Republic of Mining

There is a way to clean up ‘dirty’ oil’s problems – by Jeffrey Simpson (Globe and Mail – February 25, 2012)

February 25, 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.

Canada’s bitumen resources have a problem, and neither the companies that wish to exploit bitumen or the governments trying to help them seem to understand it.

Bitumen, from which oil is produced, takes more energy per barrel to get at than conventional oil pumped from the ground. Because it needs more energy, bitumen-derived oil produces more greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming than conventional oil.

That gap – between bitumen-derived and conventional oil – is the problem the industry and governments don’t seem to get. And that gap will widen as more steam-driven in-situ production comes on line, since in-situ uses more energy than open-face mining of bitumen.

There’s not much the oil industry can do about opponents who don’t like any fossil fuels and seek their elimination. These opponents are going to do what they can in an open society to stick spokes in the industry’s wheels.

NEWS RELEASE: Fraser Institute’s Survey of Mining Companies shows British Columbia’s steady improvement

February 24, 2012

Vancouver, BC – February 23, 2012 – Today, the Association for Mineral Exploration BC (AME BC) responded to the Fraser Institute’s rankings of mining companies’ perceptions of British Columbia. Although the province shows steady improvement in perception, not all policy improvements have been fully recognized in the survey results announced this year. BC has moved up the rankings to 31st out of 93 jurisdictions in the survey’s Policy Potential Index, up from 36th out of 79 jurisdictions included in 2011.

“British Columbia’s government worked throughout 2011 to provide further resources to agencies responsible for the industry, improve consultation timelines with aboriginal communities and address permitting efficiency,” said Gavin C. Dirom, President & CEO of AME BC.

“While we know that some very important challenges still need be addressed – particularly in land access and use matters – it’s fair to say that in the past year, the BC government has taken a number of coordinated and strategic measures to tackle many of the challenges identified by AME BC.

Public wants mining road to connect First Nations [and Ring of Fire] (CBC News-Thunder Bay – February 24, 2012)

November 3, 2015February 24, 2012

This article is from the CBC website: http://www.cbc.ca/news/

Noront Resources holds Thunder Bay open house to gauge opinion on Eagle’s Nest project

Many people at a mining information session Thursday night wanted to know how local communities will benefit from the roads planned for the Ring of Fire. More than 150 people came out to a Noront Resources open house in Thunder Bay.

They had questions about jobs and the environmental impact of the Eagle’s Nest project, but many also wanted to know more about the proposed new road to get to the mine.

Local Noront investor Don Paglaro said the road shouldn’t be just the company’s responsibility.

“I think the government should not only put in some funding, but should maybe decide on a good route … one that benefits northwestern Ontario, which is Thunder Bay,” he said.

The Windy Craggy Experience (British Columbia Mining History) – by Mary Page Webster (Fraser Institute – undated)

February 24, 2012February 24, 2012

This article came from the Fraser Institue website: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/

I first learned of the Windy Craggy copper-cobalt deposit when I was a student working towards my degree in Geology. Geddes Resources Ltd. was exploring the property and the president of Geddes (my father) showed me some surface samples. The massive sulphides in the samples indicated that Windy Craggy was one of the most important mineral finds in North America.

Windy Craggy is in the Tatshenshini Area of Northwestern British Columbia, about an hour west of Whitehorse by helicopter. The area is isolated with no ready surface access, and no permanent residents. It is not prime hunting and fishing territory. In fact, the only person working a trapline in the area at the time it was explored was a man named Yurg Hoffer, who had emigrated from Switzerland. His trapline extended along the west side of the Haines Road from about the Yukon Border to the Alaska border near Haines—a distance of about 40 miles. The scenery in the area is typical of the Rocky Mountains which extend northwest through Alaska, and south through the western United States and into Mexico.

My first visit to Windy Craggy was as part of an exploration team several years after I graduated. I spent much of the next 10 years working in the area, including in the Yukon and BC. For four of these years I was exploration manager for Geddes Resources.

Quebec risks driving away mining investment with Bill 14 – by Jean-Francois Minardi (Fraser Forum – January/February 2012)

February 24, 2012

This article came from the Fraser Institute website: http://www.fraserinstitute.org/

Until recently, mining executives around the world saw Quebec as having the best policy environment for mining investment (McMahon and Cervantes, 2010). This is mainly thanks to a predictable regulatory
environment, the absence of territorial claims in Northern Quebec, high quality geo-scientific data easily accessible to miners, good infrastructure, a skilled workforce, and an attractive mining tax system (McMahon and Cervantes, 2011).

But with the introduction of Bill 14, tabled on May 12, 2011 to amend Quebec’s Mining Act, the province is now poised to introduce a high level of uncertainty that may scare investors away and seriously damage the policy attractiveness of Quebec to mining investors.

Bill 14 gives additional power to municipalities to control mining activities in their territories. But giving municipalities control over where and how mining can take place sidelines the provincial government as the sole mining regulator and runs the risk of erecting multiple barriers to mining investment, investment that creates well-paying jobs in many Quebec communities.

Bye-bye, oil sheiks of the Middle East – by Luiza Ch. Savage (MacLean’s Magazine – February 14, 2012

February 24, 2012

http://www2.macleans.ca/

Will new technologies make North American energy self-sufficiency a reality?

The rural state of North Dakota is famous mainly for its rough weather. Its largest city, Fargo, is best known to outsiders as the title of a noir movie in which a body is fed through a wood chipper. With a population half the size of Winnipeg’s scattered across rugged plains, it once held the distinction of being the least-visited state in the U.S. But today, so many people are flocking to North Dakota that there is nowhere to put them.

In a nation beset by joblessness, workers are coming here in such numbers that an estimated 15,000 people are now living in trailers, cars, corporate “man camps” and other forms of makeshift housing. So scarce are places to sleep that in 2010 one firm housed some of its workers by trucking in a chunk of Vancouver’s recently used Olympic Village to the overwhelmed city of Williston.

The reason is an oil boom. Production in the state has surged from 100,000 barrels per day in 2007 to 500,000 barrels per day and growing—almost overnight making North Dakota the fourth-largest producer in the U.S., and on its way to becoming second only to Texas.

Regional plan needed for Ring of Fire: Liberal critic – by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – February 23, 2012)

February 24, 2012

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

The federal Liberal critic for Aboriginal Affairs is cautioning that communities in northern Ontario could see environmental and health effects like those seen in Alberta’s oilsands region, if regional planning and environmental assessments for the Ring of Fire are not done properly.

Dr. Carolyn Bennett was in Thunder Bay on Feb. 20 to meet with Matawa First Nations. Following that meeting, Bennett said the current approach of doing individual environmental assessments for each Ring of Fire project is flawed.

“It could be done in a much more coherent way,” Bennett said. “We should not be making the mistake of the oilsands, where everything is done in a very piecemeal way.”

Bennett’s comments come as documents obtained by CBC through a access-to-information request show that an Ontario manager with Environment Canada expressed similar concerns last year, before the environmental assessment process began.

How a novice miner survived a summer in the Klondike – by Jason Unrau (Globe and Mail/Report on Business Magazine – February 24, 2012)

February 24, 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.

Twin turboprops roaring, our 40-seat plane begins its descent to Dawson City Airport. The clouds give way to reveal a pockmarked heritage landscape: the Klondike gold fields.

This is where, a hundred-odd years ago, a stampede of desperate men moiled—and sometimes died—for gold. Today the soaring price of gold has made Dawson a boom town again, a place that attracts, as in 1897, all sorts of slightly at-loose-ends types. Like me. I’m out of shape and out of dough—my paltry small-town newspaper salary having failed in a Sisyphean struggle to erase $10,000 of debt—and a season of mining sounds like the perfect corrective, or at least the most perfect corrective I’ll find in the Yukon.

For the next four months, Schmidt Mining Corp.’s Quartz Creek camp, tucked in the Indian River valley about 50 kilometres southeast of Dawson City, is where I’ll live and work.

Thankfully, I only have to fly in from Whitehorse. My antecedents risked it all, traversing mountain passes on foot and sailing down the Yukon River in makeshift boats to reach the Klondike.

Raise tax rate for miners, Steelworkers say – by Liz Cowan (Northern Ontario Business – February 23, 2012)

February 24, 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.

Mining is booming in Ontario but some say the province isn’t getting its fair share of the resources.

“Minerals are not a renewable resource and every province charges a royalty to take ore out of its ground,” said Marie Kelly, a staff member of United Steelworkers District 6 (Ontario and Atlantic provinces). “Ontario is clearly the most mineral-rich province in Canada. We take out the most ore out of the ground on any given time of the year and yet we have the lowest royalty percentage.”

Kelly spoke to the Commission on Quality Public Services and Tax Fairness in Sudbury in early February to point out the province’s return on minerals.

Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador collect more mining revenue than Ontario even though their mine production is less.

A European reprieve for Canada’s oil sands – by Lorne Gunter (National Post – February 23, 2012)

February 24, 2012

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

This has been a good week for Alberta’s oil sands — if you measure success in tiny increments. The European Union couldn’t agree to label oil from the ‘sands as dirty, and one of the world’s leading climate scientists released a study showing that large-scale mining of Alberta’s vast bitumen deposits will have very little effect on climate.

The news from Europe is welcome if not quite a full-fledged victory. On Thursday, bureaucrats and experts from the EU’s 27 member countries failed to pass an amendment to the union’s Fuel Quality Directive that would have labelled oil sands oil as 22% more harmful to the climate than convention crude. The vote was 89 in favour of the amendment, 128 opposed with 128 abstaining. Since there was no majority for or against the motion, it neither passed nor failed.

But Thursday’s vote was never going to be the final word. It was, in essence, a survey of environment department bureaucrats and government scientists meant only to inform Europe’s energy and environment ministers. The ministers will hold their own vote — likely late this year — from which will emerge their recommendation to the European Parliament, whose members will cast the ultimate vote on whether or not oil sands oil should be considered “dirty” oil.

Oil sands dodge bullet in Brussels – by Peter Foster (National Post – February 23, 2012)

February 24, 2012

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

EU fails to back ‘directive’ that penalizes the oil sands — but the threat isn’t gone

It wasn’t just the oil sands that dodged a bullet on Thursday, when Eurocrats failed to support a “Fuel Quality Directive” that would have penalized European companies using such oil. Although the move would have no direct impact, since Canada exports little or no oil sands oil directly to Europe, it would have darkened the cloud over Canadian/European free trade aspirations and created a dangerous precedent.

It would have further handed control of trade, and thus the Canadian economy, to a bureaucratic juggernaut effectively controlled by environmental radicals through political puppets. It would also have raised the possibility that restrictions might extend to U.S. exports to Europe of refined products containing oil from the oil sands.

Canada’s Natural Resources Minister, Joe Oliver, described the vote as a “resounding win,” but noted that Canada would continue to defend its interests against “unjustified and discriminatory measures.” Which is a pretty good definition of climate policies in general.

In mining, most of Canada more corrupt than Botswana, Chile: study – by Nicolas Johnson (Globe and Mail – February 23, 2012)

February 24, 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.

The Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Quebec, Manitoba, British Columbia and Alberta – which represent almost three-fourths of Canada’s land area – were judged to have greater corruption than the African and South American countries, the survey by the Fraser Institute showed. Saskatchewan was seen as Canada’s least corrupt region.

“It’s something that plagues mining companies around the world,” Fred McMahon, co-ordinator of the survey with Miguel Cervantes, said in a telephone interview from Toronto on Thursday. “It’s particularly problematic for Western mining companies, which have internal codes of conduct that prevent payoffs.”

The annual survey by the Vancouver-based institute was sent to about 5,000 mining companies around the world, and the results were based on 802 responses. The survey took place between October and December last year.

Oil sands spared ‘dirty’ label in EU vote – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – February 24, 2012)

February 24, 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’s lobbying campaign pays off; blocked regulation preserves access to global markets

OTTAWA — GLOBAL ENERGY REPORTER – The Harper government picked up key support from France and the Netherlands in blocking a proposed European Union fuels directive that would target the oil sands as a particularly emissions-intensive source of crude.

A vote in Brussels on Thursday gave the Canadian government a win in its battle to preserve global markets for oil sands producers against an environmental lobbying effort, which wants refiners worldwide to pay financial penalties for using the carbon-intensive Alberta crude as well as other sources of “dirty” fuel.

Ottawa has been lobbying the Europeans for two years for fundamental changes to an EU proposal to label oil sands as being more carbon-intensive than other crude sources – a tag that would effectively ban oil sands crude, and threaten to snowball to other regions. Britain had clearly indicated it was in Canada’s camp, but on Thursday, France and the Netherlands helped derail the proposed regulation by abstaining on the vote, which needed a majority of total votes to pass.

First Nations becoming major economic players – by Ron Grech (Timmins Daily Press – February 24, 2012)

November 5, 2015February 24, 2012

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

GDP from Aboriginal communities larger than some provinces

These are “exciting times” for business opportunities in First Nation communities, a gathering of chiefs, business leaders and economic development officials in Timmins were told Thursday.

Clint Davis, president and chief executive of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business, cited several factors that have aligned enabling First Nation communities to become major economic players, if they play their cards right.

It seemed fitting that Davis would be speaking about growing economic development opportunities for First Nations as the keynote speaker at an event hosted by the CreeWest Limited Partnership. CreeWest is a Moose Factory-based charter airline service that arose from the economic opportunities created by the start-up of De Beers Canada’s Victor Mine in Attawapiskat six years ago.

It is widely known First Nation communities are the fastest growing demographic in the country.