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Rio Tinto hiring hundreds of workers in Canada because of modernization projects – by Ross Marowits, Canadian Press (Winnipeg Free Press – September 27, 2011)

The Winnipeg Free Press is the oldest newspaper in western Canada and has the largest readership in the province of Manitoba.

MONTREAL – A couple of years after it laid off 14,000 workers around the world, global mining giant Rio Tinto has launched a mini hiring spree in Canada, mainly due to its modernization projects.

The Anglo-Australian company is actively searching to hire more than 210 workers for mining and manufacturing in alumina, aluminum, iron ore, diamonds and titanium dioxide.

“We launched the campaign to help our ongoing recruitment efforts for our modernization and expansion projects,” Rio Tinto spokesman Bryan Tucker said in an email. Rio Tinto employs more than 13,000 people at 35 sites in Canada.

The company has turned to Facebook and YouTube, posting a four-minute promotional video showing operations such as the Diavik Diamond Mine, Iron Ore Company of Canada, Rio Tinto, Fer et Titane, and Rio Tinto Alcan.

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[Canada] We must be a ‘first mover’ on pipelines and terminals – by Gordon Gibson (Globe and Mail – September 28, 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.

“We have enormous resource extraction possibilities that
could pay for health care and pensions for decades.
Alas, standing in the way is one very large problem,
namely our sclerotic project approval process for the
necessary pipelines and ocean terminals.” (Gordon Gibson)

Recently an article in Report on Business fingered the Canadian propensity to study resource projects to death, while our competitors around the world get on with them. Result, the Australians, Americans and even the Gulf States capture markets that could have been ours, and we are left virtuously sucking our thumbs.

The article cited a Shell executive who spoke of prospects for the vast shale plays in northeastern British Columbia. We need an expanded customer base to properly develop that resource. Soon the Americans aren’t going to need our natural gas any more, as their own shale production ramps up. Our market increasingly will be in Asia.

It is not just sales, but dollars that are in play. A thousand cubic feet of gas goes for around $4 in North America against $14 in Asia. But to get that premium, we have to build export facilities – pipelines and terminals.

The same argument applies to oil, though in a different way. The Americans would take all the oil we can foreseeably produce – but on their terms. Their own terms means lower-than-world prices, and an ability to backload carbon pricing onto us rather than the U.S. consumer.

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Ivanhoe Mines pushes back at Mongolia over copper mine – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – September 27, 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.

MINING REPORTER- Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines Ltd.is battling back against moves by the Mongolian government to secure a larger chunk of the promising Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold project, but investors are bailing out.

The Vancouver-based miner said it expects Mongolia to honour a 2009 investment agreement giving the country a 34-per-cent stake in Oyu Tolgoi for 30 years. Ivanhoe holds the remaining 66-per-cent interest. The company’s stock lost about one-fifth of its value on Monday before recovering about half that loss to close.

Ivanhoe shares were already under pressure, falling nearly 20 per cent last week as Mongolia started to signal its interest in upping its stake to as much as 50 per cent.

Ivanhoe said the existing ownership agreement of Oyu Tolgoi is legally binding and “deserves and requires the unqualified support of all parties.” It also warned that revising the deal, signed after six years of negotiations, could harm Mongolia’s reputation as a desirable place to invest.

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Extremists’ oil protest puzzling – by Ezra Levant (Toronto Sun – September 27, 2011)

The Toronto Sun is the city’s daily tabloid newspaper.

On Monday, about 250 environmental extremists from across Canada and foreign countries travelled to Ottawa to protest oil. Plus a couple of dozen “journalists” from the CBC, there to cheer them on.

Greenpeace, the $350-million per year multinational corporation headquartered in Amsterdam, was one of the organizers. So was a group called U.K. Tarsands Network.

So, foreigners. Foreigners telling us what to do here in Canada — and boasting about trespassing in secure areas of Parliament Hill. Try that in Saudi Arabia. Or Iran. Try that in the United States, post-9/11.

These foreign meddlers pick on Canada precisely because we are the gentlest country in the world. And it would be too tough to try to protest in Iran or Saudi Arabia. The Saudi embassy is just a few blocks away from Parliament Hill, right on Sussex Dr. Saudi Arabia is the biggest oil producer in the world. They have the biggest oil reserves in the world. If this protest really was about oil, why didn’t they go there?

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Ottawa’s ‘ethical’ oil-sands campaign heats up – by Campbell Clark and Nathan Vanderklippe (Globe and Mail – September 27, 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.

Ottawa and Lincoln, Neb.— A global battle over the reputation of Alberta’s oil sands is coming to a head. Ottawa is deploying heavy diplomatic guns, on both sides of the Atlantic, to the debate over whether it will be treated as an ethical source for a world that needs oil, or a polluting pariah.

Stephen Harper’s chummy relationship with British Prime Minister David Cameron has begun to yield a friendlier view toward the oil sands, a potential influence in the fight over European standards that could label Alberta oil dirty.

In North America, meanwhile, public protests and diplomatic lobbying are intensifying over the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil sands bitumen deeper into the United States.

Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., Gary Doer, travelled Monday to meet the governor of Nebraska, where pipeline opponents are geared up for public meetings on Tuesday. In Ottawa, hundreds of activists converged on Parliament Hill for protests organized by environmentalists, unions and native leaders – before dozens climbed a barrier fence and were removed by police for trespassing.

While tactics shift, the debate has crystallized:

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Yes, we have the $25-million,’ Quebec firm says of asbestos plan – by Julian Sher (Globe and Mail – September 27, 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.

MONTREAL – A year ago, over a lunch of oysters and fine wine at a posh downtown restaurant, Baljit Chadha held himself out as the potential saviour of Quebec’s faltering asbestos industry. This week, he plans to deliver.

Days before a provincial government deadline this Saturday to find private funding for the Mine Jeffrey in Asbestos, Que., the wealthy and well-connected Montreal businessman says he has “letters of intent” from unnamed investors in three different countries – enough to breathe new life into an export trade critics decry for causing death.

“I have done a lot of soul-searching on this and have come to a conclusion that we are not exporting death,” said Mr. Chadha, who combines an almost evangelical fervour for asbestos with the clout needed to pull off his controversial plan.

Mr. Chadha, whose company already handled much of the mine’s asbestos sales to his native India, offered to buy the mine outright in August of 2010, for “tens of millions.” But to clinch the deal, he had to secure an additional $25-million from outside investors while the Quebec government kept the mine afloat with a $58-million loan guarantee.

“Yes we have the $25-million,” he told The Globe and Mail.

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Going deeper underground [Guatemala mining conflicts] – by Lyndsie Bourgon (Corporate Knights Magazine – Fall, 2011)

Corporate Knights: The Magazine for Clean Capitalism is a quarterly Canadian magazine dedicated to the promotion of responsible business practices within Canada and the advancement of social and environmental sustainability worldwide. (wiki)

In Guatemala, victims of human rights abuses involving Canadian mining companies are left to pick up the pieces. At home in Canada, company lawyers skirt around questions of accountability, and justice ultimately falls through the cracks.

Gory Wanless sits at his desk in downtown Toronto, flipping through photo after photo of burning huts and maimed bodies. He points out where Adolfo Ich was hacked in the arm with a machete before being shot in the head, and where the home belonging to one of 11 women allegedly raped once stood in Lote Ocho, a small village in Guatemala.

Wanless, a lawyer at Klippensteins Barristers and Solicitors, is working on two cases that have implicated Canadian mining company HudBay Minerals Inc. and its subsidiary, HMI Nickel Inc., in serious human rights abuses in Guatemala. Both cases concern Guatemala’s CGN security forces, employed by HMI Nickel. In Choc v. HudBay, it’s alleged that security personnel shot and killed Adolfo Ich, a well-known Mayan Q’eqchi community organizer, in public and in broad daylight on September 27, 2009.

His wife, Angelica Choc, has brought a wrongful death case forward against HudBay. In the other lawsuit, Caal v. HudBay, it’s alleged that CGN employees, the Guatemalan army and police took part in the gang rape of 11 Mayan Q’eqchi women during the forceful eviction of their homes in Lote Ocho. The women are suing HudBay for negligence.

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Growth plan to include all of Northeast – by Wayne Snider (Timmins Daily Press – September 27, 2011)

 The Daily Press, the city of Timmins newspaper. Contact the writer at news@thedailypress.ca.

Northeastern Ontario Municipal Association (NEOMA) representatives provide input into pilot project

COCHRANE — The two urban centres targeted by the provincial government to pilot the Northern Growth Plan are making a concentrated effort to include all areas of their regions in the project.

The government selected Thunder Bay and Sudbury to begin the plan. Both groups are including input from Northwestern and Northeastern Ontario communities respectively for a broader based plan.

Sylvia Barnard, president of Cambrian College, was at Saturday’s meeting of the Northeastern Ontario Municipal Association (NEOMA) in Cochrane. Her discussions with NEOMA was just one of a series of meetings with regional groups to get input to define a model for Regional Economic Development Areas (REDAs).

“When we heard from sister communities, the feeling was ‘here we go again, Sudbury gets everything,'” Barnard explained. “But we wanted to see consultation from across Northeastern Ontario from people involved in economic development.”

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Northern [Ontario] leaders are determined to be heard – by Wayne Snider (Timmins Daily Press – September 27, 2011)

 The Daily Press, the city of Timmins newspaper. Contact the writer at news@thedailypress.ca.

“The North has the potential to be one of the wealthiest
regions in the world. Yet we are not permitted to realize
the full benefits of our natural resources — while the
federal and provincial government rake in big time tax
revenues. (Wayne Snider – Timmins Daily Press)

Tired of being ignored by provincial politicians

Municipal leaders in Northeastern Ontario are hungry for political change at the provincial level. But the change they desire is over and above what happens in the Oct. 6 election.

They want the North to be taken seriously in Queen’s Park. It is a tall order, given the fact that only 11 of the 107 seats in the provincial legislature are based in Northern ridings. In terms of voting support, which is what political parties really care about, the North isn’t a significant player at the provincial level.

That is why policies — such as the Far North Act and the Endangered Species Act — get pushed through despite vocal protests from Northern municipalities. Both of these acts will limit economic growth in the North.

In the case of the Endangered Species Act, specifically the protection of caribou habitat in areas where the animals haven’t been seen for 60-80 years, it will mean economic regression for the forest industry.

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Strategic Minerals: Is China’s Consumption a Threat to United States Security? – by Dr. Kent Hughes Butts, Mr. Brent Bankus, and 2nd Lieutenant Adam Norris (U.S. Army War College – July, 2011)

“China’s resulting role in the mineral trade has increased
Western security community concern over strategic minerals
to its highest point since the end of the Cold War….The
U.S. dependence on overseas sources of strategic minerals
essential to sustain its economy and defense sector is more
pronounced than its dependence upon foreign oil….There is
not, for example, a substitute for … chromium in the
production of stainless steel.”
(U.S. Army War College Issue Paper)

 Center for Strategic Leadership,U.S. Army War College

For the web’s largest database of articles on the Ring of Fire mining camp, please go to: Ontario’s Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery

No great nation willingly allows its standard of life and culture to be lowered and no great nation accepts the risk that it will go hungry. — Hjalmer Schacht, German Minister of Economics, 1937

The vitality of a powerful nation depends upon its ability to secure access to the strategic resources necessary to sustain its economy and produce effective weapons for defense. This is especially true for the world’s two largest economies, those of the United States and China, which are similarly import dependent for around half of their petroleum imports and large quantities of their strategic minerals.

Because China’s economy and resource import dependence continue to grow at a high rate it has adopted a geopolitical strategy to secure strategic resources. China’s resulting role in the mineral trade has increased Western security community concern over strategic minerals to its highest point since the end of the Cold War.

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Voice for the North [Ontario]: NEOMA forming professional lobby group – by Wayne Snider (Timmins Daily Press – September 26, 2011)

 The Daily Press is the city of Timmins newspaper.

COCHRANE — Tired of southern-based special interest groups influencing provincial legislation that impacts the North, municipal leaders are prepared to fight back.

Members of the Northeastern Ontario Municipal Association (NEOMA) are gearing up to create a professional lobbying effort to represent their interests.

Saturday, at NEOMA’s meeting held at Cochrane’s Tim Horton Event Centre, political leaders voted to establish a subcommittee to set up a framework for the lobby effort. It will report back to the group by early January, in time for member municipalities to support the effort in their 2012 budgets.

“I am happy that we are actually rolling up our sleeves and getting active on this issue,” Cochrane Mayor Peter Politis told The Daily Press after the meeting. “I know we’ve been talking for a long time about not having a value (to the Northern perspective) in the legislature.

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Vale’s massive Newfoundland nickel refinery takes shape – by Paul Brent (Canadian Mining Journal – September, 2011)

The Canadian Mining Journal is Canada’s first mining publication providing information on Canadian mining and exploration trends, technologies, operations, and industry events.

Vale Canada Ltd.’s $2.8-billion nickel processing facility at Long Harbour in Newfoundland will be a showcase for the mining giant’s newly developed hydrometallurgy refining technology when the plant is completed in early 2013.

Long Harbour, which will process 50,000 tons per year of nickel from the Voisey’s Bay concentrate deposit in Labrador, will operate much differently than traditional nickel processing facilities. The key difference is the use of hydrometallurgy or “hydromet” technology that utilizes a combination of water and oxygen under pressure to dissolve selected metals from the incoming concentrate.

“It is a process called POL, which means Pressure Oxidative Leaching,” says Rinaldo Stefan, who is project director of the Long Harbour processing plant.

For Vale, one of the big payoffs from the POL process is a significantly reduced sulphur dioxide footprint for the Long Harbour operation. As part of the traditional nickel refining process, sulphur is mixed with oxygen to be removed, captured and then converted into sulphuric acid to be disposed of.

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Planning for a gold mine: Plan Nord’s impact on Quebec’s mining industry – by Nochane Rousseau (Canadian Mining Journal – September, 2011)

The Canadian Mining Journal is Canada’s first mining publication providing information on Canadian mining and exploration trends, technologies, operations, and industry events.

Nochane Rousseau, Leader, Mining Industry Services and Plan Nord Project – PwC. For more information, please visit PwC’s mining site at: www.pwc.com/ca/mining.

“The plan addresses these issues [infrastructure] by
outlining actions the Quebec government will take to
build the necessary strategic infrastructure in
territories with the highest economic potential—an
“if you build it, they will come” mentality.”

“Beyond being rich in resources, the province’s mining
industry is well established and affordable
hydro-electricity is a competitive advantage for miners
operating in Quebec.” (Nochane Rousseau, Leader, Mining
Industry Services and Plan Nord Project – PwC)

Twenty-five years may seem like a lifetime away, but the Quebec government’s Plan Nord could result in a huge transformation of Northern Quebec in what’s, in reality, a relatively short amount of time, given its ambitious objectives.

The numbers are nothing short of impressive. The Quebec Government projects Plan Nord to lead to over $80 billion in investments – $47 billion towards renewable energy and $33 billion for investments in the mining sector and public infrastructure such as roads, rail and airports. It will also create or consolidate about 20,000 jobs per year over a 25-year period. In its recently released plan, the government says it hopes the initiative will be to the coming decades what the development of La Manicouagan and James Bay were to the 1960-70s.

The mining industry could play a huge part in this investment. The 1.2 million km area the plan covers is a wealth of untapped opportunities that could surely captivate the interest of domestic and global mining companies. This territory produces all of Quebec’s nickel, zinc and iron ore, to name a few, and also represents a significant portion of gold production.

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How Canada’s economy can come down – David Frum (National Post – September 24, 2011)

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

Is Canada’s luck finally running out? Through three bad economic years, Canada has emerged as an island of relative stability amid the global storm. More Canadians are working today than were working in the summer of 2008. No other major Western economy has done so well.

Canada has the lowest debt burden of any G7 country. The turmoil in the Eurozone and the gloom in the United States feel very far away from the stability and prosperity of Canada.

Yet Canadians should be warned:

I was talking the other day to a diplomat from a small northern European country. I congratulated him on his nation’s relative economic success. He shrugged. “It’s only a matter of time. You cannot long remain a winner country in a loser region.”

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Republic of Mining.com Stan Sudol CBC Radio Sudbury Interview (March 9, 2011)

Wednesday March 9, 2011   A new miner is going to drill the ocean floor for nickel nodules. Offshore oil and gas companies are about to be joined by a mining company extracting nickel and copper. Stan Sudol is a blogger (RepublicOfMining.com) and mining industry watcher in Toronto he fills us in: http://www.cbc.ca/morningnorth/past-episodes/2011/03/09/a-new-miner-is-going-to-drill-the-ocean-floor-for-nickel-nodules-mar-092011/