Republic of Mining

Australia investment in new mine projects at record A$268.4bn – by Reuters (Mineweb.com – November 28, 2012)

November 28, 2012

http://www.mineweb.com/

Recent government figures show that committed investment in major resources and energy projects rose to A$268.4 billion at Oct 31.

SYDNEY (REUTERS) – Investment committed to Australian resource projects rose by nearly A$8 billion in the six months to the end of October, while the number of projects declined, in part underscoring rising construction and labour costs in Australia’s resources sector amid weakening demand.

Committed investment in major resources and energy projects in Australia increased to A$268.4 billion according at Oct 31 from A$260.8 billion recorded at the end of April, government figures released on Wednesday show.

“Looking forward, any substantial net increase to the dollar value of committed projects will require either cost increases to larger, existing projects and/or a new final investment decision on a large project within the coming year,” said Professor Quentin Grafton, Executive Director of Australia’s Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE).

Power plant costs pile up – by Bryan Meadows (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – November 28, 2012)

November 28, 2012

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

The bills are piling up amid failed attempts to convert the coal-fired Thunder Bay Generating Station to alternate fuels. The Chronicle-Journal has learned that Ontario Power Generation has cancelled a contract with Union Gas, at a cost of more than $5 million, that would have tied the power station to the Union Gas pipeline system.

The project was integral to converting the coal-fired plant to burning natural gas as fuel. Timmins-James Bay MPP Gilles Bisson said Tuesday that the Liberal government has now spent $20 million on its on-again, off-again plans to convert the Thunder Bay GS from coal to natural gas.

“If the government’s going to spend $20 million, they should walk away with something more than the bill they hand ratepayers,” Bisson said. “Instead of building responsibly to meet our province’s electricity needs, this Liberal government spends whatever they need to meet their party’s needs at election time.”

Bisson noted that the conversion of the Thunder Bay plant from coal to gas has been started and stopped twice. Conversion of the plant was announced in 2005 but the plan was cancelled in 2006. In August 2011, work started again, but it stopped this month.

Plea for ONTC likely to fall on deaf ears – by Wayne Snider (Timmins Daily Press – November 27, 2012)

November 28, 2012

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – It is one thing for the provincial government to ignore the constant pleas from municipal leaders and opposition MPPs on an issue, but it is a whole new ball game when it disregards the needs of industry.

At Timmins council Monday night, Tom Semadeni asked the city to “help us in terms of lobby efforts” to make sure freight rail service is continued in Northeastern Ontario in the wake of Queen’s Park’s ongoing sell-off of the Ontario Northland Transportation Corporation. Semadeni is the general manager of Kidd Operations in Timmins for Xstrata Copper.

Semadeni told council the divestiture of the ONTC could create possible challenges for the mining company in the future. He said trucking material would be more costly than freight rail and cause more damage to the roads.

The concerns raised by Xstrata echo comments raised by Northern leaders – from mayors and councils across the region to MPPs like Gilles Bisson (NDP – Timmins-James Bay) – since the sell-off was announced in the spring.

Clearly, the mining industry is waving a red flag to warn the provincial government about the effect the sell-off will have on industry in the region.

Africans should reap the benefits of their resource bonanza – by Paul Collier (Globe and Mail – November 26, 2012)

November 28, 2012

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.

Paul Collier is a professor of economics and public policy at Oxford University. This article is based on the Hagey Lecture, delivered at the University of Waterloo on Nov. 22.

Canada is about to take pole position in a race that will determine the well-being of a billion people. The poorest countries on Earth, many in Africa, are in the throes of massive new resource bonanzas. In the past, such bonanzas have been the path to plunder rather than prosperity. The default option is that this dismal history gets repeated: Corruption and violence remain powerful drivers. But across Africa, many brave people are saying “never again.”

In this momentous struggle, on which the future of a billion poor people hangs, Canadians must now decide where they stand. Although this is a struggle that must be won in Africa, Africans alone do not have the power to win it.

Guinea is a brutal current example of the limitations of what decent African governments can do. For decades, the country was mired in dictatorships, culminating in a military coup so grim that the African Union refused to recognize the regime.

In case you missed it: This is the ‘African century’ – by Doug Sanders (Globe and Mail – November 24, 2012)

November 28, 2012

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 we living in the “African century?” That is what many people in business and politics have begun to call it. You may not have noticed – because so many headlines are devoted to dramatic events north of the Sahara – that there has been a quieter but more dramatic change for so many of the 900 million people living in the lands to the south. In some ways, this has been the larger revolution.

The economies of many once-destitute African countries are taking off. While the economies of the West are barely moving and China has been stalled, Africa experienced economic growth of 5 per cent this year and is projected by the International Monetary Fund to see 5.7 per cent growth next year. Six of the world’s 10 fastest-growing economies today are in Africa.

After decades of rising poverty and malnutrition, Africa is moving the other way: For the first time since 1981, fewer than half of Africans live in absolute poverty (defined as an income of less than $1.24 per day). About three million Africans a year escape absolute poverty. This is also having health consequences: In Senegal, for example, the child mortality rate fell from 12 per cent to 7 per cent over five years (though this still means that every other family has suffered a child death).

As Charles Kenny of the Center for Global Development observed this month, the GDP and growth figures from Africa may be disguising larger improvements.

Father’s shadow looms over Australian billionaire’s book launch [Gina Rinehart] – by James Regan (Reuters U.S. – November 26, 2012)

November 28, 2012

http://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart, one of the world’s wealthiest people, has displayed a trait rarely revealed publicly among the super-rich: insecurity.

Rinehart’s first book was eagerly awaited by an Australian public enthralled and sometimes appalled by her story of big business, family feuds and almost unimaginable wealth.

But the 58-year-old widow with a fortune estimated by Forbes at $18 billion, played it safe at the launch of the book, ‘Northern Australia and Then Some: Changes we need to make our country rich’.

Media were hand-picked for events around the country and Rinehart surrounded herself with hundreds of supporters mostly from the mining fraternity, where she is revered for transforming her late father’s debt-ridden iron ore business into a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

There were no advance copies of the book and no questions over a fractured family life that has left Rinehart wrestling with three of her four grown children over control of a family trust that rakes in hundreds of millions of year in royalties.

SA mining’s uneasy truce with labour – by André Janse van Vuuren (Mineweb.com – November 27,2012)

November 27, 2012

http://www.mineweb.com/

While labour relations in the country have entered a period of relative calm, fears remain that the truce remains at risk.

JOHANNESBURG (MINEWEB) – Labour relations in South Africa have entered a period of relative calm in recent weeks, but the uneasy truce that exists between workers and their employers is at risk from a host of simmering tensions.

Normality has to a large extent returned to South Africa’s mining industry following the sector wide strikes which have shut the majority of the country’s biggest platinum and gold producing shafts for more than a month. Gold miners like AngloGold Ashanti and Gold Fields report the ramp-up process is largely going according to plan with no interruptions.

Similarly, the mass gatherings and often violent protests around the platinum mines of the North West province seem to have quietened down, while some mining bosses say they’re looking forward to a new era of multi-union relations.

But, some trouble spots remain. Kumba Iron Ore’s Sishen mine in the Northern Cape is, according to company spokesperson Gert Schoeman, still plagued by some no-shows and intimidation.

Lawsuit against mining firm [Hudbay Minerals] brings Guatemalans to Toronto – CBC News (November 27, 2012)

November 27, 2012November 27, 2012

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

Hudbay Minerals denies involvement in alleged shootings and gang rape

Five Guatemalans are in Toronto to sue a Canadian mining firm over allegations the security staff of one of its subsidiaries brought violence and death to their village.

The five, from the village of El Estor, are preparing for pre-trial questioning by lawyers for Hudbay Minerals Inc. in connection with three civil suits filed against the Toronto firm. They concern the alleged killing of community leader Adolfo Ich in 2009, a shooting that left another man paralyzed in 2009 and the gang rape of 11 women in 2007.

At San Lorenzo Church in north Toronto last week, Rosa Elbira choked back tears as she recounted the day in 2007 when she says she was repeatedly raped by nine men including police, soldiers and security officers for a mining company.

Beside her, holding her hand in support, sat German Chub Choc, 23, who’s paralyzed from the waist down, a bullet still lodged near his spine. He admitted to moments despair since the day in 2009 when he says he was shot by the head of the same mining company’s security detail.

Copper Mountain Tempts With Canadian Stability: Real M&A – by Tara Lachapelle and Brooke Sutherland (Blomberg.com – November 26, 2012)

November 27, 2012

http://www.bloomberg.com/

pper Mountain Mining Corp. (CUM) is offering buyers a potentially irresistible combination: the cheapest valuation in three years and the ability to extract metal without the threat of civil unrest in such places as Indonesia and Peru.

Lower-than-estimated copper production drove the company’s price-earnings ratio down to 16.7 in October, the cheapest since 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Copper Mountain has tumbled 43 percent since this year’s peak, giving the business the lowest price-sales multiple using estimated 2012 revenue among Canadian base metals stocks with a market value exceeding C$250 million ($252 million), the data show.

The location of Copper Mountain’s main mining project in British Columbia may prove alluring to acquirers seeking assets where there’s low risk of social disorder, Laurentian Bank of Canada said. While initial copper production levels were disappointing after extraction began in 2011, the Vancouver- based company seems to have turned the situation around and a buyer should strike now before Copper Mountain’s shares rebound, according to Haywood Securities Inc. Jennings Capital Inc. said companies such as Teck Resources Ltd. (TCK/B) could offer C$8 a share in a deal, more than double yesterday’s close.

“There’s a lot of reasons why it would be attractive to potential acquirers,” Adam Low, a Toronto-based analyst at Raymond James Financial Inc., said in a telephone interview.

NEWS RELEASE: Northern Superior Resources Inc. Named [Quebec] 2012 Prospector of the Year

November 27, 2012

November 22, 2012 08:00 ET

www.nsuperior.com

SUDBURY, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Nov. 22, 2012) – Northern Superior Resources Inc. (the “Company” or “Northern Superior”) (TSX VENTURE:SUP) is pleased to announce that it has been named the 2012 “Prospector of the Year” by the Association L’Exploration Miniére du Québec (AEMQ). According to its web site, “each year the AEMQ recognizes and honors the dynamism and entrepreneurship of companies and individuals involved in the development of Quebec’s mining and exploration industry.”

Specifically, the AEMQ “Prospector of the Year” award is presented to “highlight the importance of a new discovery that produced a significant ripple effect on exploration activities with regard to both the property itself and the surrounding area” and was awarded to Northern Superior in recognition of the importance of the Croteau Est Gold discovery in the Chapais, Chibougamau and Oujé-Bougoumou regions of Quebec.

Since commencing operations on the Croteau Est property in August of 2011, Northern Superior’s exploration programs have defined and continue to expand a gold-bearing alteration corridor that extends to at least 450 m depth, is at least 1,000 m in length and 50 to 150 m in width. The alteration corridor and associated gold mineralization (75.44 g/ t over 4.80 m; 8.16 g/ t over 19.55 m, as examples) remains open along strike in both directions and at depth (see press releases March 1, June 11, October 8, November 12, November 20, 2012).

Xstrata plea for ONTC – by Ron Grech (Timmins Daily Press – November 27, 2012)

November 27, 2012

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Xstrata Copper is seeking the city’s support in ensuring freight rail service to the mine is maintained in light of the province’s plan to sell the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission.

In a presentation to Timmins council Monday, Tom Semadeni, general manager of Kidd Operations, identified the divestiture of the ONTC and its potential impact on freight rail service as a possible challenge in the future. Semadeni said city council could “help us in term of lobby efforts … to make sure they maintain service.”

He said trucking the material would be more costly to the company and more damaging to the roads. Coun. Gary Scripnick said hearing these concerns directly from mine management should be helpful in any future discussions Mayor Tom Laughren has with provincial ministers.

He said it is important for the mayor to be able to report what mining officials are telling him. Other areas of concern expressed by Semadeni included high energy costs and the limited availability of housing in Timmins.

He said Xstrata Copper has hired close to 550 in the last five years and as a result has experienced the challenges associated with the housing shortage first-hand.

[Mining] Co-op students get a head start – by Norm Tollinsky (Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal – November 2012)

November 27, 2012

Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal is a magazine that showcases the mining expertise of North Bay, Timmins and Sudbury.

Mining engineering students graduate debt-free with 20 months of experience

A co-op program for students at Laurentian University’s Bharti School of Engineering is a win-win proposition for both participating students and the mining companies that hire them.

Fourth year mining engineering students James Gagner and Ian Berdusco, for example, will graduate debt-free in April with 20 months of work experience under their belts, making them ideal candidates for mining companies looking for engineering talent.

Approximately 50 of the 457 students enrolled in the Bharti School of Engineering are accepted into the co-op program.

They do a four-month placement following the successful completion of second year and a 16-month placement after third year, following which they return to Laurentian for the fourth and final year of the program.

It takes them one year longer to get their degree, but the money they make goes a long way toward paying their tuition while the experience they gain makes them more marketable.

School of Mines adds value to mining cluster – by Dick Destefano (Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal – November 2012)

September 7, 2018November 27, 2012

Dick DeStefano is the Executive Director of Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA).destefan@isys.ca This column was originally published in the November 2012 issue of Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal.

October 15, 2012 was a special day for Northern Ontario and mining. On this day, Ned Goodman, CEO of Dundee Corporation, and the Goodman Family Foundation announced an historic gift to Laurentian University’s new School of Mines.

Laurentian University president Dominic Giroux also announced that the university will name the school in honour of the Goodman family. This announcement stems from early meetings I had on behalf of SAMSSA with president Giroux in the first weeks of his appointment about three years ago.

I suggested that one of the missing components of the Northern Ontario mining cluster was a comprehensive academic centre that would add value to mining and supply and service companies regionally and gradually become a global centre of all things mining.

Many internal meetings at Laurentian and public consultations with the industry led to the October 15th announcement.

I agree with Ned Goodman’s comment at the announcement when he stated, “Greater Sudbury has the best orebody and largest concentration of expertise in mining supply, products and services in the world. We want to be associated with Laurentian University because it’s undoubtedly the go-to for university for mineral exploration and mining in Canada.”

Mining brains – by David Robinson (Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal – November 2012)

November 27, 2012

Dr. David Robinson is an economist at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada. His column is from Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal a magazine that showcases the mining expertise of North Bay, Timmins and Sudbury. drobinson@laurentian.ca

Question: What does the mining industry have in common with the zombie apocalypse?

Answer: Mining companies and zombies both have an insatiable appetite for brains. And who supplies the brains? That is the interesting question for the mining supply sector.

An industry that depends on increasingly sophisticated geological science, ever more complex equipment, more expensive transportation systems and more elaborate management systems while trying to meet ever more convoluted environmental and safety regulations clearly needs brains.

The muscle-power going into an ounce of gold or a kilogram of nickel has gone down. The energy input per unit output has risen, which is a growing problem. And no one knows if more brainpower is invested in an ounce of gold today than in an ounce from the Klondike gold rush 115 years ago.

Calculating a brain-to-gold index would be interesting, but it isn’t necessary. Brainpower has always been an essential input for the mining industry.