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A vote on Canada’s energy priorities – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – April 21, 2012)

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

Albertans will know who their next premier will be Monday and the winner of the hotly contested provincial election between the Wildrose Party and the ruling Conservatives will have a big impact on the rest of Canada.

Both right-of-centre parties are well-liked by the province’s dominant oil-and-gas industry because of their favourable views of development, particularly of the oil sands.

But they project different styles, espouse different levels of government involvement and push different pet projects that have the potential to reshape Canada’s energy priorities.

If Danielle Smith’s Wildrose overthrows Alison Redford’s Conservative dynasty, as polls suggest, Canadians should expect a bolder approach by Alberta to develop and sell its energy riches. It will closely reflect that of Stephen Harper’s federal Conservative government.

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Mayors blast ONTC sale – by Kevin Priddle (Sudbury Star – April 21, 2012)

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

Northern Ontario groups are stepping up the pressure on Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci and the Liberal government for a decision to get rid of the Ontario Northland Transportation Commission.

On Friday, the Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities issued a statement critical of Bartolucci, following a meeting Thursday with Northern Ontario mayors at his Sudbury office. Bartolucci is also the minister of Northern Development and Mines.

Also Friday, a group representing unionized employees at Ontario Northland took their displeasure to Premier Dalton McGuinty’s doorstep, protesting at his constituency office and law firm in Ottawa.

“As the premier has so far refused to meet with anyone from the North on this important issue, we thought we would save him the trip and travel to his home town to voice our displeasure with his government’s ill-advised decision to sell off Ontario Northland,” Brian Kelly, a spokesperson for the General Chairperson’s Association, said in a release.

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[Vale] Mining company to raise fish underground – CBC News Sudbury (April 20, 2012)

 http://www.cbc.ca/sudbury/

The tree nursery at Vale’s Sudbury Creighton Mine will become home to a fish hatchery
 
Nickel mining giant Vale will be pulling something new out of the ground in Sudbury — fish. Vale has already been growing tree seedlings in a green house deep in the warm underground for decades, but now the company wants to raise rainbow trout right next to them.

The trees are planted in Sudbury to re-green the landscape scarred by mining. And the fish will be put into lakes “that may have been stressed by mining activities in the past,” said Glen Watson, Vale’s senior environmental specialist.
 
“Northern Ontarians love their fish. Sudburians, in particular, love their fish. We have a lot of lakes to put them in.” Underground heat helps fish grow

Vale has spent the past five months raising Rainbow trout in an above-ground facility. On Thursday it released 4,000 fish in the Onaping River. Now that the system is tested, the project will begin underground at Vale’s Creighton mine.

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NEWS RELEASE: VALE STOCKS ONAPING RIVER WITH LOCAL GREENHOUSE-RAISED FISH

Mark Palkovits-Vale Environment Group (Vale Photo)

SUDBURY, April 19, 2012 – Lately, there have been more than just seedlings growing in Vale’s surface greenhouse in Copper Cliff.

In November 2011, Vale’s Environment Department initiated a pilot project to raise rainbow trout for stocking in Sudbury area lakes and rivers. Rainbow trout fingerlings were placed in two 1,500 litre tanks in Vale’s surface greenhouse. 

Vale consulted with local fish farming expert Mike Meeker of Meeker’s Aquaculture on Manitoulin Island in order to set up the operation and define the operating procedures. Vale also worked with the local office of the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) to choose an appropriate water body in which to release the Rainbow Trout. 

After five months of feeding and caring, the fish grew to approximately 20 centimetres long, and were transported to the Onaping River for stocking. This location was favoured by Vale due to historical mining impacts on the river system. 

(L to R) Lisa Lanteigne, Mark Palkovits, Glen Watson - Vale Environment Group (Vale Photo)

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OMA member Osisko strengthens mining industry-Metis relations

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 Osisko Mining has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Metis Nation of Ontario (MNO) concerning the development of its Hammond Reef gold project in Northwestern Ontario.  The MOU defines how the parties will be consulted and commits both parties to work together to address potential impacts of the mineral development project on Metis rights, interests and way of life.

“The signing of the MOU is the result of a respectful consultation process between the signatories,” said Sean Roosen, Osisko President and Chief Executive Officer.  “The agreement represents a milestone in our continuing working relationship with all the local communities in the region and underscores Osisko’s commitment to continue developing a strong relationship with Aboriginal people.”

“This agreement is an important step in building a mutually respectful and sustainable relationship between the Metis community and Osisko Hammond Reef.  It sets out a consultation process through which Osisko Hammond Reef can engage with the Metis Community at the local and regional levels in order to better understand Metis rights and interests that may be impacted in the local area around the project,” said Gary Lipinski, President of the MNO.  

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Rainy River bets on new Ontario gold play – by Euan Rocha (Reuters.com – April 19, 2012)

http://ca.reuters.com/

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian gold exploration company Rainy River Resources (RR.TO: Quote) believes it has stumbled on a whole new gold district in northern Ontario, where it is developing its flagship Rainy River project, Chief Executive Raymond Threlkeld said.

The project, located about 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of Goldcorp Inc’s (G.TO: Quote) (GG.N: Quote) legendary Red Lake gold mine and roughly 200 kilometers west of Osisko Mining Corp’s (OSK.TO: Quote) Hammond Reef gold project, has a very promising future ahead of it, Threlkeld said on Thursday.

Toronto-based Rainy River expects a soon to be released study on its namesake project to outline stronger production and processing numbers, along with some increases in capital costs.

“The ore is a little bit softer than we originally designed for, so it will allow a little bit more throughput. We were looking at 32,000 metric tonnes (35,273 tons) per day, but it could be as high as 35,000 tonnes per day,” Threlkeld said.

“We think we might average (annually) closer to between 350,000 ounces and 375,000 ounces, versus the 329,000 ounces we are currently estimating, on average, over the life of mine.”

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Mining and Climate Change, Part 2: Canada’s Commitment to Reducing Greenhouse Gases – by Steve May (SudburySteve.blogspot.com – April 14, 2012)

http://sudburysteve.blogspot.ca/

Steve May is the CEO of the Sudbury Federal Green Party Association (Opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the views of the Green Party of Canada – Steve May)

In my previous post, I wrote about the growing importance of the mining sector to Canada’s economy, and about why it’s important for our governments to enact the right carbon pricing policies. In this post, I’m going to talk about Canada’s historic commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to combat climate change, and why Canadians continue to demand action, and how action may impact the mining sector.

The Crises with Our Climate

There is no doubt whatsoever that human industrial activity is causing global climate change to the point that our rapidly changing climate is leading towards a crisis unlike any we have encountered before. This crisis is already having planetary impacts. Coupled with rising prices for non-renewable energy resources, particularly oil, the climate crisis will change not just our physical environment, but our economic circumstance, and social and political institutions as well. These changes are inevitable. That’s why I believe it’s best to plan for them, rather than to let them overtake us.

The mining sector will not be immune from these changes.

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Mining and Climate Change, Part 1: Toward a Sustainable Future – by Steve May (SudburySteve.blogspot.com – April 13, 2012)

http://sudburysteve.blogspot.ca/

Steve May is the CEO of the Sudbury Federal Green Party Association (Opinions expressed in this blog are my own, and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the views of the Green Party of Canada – Steve May)

When people think about how Canada’s resource sector is driving economic growth, we tend to first think about the extraction of fossil fuels, such as oil and gas. Certainly, the stories about Canada’s growing fossil fuel sector are constantly found throughout the mainstream media, and tar sands petroleum companies have even been placing their own television and print media ads, in a public relations effort intended to combat negative environmental perceptions.

But there’s been a low-key success story which many Canadians aren’t aware of in one of Canada’s natural resource sectors. The mining industry has been quietly booming in Canada for some time now, and the future continues to look very bright (see: “Canada’s mining boom takes a back seat to no industry”, Globe and Mail, April 4, 2012). The mining industry’s success story doesn’t come as a surprise to Sudburians, and Northern Ontarians, because we see those successes almost daily. However, for other Canadians, especially those living in large urban centres, mining remains a somewhat remote afterthought.

Mining: the Bedrock of Sudbury’s Success

Sudbury’s history is the history of local mining.

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Iamgold takes aim at the gold mining big leagues – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – April 20, 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.

Steve Letwin, chief executive officer of midtier gold miner Iamgold Corp., practically rubs his hands in glee as he talks about plans to propel the company into the major leagues in as little as five years.

With his Toronto-based company sitting on $1.4-billion in cash and with zero debt on the balance sheets, Mr. Letwin lays out a plan to nearly double production by 2017 from the current 850,000 ounces, with most of that to come from acquisitions, including one in coming months that will likely be worth between $400-million and $500-million.

“If we can’t pull the trigger on something in the next three months that makes sense for our shareholders we haven’t done our job,” said Mr. Letwin, a 30-year resource industry veteran who has broken ground from Canada to Colombia to deepest Africa.

“And if we’re going to buy, we’re going to buy now. These equities are ridiculously cheap, some of them.”

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BRICs slowdown casts pall on global economy – by Barrie McKenna (Globe and Mail – April 20, 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.

Growth among the emerging economic powers of Brazil, Russia, India and China is slowing fast, dashing hopes that they will become much-needed drivers of the world’s fragile recovery.

Brazil on Wednesday slashed its benchmark lending rate by 0.75 percentage points to 9 per cent – marking the sixth cut in the past eight months – in an effort to strengthen an economy that is seeing its growth decelerate at an alarming pace. The country grew 2.7 per cent last year, compared with 7.5 per cent in 2010.

The Reserve Bank of India cut its rate a day earlier, as policy makers struggle to prop up an economy that is no longer growing fast enough keep up with its exploding population.

And in China, central bankers are loosening lending requirements in an attempt to keep the economy flush with credit to avert a hard landing.

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New Keystone route aims to avoid environmentally fragile areas – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – April 20, 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 – TransCanada Corp. (TRP-T42.91—-%)plans a 32-kilometre detour – at no extra cost – for its long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline, and hopes the change will be sufficient to win approval from the U.S. State Department.

In a filing with the government of Nebraska, the Calgary-based pipeline company said the new route should allay concerns that the pipeline will threaten the state’s Sandhills region, considered a fragile environmental zone.

“The primary goal of the Nebraska reroute effort is to avoid the area defined by the [state’s Department of Environmental Quality] as the Sandhills region,” the report says.

In December, the Nebraska environment department provided TransCanada with a map that identified the extent of Sandhills region, saying the company needed to know what area to avoid.

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Ivanhoe CEO Loses in Rio ‘Chess Game’ Over Mongolia Mine – by Christopher Donville and Liezel Hill (Bloomberg.com 0 April 19, 2012)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Twelve years after beginning his quest to build a copper mine in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert, it’s checkmate for Robert Friedland.

Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. said yesterday the billionaire investor resigned as chief executive officer, along with other top executives at the Vancouver-based company. It said Rio Tinto Group agreed to ensure funding of the $6 billion Oyu Tolgoi project’s construction. The accord means Rio is free to appoint Ivanhoe’s management, cementing control of the company three months after increasing its stake to 51 percent.

“Friedland’s lost the chess game with Rio,” John Stephenson, a fund manager in Toronto who oversees about $2.7 billion at First Asset Investment Management, said in an interview.

Oyu Tolgoi — which means “turquoise hill” in Mongolian – – is just the latest of several chapters in the often controversial career of Friedland, who holds a 14 percent stake in Ivanhoe. A one-time mentor to Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, Friedland, 61, has raised funds for mines in North America and Asia since the mid-1980s and led the C$4.3 billion ($4.3 billion) sale of the Voisey’s Bay nickel deposit in Canada in 1996. His next adventure may be developing mines in Africa.

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Friedland resigns from Ivanhoe Mines in Rio Tinto shake-up – by Peter Koven (National Post – April 18, 2012)

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

After running out of options in a multi-year chess battle with Rio Tinto Ltd., there was nothing left for Robert Friedland to do but walk away.
 
In doing so, he leaves behind a $10-billion company that he built from scratch, and the satisfaction that he defied the skeptics and developed a mine in a country that very few investors believed in.
 
In short, Ivanhoe Mines Ltd. was another big win for Mr. Friedland, though his involvement ends with a creeping takeover instead of the premium, all-cash bid that investors have come to expect from Friedland stocks.
 
Mr. Friedland resigned from Ivanhoe Wednesday, as did the entire management team and six other board members that were not appointed by Rio Tinto. The move, which is part of a sweeping agreement between the two companies, paves the way for Rio to take control of all aspects of the giant Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia.

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Harper hits right balance between resources and environment – by Marilyn Scales (Canadian Mining Journal – April 18, 2012)

Marilyn Scales is a field editor for the Canadian Mining Journal, Canada’s first mining publication. She is one of Canada’s most senior mining commentators.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper appeared to hit the right balance between environmental protection and mine development in the speech he delivered on April 14, 2012, at the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia.
 
He highlighted the importance of Canada natural resource industries saying, “Mining alone is an important part of that, mining alone contributed $50 billion to GDP in 2011. We are already the world’s number-one potash producer, second for uranium, and a major global producer of most mineral and energy products.
 
“The mining industry in Canada is capital-intensive, high-tech and knowledge-based, and it produces well-paying jobs for more than 300,000 Canadians. constitutes more than a fifth of our exports and it has close to $200 billion dollars in assets throughout the world. As well, some 60% of the world’s exploration and mining companies are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
 
“In other words, in Canada, we know this industry very well.”

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A regulatory burden lifted but opposition remains – by Gary Mason (Globe and Mail – April 19, 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.

Governing is so much more fun with a majority, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper reminds us every day. Opposition parties can yell and scream all they want, but the Conservatives don’t have to listen. They can kill the long-gun registry and bring in an omnibus crime bill and simply plug their ears when Liberals and New Democrats get up in the House of Commons to complain.

The latest move by the federal government to upset the Opposition is a plan to streamline – some would say neuter – the environmental assessment process. The Conservatives have been telegraphing this one for a while.

Mr. Harper has staked the economic future of the country on the resource riches of The West, and why not? In particular, the Prime Minister is focused on helping Alberta get its crude to market as quickly as possible. Future federal budget surpluses depend on it.

In the Prime Minister’s home province of Alberta, they still talk about the Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline project, which ultimately died, in part because of a burdensome regulatory assessment process that dragged on for years.

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