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Between rock face and hard place [Ring of Fire and First Nations] -by Maureen Nadin (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – June 11, 2012)

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

This is the fourth of a multi-part series looking at the mining sector of Northwestern Ontario and the Ring of Fire.
 
Republic of Mining blogger Stan Sudol keeps his finger on the pulse of the mining and prospecting communities. The journalist and mining strategist has gone on record to express his view that the potential offered by the Ring of Fire development is “a wonderful opportunity to alleviate poverty in First Nations communities.”

Although some would argue that it is impossible to fully alleviate poverty anywhere, Sudol’s sentiment is a noble, albeit lofty expression of the economic hope that the Ring of Fire has created for communities in the mineral-rich region.

Aboriginal people have traditionally worked and had a strong connection to the land, but the modern mining industry is multifaceted and highly technological. There is a diversity of skill sets required that vary with each phase of the operation and all stakeholders must work together to open the path to the rock face for aspiring workers.

And that requires not only strategic partnerships, but a holistic “big picture” approach as to how to prepare Aboriginal people to fill those jobs.

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New Inuit leader seeks to guard development of resources – by Gloria Galloway (Globe and Mail – June 9, 2012)

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.

OTTAWA – The new leader of the organization that is the voice of Canada’s 53,000 Inuit grew up in Resolute Bay at a time when the tiny Inuit hamlet had the busiest airport north of the Arctic Circle.

Planes supporting the burgeoning oil and gas industries were constantly landing and taking off again for Edmonton, Winnipeg and Montreal. But the people of Resolute Bay, who had been transplanted to the barren stretch of gravel as part of a plan by Canada to assert its sovereignty in the High Arctic, did not share in the wealth from the resources that were being extracted, Terry Audla says.

His desire to ensure that future development in the North does not only include the Inuit but is driven by them is what propelled Mr. Audla to seek the presidency of the Inuit Tapirit Kanatami (ITK), the group that represents Inuit living in 53 communities in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Northern Quebec and Northern Labrador.

Mr. Audla, 42, won the job this week at the ITK’s annual general meeting in Kuujjuaq, Que. He had the support of 12 out of 13 voting board members and replaces Mary Simon, who had held the post for six years.

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NEWS RELEASE: Liberty Mines Receives Government Approval of the Hart Mine Closure Plan

Liberty on track to start production at Hart in Q1 2014

TSX:  LBE 

TORONTO, June 7, 2012 /CNW/ – Liberty Mines Inc. (“Liberty” or the “Company”) announced today that an important planning phase necessary for launching production at its Hart Mine has been approved and filed by the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines.   The plan, which is a necessary requirement for mines operating in Ontario, provides details and financial assurance on the rehabilitation measures that Liberty will take during operations and after the life of the Hart Mine has been exhausted.
 
“With approval of the Hart Mine Closure Plan in place, we are one important step closer to launching production at our Hart Mine, which we expect in early 2014,” said Chris Stewart, President and CEO of Liberty Mines.  “Over the coming months, we will continue on our deep drilling program at Hart and advance towards completion of a feasibility study by year end.”
 
The Hart Mine, which is located approximately 30 kilometres from Timmins, Ontario, is a nickel deposit currently consisting of 1.55 million tons of indicated resource with a grade of 1.40% nickel.  Liberty expects production at Hart to start in Q1/2014 with an initial production of 250 tons per day, eventually ramping up to 750 tons per day.

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Shell is changing the energy game — and in a big way – by Diane Francis (National Post – June 8, 2012)

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

This week, Royal Dutch Shell PLC began rolling out a strategy that will dramatically change the energy world. With revenues larger than the economies of Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia combined, Shell is betting big on natural gas to replace oil as the world’s foremost transportation fuel.
 
This is the game-changer. It was only a handful of years ago when small independent oil companies proved that a technology called fracking worked and was able to blow up deep shale rocks to release natural gas. They sold out to majors who, in turn, sold reserves to super-majors like Shell that have fuel refining and retailing expertise and operations.
 
There have been pilot projects involving the use of natural gas, liquefied or compressed, as fuel in trucks, but this week Shell made a big move. The giant announced a partnership with an American gas station operator to supply liquefied natural gas (LNG) for heavy-duty trucks at 100 fuelling stations across the U.S. by 2013.
 
The company will build LNG plants to service this chain and others that will follow. In Canada, Shell has made a similar deal with a truck-fuelling chain along 1,600 kilometers of highway between Fort McMurray and Vancouver. Shell has called this its “Green Corridor project”.

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Sudbury needs to be aggressive: LU prof – by Harold Carmichael (Sudbury Star – June 9, 2012)

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

Sudbury is “drifting along” and needs to get more creative if it wants to take advantage of Northern Ontario’s resource boom, a Laurentian University economics professor said Friday. David Robinson said he came to that conclusion after comparing job growth so far this year in Sudbury and Thunder Bay.

Robinson pointed the finger directly at city councils of recent years for not being for ward-thinking enough. “We’re just drifting along,” he said. “There was a time in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, when the leaders in this community were very, very enthusiastic. (Now), they spend their time on tiny things that prevent them from dealing with the big picture.”

For example, Robinson said Greater Sudbury will be the last of the big cities in northeastern Ontario to get working on a transportation plan. He said the 20-minute drive out to the Greater Sudbury Airport from the city core doesn’t cut it when Thunder Bay’s airport is located next to hotels. “We are not competing with Thunder Bay for access to the North,” he said.

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Sombre day for Local 6500: memorial to mark miners’ deaths – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – June 9, 2012)

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

The mood was sombre Friday at sunrise as dozens of Steelworkers walked from the parking lot at Vale’s Stobie Mine to the tunnel connecting them to work.

If the deaths of colleagues Jason Chenier and Jordan Fram weren’t already on their minds, a collage of photographs of the two men at the entrance to the tunnel reminded them this was a painful anniversary.

Chenier, 35, and Fram, 26, entered that same tunnel the afternoon of June 8, 2011. A few hours into their shift, the men were killed when they were overcome by a run of 350 tons of muck at the mine’s 3,000-foot level. Members of United Steelworkers Local 6500, the union to which the men belonged, were there Friday to mark the one-year anniversary of their deaths.

Union executives and activists attended all of Vale’s mines and surface plants early Friday morning, asking members to sign postcards urging the Ontario Ministry of Labour to commission an inquiry into mine safety.

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China’s economic slowdown a threat to Canada – by Michael McCullough (Canadian Business Magazine – June 11, 2012)

Founded in 1928, Canadian Business is the longest-publishing business magazine in Canada.

More than you probably realize, Canada’s future prosperity rests on the outcome of a political thriller unfolding an ocean away.

This much we know. On March 15, one of the contenders to become China’s president for the next decade, Bo Xilai, was sacked as the Communist Party boss for Chongqing, an inland megalopolis with a population roughly equal to Canada’s. Not only that, he was kicked out of the 25-member Politburo and thus out of contention to join the nine-member standing committee—the executive body that really runs China—at the end of this year.

Not long after, Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, was charged with last November’s suspected murder of a British businessman, Neil Heywood. Bo and Gu had been China’s most potent power couple, offspring of revolutionary heroes and renowned for fighting organized crime. Their revival of Mao-era patriotic songs was a callback to the country’s past—yet they had a son at Harvard known for driving a Ferrari.

The rest of the tale is hearsay: that a heavily indebted Heywood, a former family friend and fixer who had helped get Bo junior into Harrow (Heywood’s prestigious alma mater in England) had demanded a bigger cut of a business deal; that he threatened to expose underhanded dealings by Gu if he didn’t get it; that Bo’s police chief, Wang Lijun, had confronted him over the alleged murder (the death was originally put down to alcohol poisoning), after which Wang sought asylum at an American consulate;

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South African mining at a cross roads – Carroll – by Christy Filen (Mineweb.com – June 7, 2012)

www.mineweb.com

According to Anglo American CEO, Cynthia Carroll, South Africa’s policy choices over the coming weeks will profoundly impact not just the mining industry but also the country as a whole.

JOHANNESBURG (Mineweb) –  CEO of Anglo American, Cynthia Carroll, has said that South Africa’s policy choices over the coming weeks will profoundly impact not only the future of the mining industry but also the country.
 
“Those choices must be made wisely.  We are at a crossroads.  There is a clear path that will lead to prosperity and there are blind alleys that we must avoid” Carroll said to delegates at the Mining Lekgotla gala dinner last night.
 
Carroll has been clear in her opposition to one of these “blind alleys”, nationalisation, on many occasions, along with its promise of a “miracle cure for all ills” said the CEO. With voices waning on the nationalisation issue, Carroll moved on to address the ANC’s State Intervention in Mining Sector report (SIMS) where proposals were put forward for a mineral resource rent tax.

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Call out to stop ONTC sale – by Maria Calabrese (QMI AGENCY/Sudbury Star – June 8, 2012)

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

Premier Dalton McGuinty’s plan to not go ahead with priv at i z i n g public services should include scrapping the sale of the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission, says the organization that represents ONTC unions.

“The McGuinty government is stating that they wish to give public-sector workers some certainty at a difficult time (as) one of the reasons for this shift in policy. Then why would they not give the same consideration to workers at Ontario Northland?” Brian Kelly, a spokesman for the General Chairpersons’ Association, asked in a news release.

Kelly said the association supports the move to stop the privatization of more public services and called for a stop to the ONTC sale. Reports suggest the province is backing off further privatizations as a way to ensure NDP support for its budget.

Northern Development and Mines Minister Rick Bartolucci confirmed the ONTC selloff is going ahead, said MPP Vic Fedeli (PC — Nipissing). Bartolucci responded to Fedeli’s questions tabled in the legislature two months ago about the future of pension and benefits for ONTC retired workers.

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N. Ont. First Nation confronts foreign mining interests [Ring of Fire] – by Jody Porter (CBC News Thunder Bay – June 8, 2012)

http://www.cbc.ca/thunderbay/

Marten Falls community must see benefits from chromite mine, chief says

Marten Falls First Nation Chief Eli Moonias says his northern Ontario community will need to see the benefits of a multibillion-dollar mining project before it gives its approval, something he says Canada as a whole must also consider.
 
“We will agree only if our community will improve,” says the chief. The proposed Cliffs Natural Resources chromite mine site is in an area known as the Ring of Fire, about 540 kilometres north of Thunder Bay in the James Bay Lowlands. The American company plans to remove up to 12,000 tonnes of ore every day for 30 years.
 
“It’s not just us that are small, you’re small too,” Moonias told reporters visiting Marten Falls on Thursday, suggesting Canada’s best interests don’t necessarily harmonize with global trading priorities.
 
The proposed project in northern Ontario includes a smelter near Sudbury, Ont. Moonias said Cliffs intends to export 40 per cent of the chromite it plans to mine near his community to China.

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Sudbury Council backs call for [mining] inquiry – by Carol Mulligan (June 8, 2012)

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

Greater Sudbury Council has unanimously endorsed a motion calling on Labour Minister Linda Jeffrey to commission an inquiry into the state of mining in Ontario and the ministry’s enforcement of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

The May 29 motion has been forwarded to Jeffrey, two local MPPs and the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities, which will be asked to support it. The motion was presented by Ward 3 Coun. Claude Berthiaume at the request of United Steelworkers Local 6500. It has been calling for the inquiry since it concluded its investigation into the deaths of two men June 8, 2011, at Vale Ltd.’s Stobie Mine.

One year ago today, Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, were killed by a run of muck while working on the 3,000-foot level near the No. 7 ore pass at Stobie. The call for an inquiry was part of a 200-plus-page report the union made public in late February, which contained 162 recommendations.

On the Day of Mourning, commemorated by Local 6500 on April 28, Gerry Lougheed Jr. launched a postcard campaign calling on Jeffrey to launch the mining probe.

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PwC NEWS RELEASE: Global mining industry posts record $133bn in profits in 2011 while share prices plunge

• Net profits climb 21% to $133 billion but higher costs crimp margins
• Market values fall 25%, returns to shareholders up more than 156%
• Costs surge 25%, revenues grow 26% to $700 billion
• Supply issues to dominate for at least next five years

London, 6 June 2012  –  The global mining industry is facing a growing disconnect as despite record profits for the world’s 40 biggest miners in 2011 thanks to high commodity prices, investors proved fickle, demanding greater capital discipline and increased shareholder returns. A lack of confidence in the sector’s growth prospects saw market values plunge 25% to about $1.2 trillion and only six of the world’s top 40 miners saw their market value increase, according to a new report from PwC, Mine: The growing disconnect.

PwC’s analysis of the top 40 largest miners showed 2011 to be a year of polarisation.  While the industry started the year strongly, company stocks significantly underperformed in the broader equity markets, losing value by year-end as a result of continuing global economic fears stemming from, among others, the ongoing European sovereign debt crisis and a projected slowdown of China’s economy.

Tim Goldsmith, global mining leader, PwC, said:

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Was Regent the heavy or the fall-guy for Barrick’s missteps? – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – June 7, 2012)

www.mineweb.com

As a new co-chairman shares Chairman Peter Munk’s workload, employees and shareholders may finally have to concede that Barrick Gold’s patriarch can’t manage the world’s top gold miner forever.

RENO (MINEWEB) – While Barrick’s ouster of CEO Aaron Regent Wednesday grabbed the lion’s share of the news headlines, the decision of 84-year-old Peter Munk, the co-founder and chairman of Barrick, to appoint a co-chairman may actually have the longer-term ramifications for the world’s top gold miner.
 
Over the years, Munk has been a stickler for share price performance. And, perhaps, a warning of what was on the cards for Regent occurred last month when Munk told shareholders at the Barrick’s annual meeting that the company’s share price was not satisfactory.
 
In 2003, Munk ousted then-CEO Randall Oliphant as a Barrick news release said, “The board made the change to address its concerns over the company’s recent performance…”
 
In a news release publicizing Regent’s ouster, Munk once again stressed, “We are fully committed to maximizing shareholder value, but have been disappointed with our share price performance.”

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Marathon takes action in the mining economy – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – June 2012)

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.

Prepping for the boom

The Town of Marathon is preparing to meet the needs of the mining industry with two new operations expected to come online within the next three years. Barrick Gold, 40 kilometres west of Marathon, is in the feasibility stage of expanding its open pit at the Hemlo complex to extend mine life by 10 years.
 
And just north of the town of 3,300, Stillwater Mining is now in the environmental assessment and permitting stage of its Marathon PGM deposit, expected to be ready for open pit operations by 2015.
 
Daryl Skworchinski, Marathon’s community services and economic development manager, has carried out a value-chain assessment to determine what does a mining economy look like, and how can Marathon fill the gaps on the supply side.
 
“Barrick was really helpful in letting us know where their purchasing comes from and now we’re finalizing our action plan to hit the road and do some active recruiting at the (mining) shows.”

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Barrick shakeup highlights risk fears – by Pav Jordan, Eric Reguly, Jacquie McNish (Globe and Mail – June 7, 2012)

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.

Toronto, Rome — The dismissal of Barrick Gold Corp’s chief executive officer over the company’s long-stagnant stock price signals deepening concerns that a year-old, multibillion dollar bet on an African copper project has turned sour.

Toronto-based Barrick, the world’s biggest gold miner, said on Wednesday it ousted president and CEO Aaron Regent less than four years into the job, a period during which the company’s shares barely moved on the Toronto Stock Exchange despite a huge rally in the price of gold.

“We are fully committed to maximizing shareholder value, but have been disappointed with our share price performance,” said Peter Munk, who founded Barrick and remains the driving force of the company.

Barrick made a bold move into the copper market last year with its $7.3 billion acquisition of Equinox Minerals Ltd., but the deal alienated many investors who saw it as an expensive departure from the company’s focus on gold. Barrick shares dropped sharply on news of the deal.

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