? Join the crowd. Arctic air is sweeping across Canada. Snow and ice are wreaking havoc on Britain. Russians are dying from the cold. And Germans are sneaking into forests to cut down trees because their fuel bills are so high.

Hey! Whatever happened to global warming?

That’s a naive question, of course. Everybody knows there’s little or no connection between daily weather events and climate change (except when there’s a heat wave, a hurricane or some other natural disaster, in which case global warming is invariably to blame). Experts will tell you that our bitter winter weather proves nothing about climate change – that the world is still warming up at an alarming rate.

Well, maybe not so alarming. Global temperatures have now held steady for 16 years. They levelled off around 1997. The latest data come from Britain’s weather and climate agency, the Met Office, which says you can’t draw any conclusions from such a short span of time. Still, the data are proving awkward for leading climatologists, who are reluctantly admitting that their projections have their limits. Nor is the news likely to increase support for activists such as NASA scientist James Hansen, who warned, in an interview with The Guardian back in 2009, that Barack Obama had only four years to set an example for the world and avert disaster.

Read more


Declaration lets Spence save face, end protest after failing to secure meeting with PM and Governor General – by Jesse Kline (National Post – January 24, 2013)

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

Theresa Spence Wednesday night officially ended her six-week-old protest, which saw her subsisting on a liquid-only diet. It followed intense behind-the-scenes bargaining that allowed her to save face in the eyes of the government, her people and the general public.

Ms. Spence did a great job of publicizing her issue, but as a politician, she leaves much to be desired. With Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo also announcing Wednesday he will return to work Thursday after a medical leave, future negotiations will hopefully be a little less chaotic, and a little more productive.

From the beginning, it has been clear that Ms. Spence was in way over her head. When the Attawapiskat Chief first set up camp on an island in the Ottawa River on Dec. 11, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was faced with a serious dilemma: Meeting personally with Ms. Spence would have set a dangerous precedent, and could have led to every Canadian who has a grievance with the federal government (there are many) threatening to kill themselves, should they not get the ear of the prime minister. On the other hand, if he let her die, he would forever be known as the prime minister who was too stubborn to save a life.

Neither was a good option for Mr. Harper, who expertly organized a meeting that included representatives of the AFN and other aboriginal leaders.

Read more


Is the iron ore rally overdone? – Northern Miner Editorial (January 10, 2013)

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

Spot prices for iron ore fines delivered to China touched a three-year low in September 2012 of US$87 per tonne before rebounding to US$119 per tonne in December and to the US$158-US$160 per-tonne level of recent days. The question is, where will prices for the metal move from here?

John Goldsmith, deputy head of equities at investment management firm MontruscoBolton in Toronto, says they have nowhere to go but down. “Iron ore has had an absolutely phenomenal rally but I think it’s time to take money off the table,” he says. “The rally has been long in the tooth.”

In Goldsmith’s view, GDP growth in China over the next three years will average about 6%, down from the 7.8% the country clocked last year and the 9.2% of 2011. That estimate, he explains, is a function of the average 7% GDP growth rate set out in China’s last five-year plan in 2010. And a growth rate of 6%, he says, will have an impact on iron ore demand and prices, given that the economic juggernaut produces nearly 50% of the world’s steel and makes up more than 60% of global demand for seaborne iron ore.

“People are realizing that China will not grow to the moon, it will not have GDP growth north of 8% for the next ten years, and people that think that are dreaming,” he continues. “The risk for the iron ore trade right now is that there is a slowdown in infrastructure spending in China and it will have an impact on steel consumption usage and that will cascade down to the iron ore price.”

Read more