Republic of Mining

‘I see other people trying to tell us how to run our land’ [KI First Nation] – by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – March 16, 2012)

March 19, 2012

This article came from Wawatay News: http://www.wawataynews.ca/

KI lands and resource Stephen Chapman was a main speaker during the KI rally in Toronto, outside the Prospectors and Developers Association conference. He spoke to Wawatay News about his community’s struggle to protect its traditional lands from mining and on watching First Nations involvement in the Prospectors conference.

Wawatay (wwt): First off, why was it important to bring this message to Toronto?

Stephen Chapman (SC): Toronto is a big place. We want to spread the word as much as possible, to Ontario, Canada and all over the world.

Wwt: The last time you went through this there was a lot of support down here in Toronto. Does that make it easier this time?

SC: Yes. We made connections before, and our connections are growing. They support us and they spread the word.

Cost overruns, write downs leave Kinross Gold priced for takeover – by Pav Jordan and Euan Rocha ( Mineweb.com – March 19, 2012)

March 19, 2012

www.mineweb.com

With the miner’s stock having fallen by nearly half since September, bankers see it a target for bigger players who are always on the hunt for deposits to replenish their reserves.

TORONTO (Reuters) – Cost overruns and a massive writedown have knocked Kinross Gold’s stock so low that some bankers see it as Canada’s biggest potential takeover play, though obstacles to a bid for the senior gold producer may be too big to surmount.

Kinross, the world’s seventh-largest gold miner, owns some huge, largely unexploited assets spread across four continents, making it an appealing target for bigger players who are always on the hunt for deposits to replenish their reserves.

Despite a huge reserve base its stock, which traded for nearly C$19 at the start of 2011, closed at C$9.90 on Friday as mounting concerns about the cost of developing its flagship project sapped investor confidence.

U.S. energy policy is fuelled by fantasy – by Charles Krauthammer (National Post – March 17, 2012)

March 19, 2012

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

Yes, of course, presidents have no direct control over gas prices. But the American people know something about this president and his disdain for oil. The “fuel of the past,” he contemptuously calls it. To the American worker who doesn’t commute by government motorcade and is getting fleeced every week at the pump, oil seems very much a fuel of the present — and of the foreseeable future.

President Obama incessantly claims energy open-mindedness, insisting that his policy is “all of the above.” Except, of course, for drilling

— off the Mid-Atlantic coast (as Virginia, for example, wants),

— off the Florida Gulf Coast (instead, the Castro brothers will drill near there),

— in the broader Gulf of Mexico (where drilling in 2012 is expected to drop 30% below pre-moratorium forecasts),

— in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (more than half the size of England, the drilling footprint being the size of Dulles Airport),

Why Hugo Chavez (alive) is good for Canada’s oil sands – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – March 16, 2012)

March 19, 2012

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

CALGARY • It’s been almost a decade since scores of highly skilled Venezuelan oil workers like Petro Pereira, fired and blackballed by dictator Hugo Chavez for protesting his tightening grip on the national oil company, made their way north to Alberta.

Today, word that an aggressive cancer may soon put an end to his dictatorship and potentially reactivate Venezuela’s once-mighty oil industry has many reassessing the future.

Mr. Pereira, a world expert on heavy oil who is now a scholar at the University of Calgary, is so engrossed in research to improve oil sands upgrading he plans to stay put.

But the state of Mr. Chavez’s health is a hot topic in the colony of expats, and many are talking about returning if there is regime change in the South American country, he said.

Oil sands are a triumph for the human ‘environment’ – by Rex Murphy (National Post – March 17, 2012)

March 18, 2012

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

Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National, and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.

I’m lucky to be going to Fort McMurray, Alta. this weekend with colleagues from CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup. I have a great wish to see what the green Jeremiahs deem to be the greatest blot on the visage of Mother Gaia, and to meet some of the soulless folk who work there. After all, environmentalists might ask: Who would take a job on a site that threatens the destiny of the planet, except people whose souls have been bought off with oil-company lucre?

Outside Fort McMurray, it is impossible to escape the furor over the Alberta oilsands. Its product is routinely described, lazily and slanderously, as the dirtiest on the planet. The Premier of Ontario, a province that owes much of its prosperity to its huge automobile industry shivers when he looks at Alberta, mutters about the dark forces of the “petro-dollar,” and implied (until he was scolded and half-recanted) that somehow Ontario’s fretful financial state is Alberta’s fault.

It’s almost a fantasy disconnect. Dalton Mcguinty can throw billions at General Motors and urge the feds to do the same, all to save the automobile industry. He ignores that four decades or more of Ontario’s prosperity wasn’t founded on windmills: It was based on gas-guzzling cars and trucks.

Like selling off the family [Canada corporate] jewels – by Diane Francis (National Post – March 17, 2012)

March 18, 2012

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

News that foreigners are circling around another important Canadian company, Viterra Inc., is upsetting and again raises the question as to what is in Canada’s “national interest.”

The question of national interest is what Investment Canada must evaluate if foreigners win the bid for Viterra or any Canadian company. But the question is easily answered. Losing any sizable head office to a foreigner is never in the national interest.

And legislation to that effect should be passed immediately. To use a military metaphor, Canada is at war with the world for living standards. Its head offices are its beachheads, and strategic institutes. Its CEOs are its generals and are answerable, and often helpful policywise, to governments. They are responsible for making their operations profitable but they must also uphold Canada’s laws.

But if head offices are moved to another jurisdiction, the loyalty, and respect for laws, moves with them. Foreign CEOs, or generals, can move Canadian operations, patents, research, employees and tax expenditures around the world to suit their purpose and to suit the purpose of the jurisdiction in which they operate.

Brazil’s commodity curse – by Matthew Bristow And Juan Pablo (National Post – March 17, 2012)

March 18, 2012March 18, 2012

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

Bloomberg News

RIO DE JANEIRO. In 2007, Brazilian geologists made the biggest oil find in the Americas in three decades. Buried more than eight kilometres below sea level, the discovery was estimated to raise the country’s crude reserves by 62%.

Brazil was already the world’s natural-resource powerhouse: its biggest exporter of coffee, sugar, orange juice and beef. The prospect of it becoming a major energy power as well prompted then-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to declare amid a rush of patriotism that “God is Brazilian.”

Brazil has struggled for half a century to break its dependence on commodities, grappling with the socalled resource curse. Depending on how profits are managed, the new oil wealth could be a godsend that drives a new era of development or a burden that holds the nation back, said Alberto Ramos, a senior Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in New York.

“They can be Norway, or they can be many other countries where oil did not bring growth and development,” Mr. Ramos said in a telephone interview. “You’d better be smart and forward-looking about using it, otherwise it might hurt you.”

Canada Sees Mining Resurgence: Scott Jobin-Bevans – by Sally Lowder and Brian Sylvester (The Gold Report – March 16, 2012)

March 18, 2012

http://www.theaureport.com/

Amid the bustle of the 80th Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention in Toronto, The Gold Report sat down with PDAC President Scott Jobin-Bevans for his take on the challenges the mining industry faces. In this exclusive interview, he covers a wide range of topics, from skilled labor shortages to the trials of mining in remote northern Canada.

The Gold Report: What are the key challenges the mining industry faces in 2012–2013?

Scott Jobin-Bevans: PDAC, under the leadership of newly appointed Executive Director Ross Gallinger, will be conducting a strategic review involving the board of directors, staff and gathering membership input. There are a number of issues facing the association and the industry, and I am sure that human resources challenges will surface as a key issue.

TGR: When you say human resources, what are you talking about specifically?

The Metallurgical Achilles’ Heel of the United States – by Richard (Rick) Mills (Ahead of the Herd.com – March 2012)

March 18, 2012

http://aheadoftheherd.com/

“The United States has consistently maintained that a strong domestic minerals and metals industry is an essential contributor to the nation’s economic and security interests…The United States has a fundamental interest in maintaining a competitive minerals and metals sector that will continue to contribute significantly to the nation’s economic strength and military security. The industry represents an $87 billion enterprise that employs over 500,000 U.S. workers and provides the material foundation for U.S. manufacturing.” The 1980 National Academy of Sciences executive summary of “Competitiveness of the U.S. Minerals and Metals Industry”

A concise summary of U.S. mineral vulnerabilities was presented to the Industrial Readiness Panel of the House Armed Services Committee as early as 1980 by General Alton D. Slay, Commander Air Force Systems Command. He pointed out that technological advances have increased the demand for exotic minerals at the same time that legislative and regulatory restrictions have been imposed on the U.S. mining industry.

The 1981 report “A Congressional Handbook on U.S. Minerals Dependency/Vulnerability” singled out eight materials “for which the industrial health and defense of the United States is most vulnerable to potential supply disruptions” – chromium, cobalt, manganese, the platinum group of metals, titanium, bauxite/aluminum, columbium, and tantalum – the first five have been called “the metallurgical Achilles’ heel of our civilization.”

South Africa’s stricken ferrochrome industry eyes Canada’s Canpotex as potential turnaround model – by Martin Creamer (MineWeekly.com – March 16, 2012)

March 16, 2012

Mining Weekly is South Africa’s premier source of weekly news on mining developments in Africa’s most important industry. Mining Weekly provides in-depth coverage of mining projects and the personalities reshaping the mining industry.

South Africa’s once mighty chrome-to-ferrochrome industry, now threatened by an unexpected local oversupply of raw ore, is looking to get itself back on its feet by emulating what the Canadians did 40 years ago for their then teetering but now thriving Saskatchewan potash industry.

South Africa’s ferrochrome business is losing market share to China hand over fist and has been forced to temporarily shut furnaces left, right and centre.

Once the proud holder of a 50% share of the global ferrochrome market, the local industry now finds that China is stealing the show – ironically, with the help of South African ore.

China hosts no chromite deposits of its own, but imports the ore it needs from a string of countries.

South African ferrochrome in meltdown, urgent intervention needed – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – March 16, 2012)

March 16, 2012

South Africa has a long-standing chrome value chain that sustains 200 000 jobs and R42-billion a year in gross domestic product (GDP), but the industry speaks with one voice when it says that it is in meltdown mode.

If things go on like this, it could shed 60 000 to 80 000 of those jobs and lose its once dominant market position to China, despite China having no chrome of its own.

The contribution of the ferrochrome industry to South Africa’s GDP could plunge to R23-billion, and chrome ore prices could collapse.

On the environmental protection front, global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from production would rise by at least 15% a ton as a result of the displacement of capacity from the world’s most efficient South African smelters to the world’s least efficient energy-sapping and CO2-spewing Chinese smelters.

Pass the Books. Hold the Oil. [The Oil Curse] – by Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times – March 10, 2012)

March 16, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/

EVERY so often someone asks me: “What’s your favorite country, other than your own?” I’ve always had the same answer: Taiwan. “Taiwan? Why Taiwan?” people ask.

Very simple: Because Taiwan is a barren rock in a typhoon-laden sea with no natural resources to live off of — it even has to import sand and gravel from China for construction — yet it has the fourth-largest financial reserves in the world. Because rather than digging in the ground and mining whatever comes up, Taiwan has mined its 23 million people, their talent, energy and intelligence — men and women. I always tell my friends in Taiwan: “You’re the luckiest people in the world. How did you get so lucky? You have no oil, no iron ore, no forests, no diamonds, no gold, just a few small deposits of coal and natural gas — and because of that you developed the habits and culture of honing your people’s skills, which turns out to be the most valuable and only truly renewable resource in the world today. How did you get so lucky?”

That, at least, was my gut instinct. But now we have proof.

Unfounded fears of a Canadian Exxon Valdez on the West Coast – by Lorne Gunter (Natioanl Post – March 15, 2012)

March 16, 2012

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

I’ll admit to sharing some British Columbians’ concerns about shipping oil from Alberta’s oilsands to Asia using tankers leaving from a port on that province’s north-central coast. The Pacific coast is a special place, with salmon, eagles and grizzlies. Befouling it with crude oil from a tanker spill would be a horrible ecological tragedy.

Still, it should be possible to build a port at Kitimat and run tankers in and out of the Douglas Channel without incident. The key is not merely devising the right rules for tanker operation, but also maintaining vigilant enforcement for as long as ships filled with oil navigate through the sensitive waterway.

The problem with the 1989 Exxon Valdez grounding was not that Alaska had too few safety regulations at the time, but rather that the company had become lax in following them and government enforcers had stopped monitoring company compliance.

A cautionary pipeline tale for B.C. from N.W.T. – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – March 15, 2012)

March 16, 2012

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

While Canadians seem more concerned than ever about the costs and risks of pipelines, the Far North is feeling the pain of not having one.

With the Mackenzie Gas Project on ice because of low natural-gas prices, the Northwest Territories is searching for other ways to fuel its economy, while dealing with the human toll resulting from lack of opportunity.

As N.W.T. leaders met in Calgary this week to take stock of Arctic oil and gas activity, or more precisely the lack of it, they had this advice for Northern B.C. communities trying to kill the proposed Northern Gateway project: Be careful what you wish for.

For decades, the Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline from Inuvik to Alberta faced many of the hurdles that are troubling the Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline today: unsettled aboriginal land claims, worries that development would alter traditional ways of life, warnings about the environmental impacts, concerns that the pipeline’s fuel would be used to support the growth of Alberta’s oil sands.

An all-party voice for North – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (March 9, 2012)

March 16, 2012

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

NORTHERN MPPs from all parties in the Ontario legislature have consistently expressed frustration with the Toronto-centric nature of Queen’s Park. Decisions affecting the North at times fail to take account of northern realities, with the result that Northerners often feel alienated.

Conservatives and Liberals in power cannot change their opposition past even as they defend the nature of their northern policies. Thunder Bay-Superior North Liberal MPP Michael Gravelle is in just such a pickle this week.

In opposition against the Mike Harris Tories, Gravelle was seen as a champion of northern causes. He racked up impressive electoral majorities at home because people in his riding viewed him as an effective voice for northern consideration in a legislature dominated by southern members and issues.