Republic of Mining

Congo’s plethora of resources translates only to misery – by Peter Koven (National Post – November 26, 2011)

November 26, 2011

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

Amid the biggest boom in the history of the copper market, the country with the richest reserves heads to the polls in two days with almost nothing but misery to show for it.

Monday’s election in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) should be a joyful event: It is only the country’s second democratic election since 1960, and the first that is being run without massive support from the international community.

Unfortunately, the DRC remains a test case for a country that has failed to benefit from its tremendous natural resources. Despite an estimated US$24-trillion of mineral wealth, poverty is still at unacceptable levels: The Congo recently ranked last among 187 countries in a human-development report from the United Nations. Sectarian violence and rape remain commonplace in the eastern part of the country, and the government has come under fire for alleged corruption and mismanagement. The election has shone a light on these issues, but analysts worry about violent outbreaks no matter who wins.

China keen on importing Canadian crude – by Florence Tan and Judy Hua (National Post – November 26, 2011)

November 26, 2011

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

SINGAPORE/BEIJING – China is set to embrace Canada’s offer of more crude, heating up competition with the United States as the world’s top two oil consumers jostle to secure supplies and meet ravenous demand.

Shipments from a politically stable country such as Canada will be a welcome diversification of supply sources as top consumers make plans to deal with a supply shock if tensions in the Middle East escalate and choke off Iranian exports, barely a year after markets coped with a disruption from Libya.

“There is no oil that we can’t process,” an official at Sinopec, Asia’s largest refiner, said, declining to be identified as he is not authorized to talk to the media. “With 30 refineries, there will be some that can use Canadian crude.”

China is an ideal client for Canada in Asia as it has the ability to process a wide range of crude and its appetite continues to grow. The Canadian heavy sour grade, which will be shipped to Asia, has API gravity of 19 to 22 degrees and contains around 3% sulphur. Most Asian refineries process crude of 30 degrees API.

Will Sellwood see its second boom with a [Ring of Fire] chromite smelter? – by Rita Poliakov (Sudbury Star – November 26, 2011)

November 26, 2011

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

You can still find the town of Sellwood on Google Maps. It’s not much of a map though, with one long street and a small marker off to the right, in the middle of a patch of nothingness. The site itself isn’t all that different.

About 20 km from Capreol, on a long, potholed road, there’s a sign marking the Moose Mountain Mine site, which, if all goes well, may one day host a ferrochrome production facility for Cliffs Natural Resources.

Other than some construction work (workers are grinding rocks into gravel), the site is a rocky wasteland, filled with ponds that probably started off as open pit mines and orange-tinted rocks that hint at iron deposits.

But in the early 1900s, Sellwood was a town of promise. “Sellwood was going to be the iron ore capital of the world,” said Stu Thomas, president of the board of directors of the Northern Ontario Railroad Museum in Capreol.

[Sudbury’s Laurentian University] LU gets big bucks – Star Staff (Sudbury Star – November 25, 2011)

November 26, 2011November 25, 2011

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

Laurentian University’s School of Engineering got a new name and a huge financial boost Thursday. Stan Bharti, chairman and CEO of Forbes & Manhattan, Inc., announced a $10-million gift for the engineering school.

In recognition of the donation, Laurentian University president Dominic Giroux said the university will rename the school in the Bharti family’s honour.

“We have very fond memories of the many years during which we lived and raised our family in Sudbury, and wanted to give back to the community,” Bharti said in a statement. “Our family is very proud of the momentum at Laurentian University.

“We wanted to be part of it and encourage other families with an affinity for Northern Ontario or the mining sector to support The Next 50 Campaign.”

The donation is part of the Sudbury Families initiative, bringing the total raised for Laurentian’s The Next 50 Campaign to $48.6 million.

Sydney Tar Ponds to get a facelift – by Emily Jackson (Toronto Star – November 25, 2011)

November 26, 2011November 25, 2011

The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion

Sydney, N.S., will soon boast its own version of Central Park, with one small caveat — it will be built on top of a former hazardous waste site. The park will mark the final phase in the $400 million cleanup of the Sydney Tar Ponds, pools of toxic waste caused by more than 100 years of runoff from a steel plant.

Controversies surrounding the cleanup will linger for years, but all parties involved seem excited to move on from the toxic mess and finally transform the space into something positive. “At the end, the community was tired of fighting about the actual cleanup mechanism,” said Cape Breton Regional Municipality Mayor John Morgan.

The polluted sludge was mixed with cement, covered with an “impermeable” cap, and then buried under the soil where the park will be built. While people argued if this was the best way to remediate the waste (many wanted it to be burned), there has been very little bickering over what to do with the land once it’s actually clean, Morgan explained.

TEAMSTERS CANADA NEWS RELEASE: McGuinty government urged to kill plans to ship ‘Ring of Fire’ refinery work to China

November 25, 2011

Canada NewsWire

U.S. multinational Cliffs Natural Resources says it will seek exemption to Ontario Mining Act to ship raw chromite overseas, but Teamsters wants the government to tell foreigners that if you ‘mine it here, then refine it here or keep it in the ground’

OTTAWA, Nov. 25, 2011 /CNW/ – Queen’s Park will squander huge potential benefits of the so-called “Ring of Fire” mining discovery in the James Bay lowlands if it allows the lion’s share of raw materials to be siphoned off and sent to China for refining, says the head of Teamsters Canada Rail Conference Maintenance of Way Employees.

“A senior executive of Cliffs Natural Resources told CBC news this week that it plans to ship much of the raw chromite to Asia for refining and will seek an exemption to the Ontario Mining Act because the law prevents materials mined in Ontario being refined outside Canada,” says William Brehl, president of the union representing maintenance workers on several short line railways in Northern Ontario that may carry Ring of Fire minerals.

MINING WATCH CANADA NEWS RELEASE: Report Details Unacceptable Impacts from Deep Sea Mining by Canada’s Nautilus Minerals

November 25, 2011

For a copy of the report see: http://www.deepseaminingoutofourdepth.org

(November 24, 2011: Port Morseby, Ottawa, Melbourne) The Centre for Environmental Law and Community Rights in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and MiningWatch Canada and have released a new report called “Out of Our Depth.” It details serious environmental and social impacts expected as a result of unprecedented mining of the ocean floor in PNG.

Canadian mining company Nautilus Minerals Inc. (Nautilus) plans to extract gold and copper from the floor of the Bismarck Sea in 2012 at its Solwara 1 project. The project will mine active and inactive hydrothermal vents at 1.46 kilometres under the sea. Thousands of these vents over an 11 hectare area will be destroyed. Possibly the origins of life on earth, these high-temperature underwater vents host unique species, most of which have not yet been identified or studied.

The underwater mine site is located close to coastal communities that rely heavily on sea food for diet and income. The project is raising alarm among these directly affected communities, as well as among PNG citizens who question the environmental process that led to the licensing of the project.

Canadian asbestos production suspended – by Andy Blatchford (Globe and Mail – November 25, 2011)

November 25, 2011

Montreal— The Canadian Press – Canada’s once-mighty asbestos sector has ground to a halt for the first time in 130 years, as production of the controversial fibre has stalled in both of the country’s mines.

A shutdown this month marked a historic milestone for the Canadian asbestos industry, which at one time dominated world production and led to the construction of entire towns in Canada. Proponents of the industry insist it’s way too early write the obituary on Canadian asbestos; they’re hoping to start digging again as soon as the spring.

But for now, amid all the noisy political debates and a dramatic anti-asbestos news conference Thursday on Parliament Hill, Canadian production has quietly and suddenly stopped.

Work halted earlier this month at the Lac d’amiante du Canada operation in Thetford Mines, Que., which followed a production stoppage at Jeffrey Mine in Asbestos, about 90 kilometres away. The future of both mines is unclear.

Long-time Sherritt chief Ian Delaney to retire – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – November 25, 2011)

November 25, 2011

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.

Ian Delaney, the “Smiling Barracuda” of Bay Street who transformed Sherritt International Corp. into a multifaceted mining company with reaches into Cuba and Madagascar, is stepping down, again, as its CEO.

The 68-year-old business maverick, who still exchanges notes with Fidel Castro and shrugs off his ban from the United States, said he can comfortably relinquish the chief executive officer’s role now that his successors are primed to take over during what he sees as a prolonged period of market volatility.

“They are all firing on eight cylinders, they don’t need me,” Mr. Delaney said in an interview on Thursday after announcing his retirement effective at the end of the year, three years after being “drafted” back to the position. He will be replaced by chief financial officer David Pathe on Jan. 1.

The provocative former Merrill Lynch investment banker will remain as chairman of the diversified Toronto-based resources firm he won control over in a hostile proxy contest in 1990, turning it into Canada’s largest coal producer and the largest independent energy producer in Cuba.

NEWS RELEASE: Another record year with total mining investment [in Quebec] close to $3 billion in 2010

November 25, 2011

Québec, November 22, 2011 – The mining industry is soaring from one all-time high to the next. It had a record investment of $2.92 billion in 2010, up an unheard of 43% from 2009. This was the seventh straight year of increase in total mining investment with each of the last three years crossing the threshold of $2 billion.

The same level of investment by Québec mining companies is forecast for 2011. This was revealed in the newsletter Mines en chiffres 2010 released today by the Institut de la statistique du Québec.

The mining triangle formed by the regions of Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Côte-Nord and Nord-du-Québec continues to reap the lion’s share with 95% of total investment. However, Abitibi-Témiscamingue remains the primary mining region, the only region having broken the barrier of $1 billion in 2010 ($1.42 billion), i.e. 48.6% of the overall amount.

SAMSSA’s Dick DeStefano Interviews Republic Of Mining’s Stan Sudol about Northern Ontario’s potential

September 7, 2018November 25, 2011

A November 24, 2011 $10 million gift to Laurentian's Engineering School from Stan Bharti, (centre holding cheque) chairman and CEO of Forbes & Manhattan, Inc. confirms Sudbury's status as Canada's pre-eminent centre for mining education, reseach and production.

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 December, 2011 issue of Sudbury Mining Solutions Journal.

Stan Sudol has one of the most active mining logs in North America: www.republicofmining.com It has recently been added to a Top Ten Mining Blog list by Australian Mining magazine. We asked Stan for his comments and views on Northern Ontario Mining and its technology cluster.

SAMSSA has been monitoring the mining sector for nine years now and with the exception of the crash in September 2008, the sector continues to grow. Why?

China, India and many other industrializing and urbanizing economies will continue to grow and place enormous demands on mineral production and the supply and service suppliers. We are still in a commodity super-cycle that will last much longer than previous ones. However, commodity super-cycles have temporary downsides as we saw in 2008.

China is witnessing the largest rural-urban migration in the history of mankind. Hundreds of millions of new middle-class consumers need all sorts of products and infrastructure services that can only be made with the minerals we dig out of the ground in Sudbury and Northern Ontario.

Development, protection; [Ontario] Far North Act clarifies land use planning – by Michael Gravelle (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – November 21, 2011)

November 24, 2011

Michael Gravelle is Ontario’s Minister of Natural Resources and MPP for Thunder Bay-Superior North.

AS the minister responsible for implementing the Far North Act, I can tell you that I truly believe it is the foundation of a remarkable and, frankly, unprecedented land use planning process that will benefit the North.

While our government moves forward in its work with scores of First Nation communities, I do acknowledge that there is still a lot of misunderstanding and opposition, and I believe that it is my responsibility to address this.

Most people would agree that good planning leads to good development which creates good jobs and a strong economy. The fact is that jobs and investment are coming to the Far North, and the benefits of that will be felt by both First Nations communities and the Northern Ontario communities that will become important transportation hubs and supply and service providers.

NEWS RELEASE: BHARTI FAMILY INVESTS $10 MILLION IN LAURENTIAN’S AWARD-WINNING SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

May 7, 2013November 24, 2011

Largest gift in Laurentian’s 51 year history

SUDBURY (November 24, 2011) – Stan Bharti, chairman and CEO of Forbes & Manhattan, Inc. and dozens of other companies, announced today a $10 million gift to Laurentian University’s School of Engineering, as part of the “Sudbury Families” initiative, bringing the total raised for The Next 50 Campaign to $48.6 million. In recognition of this significant investment, Laurentian University President Dominic Giroux announced that the university will rename the school in the Bharti family’s honour.

“We have very fond memories of the many years during which we lived and raised our family in Sudbury, and wanted to give back to the community”, explained Stan Bharti. “Our family is very proud of the momentum at Laurentian University. We wanted to be part of it and encourage other
families with an affinity for Northern Ontario or the mining sector to support The Next 50 Campaign.”

The Bharti family’s gift will be invested in an endowment to the exclusive use of the Bharti School of Engineering. “The endowment fund will be used to enhance the student experience by ensuring that we attract top faculty and provide our students with first class opportunities to learn both inside and
outside the classroom.”, said Dr. Ramesh Subramanian, director of the Bharti School of Engineering. “Moreover, the endowment will ensure that we can attract the best and brightest students through scholarships and promote our programs nationally.”

(L to R) Perry Dellelce, Managing Partner of Wildeboer Dellelce LLP; Dominic Giroux, Laurentian University President; Stan Bharti, Chairman and CEO of Forbes & Manhattan, Inc.; Marianne Matichuk, City of Greater Sudbury Mayor; Dr. Ramesh Subramanian, Director of the Bharti School of Engineering; Tracy MacLeod, Director of Development and Campaign Director, Laurentian University; Michael Atkins, Member of Laurentian Board of Governors and President Laurentian Media

NEWS RELEASE: $18 Million Gift from Peter and Melanie Munk Builds On Past Support at Peter Munk Cardiac Centre

November 24, 2011

Lead gift launches $100 million campaign in support of cardiac care

TORONTO, Nov. 24, 2011 /CNW/ – Dr. Robert Bell, President and CEO of University Health Network (UHN), announced today that the Peter and Melanie Munk Charitable Foundation is donating $18 million to the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre at UHN. This new gift brings the total investment by Peter and Melanie Munk in UHN to $65 million.

“Peter and Melanie’s new gift builds on their tremendous support over the 18 years they have been involved in creating a world-class cardiac centre,” said Dr. Robert Bell. “Their generosity will continue to transform the standard of cardiac care in Canada, North America and around the world. At the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre, heart surgeons, vascular surgeons, radiologists and cardiologists all work and train together on an integrated team – something that is setting the standard for the care of heart patients.”

The gift will support innovation, recruitment and retention of top cardiac talent by leveraging the incredible patient care and research discoveries already taking place. It will help recruit, retain and train top minds in cardiovascular medicine, surgery and imaging from around the globe.

Slowdown in Chinese manufacturing fuels global fears – by Andy Hoffman (Globe and Mail – November 24, 2011)

November 24, 2011

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.

China’s massive manufacturing sector is slowing, raising fears of a hard landing for the Asian economic superpower that would deliver a devastating blow to a struggling global economy.

Confirming concerns that Europe’s sovereign debt crisis is crimping demand for Chinese exports, a key measure of China’s manufacturing activity has slipped to its lowest level since March, 2009.

The HSBC China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to a reading of 48 in November, down from 51 in October. A reading below 50 indicates contraction.

“The drop suggests that the economy has taken a turn for the worse after a few months in which conditions seemed stable,” Mark Williams and Qinwei Wang of London’s Capital Economics said in a report.