Republic of Mining

NEWS RELEASE: RESPONSE FROM MISSANABIE CREE FIRST NATION CHIEF REGARDING NATIONAL POST COLUMN

January 22, 2013

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

GARDEN RIVER, ON — Regarding an article published in the National Post January 8, 2013 where Glenn Nolan, a former Chief of the Missanabie Cree First Nation made comments regarding key First Nations issues and resource revenue sharing, current Chief Kim Rainville issues the following statement:

Let it be known that the support from the Missanabie Cree First Nation council and community have been instrumental in Mr. Nolan achieving his professional goals. Being the president of the Prospector’s and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) as well as an executive of a junior mining company embroiled in the Ring of Fire development, it would make it very difficult for Mr. Nolan to express support for such a significant movement as “Idle No More”. Mr. Nolan’s opinions do not reflect the belief of the Missanabie Cree First Nation regarding the actions taken by Attawapiskat’s Chief Spence or support of the Idle No More movement.

“I believe the agenda of the government smearing a courageous leader such as Chief Spence is reprehensible,” said Chief Kim Rainville. “To have it seemingly come from a former Chief undermines the changes which are being called for by the “Idle No More” movement and a denial of the realities faced by many first Nations citizens.”

The list of issues is long; inadequate housing, health care, education economic opportunities, youth suicide, family violence, policing and the list goes on. These are immediate issues which need to be addressed. Recognition of First Nation autonomy, sovereignty, changes to the Indian Act driven by a First Nations process are paramount to achieving our rightful place in society, resource revenue sharing but a component of righting the many injustices.

Inmet urges shareholders to reject First Quantum bid – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – January 22, 2013)

January 22, 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.

Inmet Mining Corp. has recommended that shareholders reject a hostile takeover bid from First Quantum Minerals, saying the $5.1-billion cash-and-stock offer fails to reflect the value of its massive Cobre Panama project.

Citing the conclusions of a special committee of independent directors as well as input from financial and legal advisers, the Inmet board says the offer is below precedent for recent deals in the mining sector. It says it has approached a number of third parties who have expressed interest in considering strategic alternatives to the First Quantum bid, going so far as to sign confidentiality and standstill agreements with “a number” of those.

Cobre Panama will be one of the world’s largest new copper mines when construction is complete in 2016. The mine will cost some $6.2-billion to build and will produce about 300,000 tonnes of the vital industrial metal annually and is a bet that copper prices will continue to rise as demand strengthens further in China and the economies of Europe and the United States recover.

“The Inmet Board has concluded that the First Quantum Offer fails to adequately compensate shareholders for Inmet’s low risk asset base and its strong prospects for growth and value creation at Cobre Panama, which has the potential to become one of the world’s largest copper mines,” Inmet board chairman David Beatty said in a statement that marks Inmet’s first official response to the First Quantum bid since it was made in mid-December.

Environmental assessment of Cliffs Chromite project is off the rails – by Ramsey Hart (rabble.ca – January 18, 2013)

January 22, 2013

http://rabble.ca/

Rabble.ca is a left-wing news website and Ramsey Hart is the Canada Program Coordinator at MiningWatch Canada.

If you follow mining in Canada you’ve certainly heard about the much hyped “Ring of Fire” or McFauld’s Lake area of northern Ontario. This area on the boundary of the Hudson Bay lowlands and boreal shield is Oji-cree and Cree territory. It is also where Cliffs Natural Resources and Noront Resources are proposing the first of what could be many mining projects in the remote and relatively pristine area.

MiningWatch recently had an opportunity to comment on an important document that will guide Cliffs in drafting the environmental assessment for their project, the latest draft of the Terms of Reference. As reported in the Wawatay News Cliffs initially gave First nations and “interested parties” like MiningWatch only 15 days to comment on hundreds of pages of documents.

While the company justified this by saying it was a revision of a previously released document and the revisions were minor — a careful read of the documents showed this was not the case. In response to several requests Cliffs conceded to extend the deadline on comments until January 11. Joining MiningWatch in submitting comments were the Wildlands League, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Vermillion River Stewardship.

Unlike the joint review processes we are involved with there is no public registry of submissions for this project so it’s hard to know who else may well have submitted comments. Certainly we expect some of the affected First Nations will have. Neskantaga First Nation has an outstanding request with the Ontario Government for mediation over the terms of reference.

Oil price shocks, 40 years on – by Peter Tertzakian (Globe and Mail – January 22, 2013)

January 22, 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.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the 1973 oil price shock. Rifling through an old Life magazine sparked memories of the Middle Eastern drama. Looking at some of the contrasting photos – a room full of jovial Arab leaders enjoying the 250-per-cent rise in the price of oil; a western freeway void of cars due to widespread gasoline shortages – the disco-era reminiscence gave pause for thought about vulnerable oil markets.

Running some numbers on the flashback was thought-provoking, too: in real dollar terms a barrel of light oil (world price) is 40-per-cent more expensive today than it was during the second, 1979 price shock (see accompanying chart Real Price). Should oil producers be concerned about a price fall from today’s lofty high?

At a time when global oil demand was growing by 9 per cent per year, the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and resulting embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) drove the price of a barrel of oil up nominally from $3.00 (U.S.) to $8.00. Figure 1 shows that the elevated prices lingered for seven years, until after 1979, when the second blow of the one-two punch was thrown. The vicious Iran-Iraq war took 7 million barrels per day (MMB/d) off the world market, resulting in a fourfold, average $32a barrel jump in oil prices. Adjusted to today’s dollar terms, Figure 1 shows that prices in the late ‘70s climbed to $80 a barrel.

Franco-Nevada confident in Inmet despite First Quantum’s $5.1B takeover bid – by Peter Koven (National Post – January 22, 2013)

January 22, 2013

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

TORONTO – Inmet Mining Corp. has received a vote of confidence from royalty firm Franco-Nevada Corp., which is not convinced that First Quantum Minerals Ltd. is the best company to build the Cobre Panama project.

Franco-Nevada has committed US$1-billion to Inmet for the development of Cobre Panama, so it has a unique interest in First Quantum’s $5.1-billion hostile bid for the company. Franco chief executive David Harquail said he has been very impressed with Inmet’s handling of the project so far, and has some ongoing questions about First Quantum’s proposal to build the mine for significantly less money. First Quantum has not approached him yet, he said.

“Our worry is what messages [First Quantum] is sending to Panama and the community when they say they have a different plan or scenario going forward and they expect to spend that much less money. Our preference is to have a more steady-state approach,” Mr. Harquail said in an interview.

“Right now, we’re supporting the folks who have brought us to the table and we have to reserve judgment on the new plans.”

That has to be music to Inmet’s ears. The Toronto-based miner is about to formally reject First Quantum’s bid, and will try to argue that it is the better caretaker of the US$6.2-billion mega-project. First Quantum has talked about reducing capital costs at Cobre Panama, but has not offered up firm numbers.

Landlocked Alberta facing budgetary ‘perfect storm’ as oil price gap stings: Horner – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – January 22, 2013)

January 22, 2013

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

With world oil prices staying comfortably above US$100 a barrel, Alberta should be living large and cashing in on the boom. Instead, Albertans have been robbed of their windfall by a shortage of pipeline space and by competing new oil production in the United States.

The mix has depressed Canadian oil prices so much that the provincial government warned Monday its March 7 budget for 2013/2014 will make a big course correction from big spending to big belt-tightening.

The province is facing a “perfect storm” because Canadian oil sold in the U.S. is selling at a deep discount, world markets seem increasingly out of reach and resource revenues have plummeted, Doug Horner, Alberta’s Finance Minister, said in Calgary.

“No storm is good and this one is going to be severe,” Mr. Horner told reporters after addressing the Calgary Chamber of Commerce.

Mr. Horner said the gravity of the problem hit home just in the past few months and it was only before Christmas that Alberta, the federal government and industry realized the magnitude of the North American oil glut.

“Our biggest problem is that Alberta is landlocked,” Mr. Horner said. “In fact, of the world’s major oil-producing jurisdictions, Alberta is the only one with no direct access to the ocean.

Fallen mining CEOs scapegoats rather than villains – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – January 22, 2013)

January 22, 2013

http://www.mineweb.com/

The idea of a board of directors is one of collective responsibility for major decisions, but it is those unfortunate to be at the head of a company at the wrong time who carry the can.

LONDON (MINEWEB) – Among the spate of CEO changes we have already noted, many observers had remarked that Rio Tinto’s CEO, Tom Albanese had effectively been fired as a consequence of the huge write-down of the company’s investment in major aluminium producer Alcan, coupled with the smaller write down of its Mozambique coal assets acquired from the takeover of Riversdale coal last year.

The Riversdale acquisition was obviously down to an extent to Albanese, but a company CEO has to rely on his management executives and board for pursuing, and approval of, major decisions of this type.

It’s not just a case of the CEO pushing through an investment of the type without receiving plenty of advice first. In this case the acquisition appears to have been pushed through on the advice of a technical team led by Doug Ritchie who lost his job at the same time as Albanese.

Now, under normal circumstances, Albanese might have survived the Riversdale debacle on its own but one suspects that the Rio Board, faced with deciding to take the Alcan and Riversdale write downs at the same time, also decided that a high profile head would have to roll –

Jobs at stake in caribou conflict – by Wayne Snider (Timmins Daily Press – January 21, 2013)

January 22, 2013

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

COCHRANE – While many believe forestry is on the verge of a major comeback, there is a fear Northeastern Ontario won’t benefit from the upturn if provincial legislation remains unchanged. Northern leaders hope, however, Natural Resources Minister Michael Gravelle will intervene.

The situation was discussed at length by community leaders during last week’s meeting of the Northeastern Ontario Municipal Association (NEOMA).

As part of the Endangered Species Act, the provincial government is looking to protect massive amounts of forest to preserve caribou habitat. One of the key areas of discussion is the Abibiti River Forest region. As the legislation sits, 65% of the region would be off limits to wood harvesting.

But an amended agreement reached between representatives of industry, environmental groups and Northern leaders would reduce that to 20%. The problem is the Ministry of Natural Resources doesn’t currently recognize the compromise solution reached.

The compromise agreement allows harvests to continue where there is usable wood and little chance of caribou coming back, while protecting areas where the species is known to be present and little lumber-worthy forest.

Canada playing a growing role in global mining industry – by Gordon Hamilton (Vancouver Sun – January 21,2013)

January 22, 2013

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

Country now attracting 18 per cent of world’s mineral exploration

Canada’s mining industry broke records in 2011 for exploration spending, production and exports, according to a report released Monday by the Mining Association of Canada.

The report states Canada has emerged as the world’s top destination for mineral exploration, attracting 18 per cent of global investment, well ahead of second-place Australia, which attracted 13 per cent.

Further, Canada has developed world-leading hubs at Vancouver and Toronto for exploration and investment, respectively, said Pierre Gratton, president of the Mining Association of Canada

Vancouver is the top destination for mining exploration, with the world’s leading cluster of exploration companies, while Toronto is the global hub for mining financing, with the TSX and TSX Venture exchanges accounting for $12.5 billion, or 40 per cent of global mining equity capital, according to the report.

The report states there are 1,200 exploration companies in the Greater Vancouver area, while the Toronto Stock Exchange lists 58 per cent of the world’s public mining companies. London is still the global finance centre for mining in terms of large transactions, but Toronto leads in terms of total value, Gratton said.

Excerpt from “The History of Mining: The events, technology and people involved in the industry that forged the modern world” – by Michael Coulson

January 22, 2013

To order a copy of The History of Mining please click here: http://www.harriman-house.com/products/books/23161/business/Michael-Coulson/The-History-of-Mining/

JOHN NORTH (1842-1896) Chile’s Nitrates King

John Thomas North was known as the nitrates king as a result of his dominance of Chile’s nitrates industry in the latter part of the 19th century and his web of listed nitrates companies in London. He was also an active promoter and owner of coal mines in Chile and the UK and gold mines in Australia.

The son of a prosperous coal merchant, North was born in Holbeck, near Leeds in Yorkshire, in the north of England, in 1842. He served an apprenticeship in a local engineering firm, Fowler & Co, and then went out to southern Peru in 1869 where he installed machinery to treat nitrates. At the time nitrates – nitrogen rich salts – were beginning to be the fertiliser of choice for farmers, and Peru and Bolivia had the largest reserves of the mineral.

In 1879 the War of the Pacific broke out between Chile and Peru and Bolivia and as a result there was concern for the nitrate fields in southern Peru. One of the main problems was that the Peruvian government had issued government nitrate bonds in 1875 in an attempt to nationalise the largely British and Chilean owned nitrate deposits in Peru. With the outbreak of war the value of the bonds plunged and North, who had by then established his own nitrate works and invested in a water company which supplied the desert-located nitrate fields, began to purchase these nitrate bonds at less than 15% of face value.

Stompin Tom Connors Wiki Profile and Mining Songs

February 10, 2016January 21, 2013

Inco Nickel Miners – Sudbury Saturday Night

Charles Thomas “Stompin’ Tom” Connors, OC (born February 9, 1936) is one of Canada’s most prolific and well-known country and folk singers. Focusing his career exclusively on his native Canada, Connors is credited with writing more than 300 songs and has released four dozen albums, with total sales of nearly 4 million copies.[1]

Elliot Lake Uranium Miners – Dam Good Song For A Miner

Early life

He was born Charles Thomas Connors (known as Tommy Messer) in Saint John, New Brunswick to the teenaged Isabel Connors and her boyfriend Thomas Sullivan. He was a cousin of New Brunswick fiddling sensation, Ned Landry. He spent a short time living with his mother in a low-security women’s penitentiary before he was seized by Children’s Aid Society and was later adopted by the Aylward family in Skinners Pond, Prince Edward Island.

At the age of 15 he left his adoptive family to hitchhike across Canada, a journey that consumed the next 13 years of his life as he travelled between various part-time jobs while writing songs on his guitar. At his last stop in Timmins, Ontario, which may also have been his big “break”, he found himself a nickel short of a beer at the city’s Maple Leaf Hotel. The bartender, Gaet Lepine, agreed to give Tom a beer if he would play a few songs. These few songs turned into a 13-month contract to play at the hotel, a weekly spot on the CKGB radio station in Timmins, eight 45-RPM recordings, and the end of the beginning for Tom Connors.

Will gold’s 12-year continue in 2013 – by Ross Marowits (Toronto Star/Reuters – January 21, 2013)

January 21, 2013

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

MONTREAL – Gold is expected by many to continue to sparkle as an investment opportunity over the next two years despite a 12-year bull run that briefly took the precious metal as high as US$1,900 an ounce before pulling back.

Investment strategist Gavin Graham says gold should rise from its current price of US$1,689 an ounce to approach the 2011 high price later this year before perhaps hitting US$2,000 in 2014.

“I know a number of people have got US$2,000 an ounce pencilled in at some stage over the next 18 months to two years and that’s not an unreasonable forecast,” the president of Graham Investment Strategy Ltd. said.

Gold saw its smallest price increase since 2008 last year and, adjusting for inflation, it remains below the real all-time peak of US$850 per ounce set in 1980. That’s equivalent to a nominal value of about US$2,500.

Once gold breaks through US$2,000, Graham believes it could attract skeptical buyers. “There’s still more legs in it even though it’s gone up a lot.” Serge Pepin, vice-president Investment Strategy of BMO Global Asset Management, also sees gold rising despite fears that India, the world’s largest buyer of the metal, could slap a bigger tax on gold imports.

‘You gotta know how to do things yourself up here’: For modern reserves, success is in balancing tradition and capitalism – by Jonathan Kay (National Post – January 19, 2013)

January 21, 2013

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

When I talk with Abraham Metatawabin about his life in the bush, there is a communication problem. I do not speak Cree, and the 92-year-old Fort Albany, Ont., elder does not speak English. But even with his son Chris acting as translator, there is another, more basic impediment: The hunting, trapping and fishing methods he learned as a young child in the sprawling riverlands west of James Bay are so basic to his way of thinking that he doesn’t even think of them as activities requiring explanation, and so I have to keep interrupting him for more detail.

Commanding a team of sled dogs, building a shelter out of wood and cured animal hide, catching a pike dinner with nothing but a baitless hook: You either knew how to do these things in the bush, or you became a frozen, emaciated corpse.

I came to talk with Abraham at his home on the Fort Albany reserve not just because he is a link to a bygone era, but also because the Metatawabin family as a whole — of whom I met four generations, in three different communities, during my travels to James Bay this past week — constitutes a sort of living roadmap to the wrenching transformations that First Nations have endured over the last half-century.

Like most members of the Fort Albany First Nation, Abraham was brought up as a Catholic. But he still has strong memories of his grandfather, a traditional 19th-century medicine man whom the RCMP hunted as an outlaw. Abraham’s father was recruited out of the bush into the Canadian army, and fought the Germans in the First World War.

Cashless juniors! Off with their heads! – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – January 21, 2013)

January 21, 2013

http://www.mineweb.com/

Watch out for the coming junior zombieland – for both danger and opportunity as cash-poor juniors are culled, say Kaiser, Coffin and Roulston.

VANCOUVER, BC (MINEWEB) – It’s not a new call, a new argument, a new macabre hope for the end of what some consider a worthless class of underperforming, cashless and asset-poor juniors.

But calls for the culling of a fair chunk of juniors on the TSX Venture Exchange are undoubtedly growing and were especially evident in Vancouver on Sunday in the presentations of newsletter writers to the Cambridge House investment conference.

One of the closest to the subject is John Kaiser, of Kaiser Research, who, since about mid last year, has been putting hard numbers to the otherwise obvious reality that faces or will face juniors that have not been able to replenish their cash piles for some time over the past year or so.

Since climbing Mount Exuberance in 2010 – having fallen off it in 2008 after an equal peaking – investors have refused to fund the exploration plans of many juniors. That of course is a serious problem for an endeavour that is predicated on the pursuit of the big payoff but does not, by and large, generate revenue to get it there.

Bracing for the extinction of 500 juniors or an entire institution? – by John Kaiser (Kaiser Research Online – December 2, 2012)

January 21, 2013

http://www.kaiserbottomfish.com/s/Home.asp

During my travels the past couple months I have been repeatedly surprised by declarations from others that about 500 Canadian listed resource juniors will disappear within the next year unless there is a remarkable turnaround for the resource sector in 2013. These numbers have their origin in my May 23, 2012 Kaiser Blog post Staving off Mass Extinction with the Big Anomaly which provided the grim statistics on which this now widely circulated warning is based. Since then the situation has worsened, as is evident in the figures as of November 30, 2012 which active KRO members can see updated on a regular basis in KRO Key Charts.

Kaiser Research Online tracks all companies listed on the TSX and TSXV who appear to be involved with resource sector exploration, development or mining, as well as a handful of former resource juniors which have shifted their focus to energy or other arenas. We do not track the capital pools until they have made a qualifying transaction involving the resource sector, but we do track resource juniors that have abandoned their projects, reorganized, and are shells looking for a new focus.

Currently we have 1,803 companies that are trading. The Working Capital Distribution chart above shows the percentage trading in each of the 12 price categories, the median working capital for each price range, and the average working capital. It also shows separately compiled figures whose particulars KRO members can peruse using our KRO Search Engine or by clicking the links in the table below.

The latest batch of figures do not yet include the September 30 quarterlies whose filing deadline was November 29 and which KRO will have updated by the end of December. Given that there are more than 900 companies for whom the latest balance sheet is dated June 30, I can guarantee you that the numbers will be worse, especially in light of the weak financing conditions in 2012.