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Peregrines disrupt Vale’s [Sudbury] demo plans – by Harold Carmichael (Sudbury Star – May 31, 2011)

The Sudbury Star, is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper. This article was published on May 31, 2011.  hcarmichael@thesudburystar.com

It has been closed since 1980, but don’t tell a pair of peregrine falcons.

As far as the endangered raptors are concerned, the upper parts of Vale’s Iron Ore Recovery Plant off Fielding Road in Copper Cliff make for a perfect nesting area where they won’t be disturbed.

In fact, the pair — either descendants of young peregrines brought from Alberta to Greater Sudbury back in the early 1990s during Project Peregrine Sudbury or original birds released here — have been making the long-closed building their summer home for four years.

“I would expect so,” said Allison Merla, senior environmental analyst at Vale’s Greater Sudbury operations. “Peregrines will return to the same nesting area year after year.” While the pair’s nest was visible in previous years, it appears this year the nest is situated inside the structure.

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Claims of sexual abuses in Tanzania blow to Barrick Gold – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – May 31, 2011)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

“These deplorable crimes, if confirmed, are neither acceptable nor excusable.
They send a clear message to us that we have not met the promises we have
made to the community, and to ourselves, to pursue responsible mining in every
location where we and our affiliates operate. We can, and will, do more.”
(Barrick statement to The Globe and Mail)

NORTH MARA, TANZANIA – Just two weeks after the fatal shooting of seven people at one of its Tanzanian gold mines, Barrick Gold Corp. is investigating allegations of sexual assault by about a dozen police and security guards at the same violence-plagued mine.

The Toronto-based corporate giant, the world’s biggest gold miner, is already reeling from allegations of gang rape by its security guards at another of its subsidiaries, in Papua New Guinea.

The deaths and alleged abuses at the Barrick sites, which began years ago but failed to gain wide attention until recently, are accelerating Barrick’s efforts to introduce stronger rules for investigating human-rights problems at its 26 mines around the world. The latest case comes as investors have been urging Canadian companies operating overseas in tough and lawless environments to push for more transparency instead of tolerating human-rights abuses.

Barrick recently became the first Canadian mining company to sign up to the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, an international set of guidelines for extractive industries, which oblige it to investigate and report any credible information about human-rights abuses at its workplaces.

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For resource value, reject the helicopter model [Vale/Voisey Bay] – by Jim Stanford (Globe and Mail – May 30, 2011)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

Jim Stanford is an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers union.

Natural resources are increasingly central to Canada’s economic trajectory. Our challenge is to maximize the positive spinoffs from resource developments, while minimizing the economic and environmental costs. In that regard, imagine two extreme cases: one in which resource projects generate diversified and lasting benefits, and one in which they do not.

Consider the negative case first. Suppose a resource is discovered in a remote northern location. Using helicopters, a foreign-owned company flies in necessary capital equipment and supplies, even labour. The resource is transported to global markets, also using helicopters. The profits are exported to the foreign owner, and much of the spending on tools, supplies and specialized workers also leaves the country (since these have been imported). Canada’s GDP is boosted for a while (until the resource runs out), but much of that wealth never “touches down” here.

The opposite to this negative “helicopter” model is a strategy that maximizes Canadian participation in every phase of the development: exploration, investment, production, supply chain and transportation. This doesn’t happen automatically. It takes deliberate measures by the developer (prodded and assisted by government) to maximize lasting benefits to Canadians.

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Memo to Drummond and McGuinty: Consolidate Ontario Mining Programs at Laurentian University – by Stan Sudol

Stan Sudol is a Toronto-based communications consultant who writes extensively on mining issues. stan.sudol@republicofmining.com

The Sudbury Basin itself, is the third most strategic and richest hardrock
mining centre in the world. The four combined mining clusters found in
Sudbury – mineral operations, education, research and supply and
services – are globally unique. (Stan Sudol)

Ontario’s mining industry is facing a perfect storm of skills shortages – mining engineers and geologists – at a time of severe provincial budget constraints. These fiscal problems will only diminish the mineral sector’s post-secondary education programs at a time when global economies are experiencing the most extraordinary demands for metal products in the history of mankind – a commodity super cycle.

According to the Mining Industry Human Resource Council’s (MiHR) 2010 Canadian Mining Industry Employment and Hiring Forecast report, under the baseline scenario the Canadian mining industry will need to hire 100,000 new workers by the end of 2020. This is the number of workers required to fill newly created positions and also to meet replacement demand as workers retire or leave the mining industry.

That forecast represents MiHR’s baseline scenario, if commodity prices perform better than expected (the expansionary scenario), the cumulative hiring requirements could reach nearly 135,000 workers by 2020.

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More professional programs calling Northern Ontario home – by Louise Brown (Toronto Star – May 28, 2011)

Louise Brown is the education reporter for the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion.

There’s a new northern exposure to higher education in Ontario. First there was a fancy $95 million two-campus med school launched in cities known more for training drillers than doctors: Sudbury and Thunder Bay.

Then the lofty Law Society of Upper Canada gave its blessing this month to Thunder Bay’s dream for a law school, leaving Lakehead University to hope for provincial approval — and funding.

And this week, Queen’s Park approved a $44 million new school of architecture for Sudbury, kicking in $21 million. With the city pledging another $10 million for a program it hopes will pump $50 million a year into the Big Nickel’s economy, Canada seems poised to land its first new architecture school in 40 years.

Doctors, lawyers, architects — why so many blue-chip professional programs in the green woodlands that hold only 6 per cent of Ontario’s population?

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Why Maples’s bid is best fate for [Canadian] TMX – by David Olive (Toronto Star – May 28, 2011)

David Olive is a business columnist with the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. dolive@thestar.ca

TMX accounts for nearly six of ten publicly traded mining firms worldwide. Last year,
they raised $17.8 billion in equity capital, about 60 per cent of the world mining total.
Close to 200 foreign resource firms have their principal listings on TMX exchanges,
though many lack Canadian assets. (David Olive – Toronto Star Business Columnist)

By 150-year-old tradition, TMX is in the business of nurturing its staggering 1,531 listed mining firms into global giants like Barrick Gold Corp. and Teck Resources Ltd.

If it succeeds, the rival bid for TMX Group Inc., owner of the Toronto Stock Exchange, will make history far beyond derailing a takeover offer for TMX made by London Stock Exchange PLC in February, supported by Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal.

The nine-member Maple Group Acquisition Corp., a consortium of four Canadian banks and five pension funds, seeks to further strengthen a TMX already regarded by investors worldwide as the “go-to” exchange for trading in resource firms, notably mining companies.

Current conventional wisdom has it that an urge to merge will result in a handful of global mega-exchanges.

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[Toronto Star freelance] Journalist deported for investigating [Barrick] mine massacre – by Jocelyn Edwards (Toronto Star – May 29, 2011)

The Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada, has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion.

But local leaders accuse the company of complicity in the conduct of the police,
because it employs officers to provide mine security, and allege that African Barrick
is benefiting from it. (Jocelyn Edwards)  “A community that has been intimidated is a
community that can’t demand its rights from the company.” (Tanzanian MP Tundu Lissu)

Reporter for the Star questioned in Tanzania as string of arrests follows deaths at Barrick site

KAMPALA, UGANDA—Given that I had been followed around the tiny town for two days by men in ’80s-style wraparound sunglasses, it wasn’t really a surprise to me when I finally got arrested last Thursday in northern Tanzania.

I had gone to the East African nation to investigate the deaths of five villagers gunned down at a mine in North Mara belonging to African Barrick, a subsidiary of Toronto-based mining giant Barrick Gold Corp. Barrick said the men killed by security forces — initial reports had pegged the death toll at seven — were “intruders.” Family members of the victims said the gold-laced stones the men routinely collected at the mine were their only means of survival.

Trucks of police in full riot gear patrolled the streets of Tarime, the town nearest the mine. The situation was tense and relatives of the deceased were huddled together in a compound.

Tuesday morning, I woke up and found the room next to mine empty. The environmental and human rights lawyer who had been staying there had been arrested, along with seven other people who had been guarding the bodies of the victims at the town mortuary.

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[Goldcorp’s] Ian Telfer: ‘I’m more of an opportunist than a visionary’ – by Andy Hoffman (Globe and Mail – May 28, 2011)

 The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

Ian Telfer was a screw-up. The Canadian mining industry luminary didn’t exactly excel during his undergraduate days in university. He was too busy having fun.

So at 25, after doing some travelling and bouncing around at entry-level jobs for a few years, he was exceedingly grateful to have been accepted (at the absolute last moment with two days until classes) to the University of Ottawa’s MBA program.

“I was not cum laude,” he smirks with a creviced grin. So appreciative was Mr. Telfer, in fact, that he has since created a scholarship awarded annually to the program entrant with the lowest university marks.

Despite a playful and self-deprecating sense of humour, the unusual academic endowment isn’t just a lark. It tells you all you need to know about the 65-year-old’s sense of self and his perceived place among Canada’s corporate elite.

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Battered [Sudbury] nickel regaining lustre – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – May 28, 2011)

Lisa Wright is a business reporter with the Toronto Star, which has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on Canada’s federal and provincial politics as well as shaping public opinion. This article was originally published May 28, 2011.

Two little Sudbury-area miners reopen amid a resource rebound

If Bill Anderson had a nickel for every time someone asked him why he’s not in the gold mining business, he could open a nickel mine. After all, gold is synonymous with glamour and wealth while nickel, at least for Canadians, is synonymous with, well…Sudbury. Jokes aside, the lifelong geologist took all those cocktail party digs and opened a little nickel mine.

First Nickel Inc., which CEO Anderson co-founded, scooped up the old Lockerby mine in the Sudbury basin from former Canadian mining giant Falconbridge (now Xstrata Plc) in 2005.

And it seemed like the good times would never end as nickel prices soared to what Anderson calls “silly” levels of nearly $25 U.S. a pound, prompting foreign mining conglomerates Xstrata of Switzerland and Brazil’s Vale to take over historic Sudbury foes Falconbridge and Inco respectively for top dollar at what turned out to be the height of the market.

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Cold War relic [in Northern Ontario] ‘Site 500’ gets costly cleanup – by Steve Ladurantaye (Globe and Mail – May 27, 2011)

 The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous impact and influence on Canada’s political and business elite as well as the rest of the country’s print, radio and television media.

Six decades after the radar operators gave up their search for Russian bombers streaking across the Northern Ontario sky, a massive cleanup effort will finally begin to erase a ghost town that was very briefly one of Canada’s most important military installations.

The town doesn’t even have a formal name – military documents simply refer to it as Site 500. It was the operations centre for the Ontario portion of the Mid Canada Line Radar installation, a network of 17 sites built as part of a national network in the 1950s to monitor the skies for foreign invaders.

Site 500 is now at the centre of the largest environmental remediation project ever undertaken in Ontario. Its scale is dwarfed only by the national cleanup of the Distant Early Warning radar line – a more northern string of radar installations that the federal government has already spent half a billion dollars cleaning.

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Quebec to Spend Billions to Develop Resources in Northern Regions- by Ian Austen (New York Times – May 10, 2011)

 www.nytimes.com

OTTAWA — Quebec province, anticipating renewed interest in its natural resources, rolled out on Monday an ambitious 25-year plan to develop its vast but largely untouched northern and Arctic regions.

The region is well endowed with mineral resources, woodlands and potential hydroelectric developments, but it lacks the roads, railways, ports, communications links and other infrastructure necessary for their exploitation.

The plan initially commits the province to spending 2.1 billion Canadian dollars ($2.2 billion). It also calls for a variety of measures, including the establishment of an investment fund, which Quebec hopes will initially lead to the development of at least 11 mines and ultimately produce overall investment of 80 billion Canadian dollars.

While the proposed project, known as Plan Nord, includes banning any industrial activity in a large portion of the mainly pristine region, the program has the potential to put the province at odds with environmentalists. Similarly, while consultations are already under way between the province and the area’s large native Canadian population, the development of their traditional lands may pose potential political difficulties.

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VALE NEWS RELEASE: $200 MILLION CORe PROJECT CONSTRUCTION UNDERWAY AT VALE’S

www.nickel.vale.com

For Immediate Release

SUDBURY, May 27, 2011 – Vale today announced that construction has begun on the Company’s CORe (Challenging Ore Recovery) project at Clarabelle Mill. The $200 million investment will increase metal recoveries at the mill by four per cent, increasing the value extracted from existing resources.

“The CORe project is part of a $3.4 billion investment plan Vale announced for our Sudbury operations in November of last year,” said Jon Treen, General Manager of Vale’s Ontario Operations. “This investment will help modernize our operations and contribute to our ongoing competitiveness and sustainability for years to come in Sudbury.”

The CORe project includes the construction of a new 38,000 square foot flotation plant containing a new flotation system using state-of-the-art technology. The project also involves technology improvements to existing mill infrastructure including installation of a new Isa Mill and replacement of flotation cells. A new dry (change house) is also part of the project along with a construction and equipment laydown yard to accommodate the anticipated workforce.

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NEWS RELEASE: VALE AWARDS MAJOR CONTRACT FOR LONG HARBOUR [NEWFOUNDLAND & LABRADOR] PROCESSING PLANT

www.nickel.vale.com

May 26, 2011 – Vale has awarded a two-year $600 million contract to KBAC Constructors, a Kiewit – BMA – G.J. Cahill  Partnership to provide mechanical, piping, electrical and instrumentation services for the construction of the Long Harbour Processing Plant in Newfoundland and Labrador.

KBAC is a partnership of Peter Kiewit Infrastructure Co., BMA Constructors – a Black & McDonald-Alberici Joint Venture and G.J. Cahill & Company (1979) Limited. 

“The mechanical, piping, electrical and instrumentation services contract is the largest single contract that we have awarded to date on the Long Harbour construction project and one of the largest supplier contracts awarded at Vale,” said John Pollesel, Chief Operating Officer for Vale’s Base Metals Business in North Atlantic. “The partners in the KBAC partnership have been working with us over the last year and we are very pleased to see them come together in a partnership to work on this part of the project.” 

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The running out of resources myth – by Brian Lee Crowley (National Post – May 27, 2011)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper. This article was originally published in the Financial Post on May 27, 2011.

Brian Lee Crowley is the managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a national public policy think-tank based in Ottawa. www.macdonaldlaurier.ca

Markets and ingenuity will ensure supply

The premise behind the question “Are we running out of natural resources?” is terribly mistaken. There is indeed a finite quantity of fossil fuels and other resources in the Earth’s crust. But that does not mean that we will ever run out of them. In fact, human beings will likely cease using fossil fuels long before we have used them up, and this transition is independent of any policy designed to speed up the development of alternative energy sources.

Fears that we are running out of commodities are not new. In the 18th century, Thomas Malthus predicted that mass starvation would result from an inability of the food supply to adjust for rapid population growth. In the 1970s, the Club of Rome predicted massive shortages of natural resources due to overconsumption and overpopulation, with disastrous effects on human health and material well-being. In 1980, The Global 2000 Report to the President noted that: “If present trends continue, the world in 2000 will be more crowded, more polluted, less stable ecologically, and more vulnerable to disruption than the world we live in now.… ”

But the ecosystem hasn’t collapsed. We haven’t run out of oil. We are still successfully feeding ourselves. Our incomes are rising and our health status is improving around the globe. Why?

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[Quebec] Mining’s future looks bright – by Robert Gibbons (Montreal Gazette – April 27, 2011)

www.montrealgazette.com

Quebec is embarking on expansion driven by growth in Asia-Pacific region and Latin America

Quebec’s mining industry may well be on the cusp of historic long-term expansion, despite fears that surging commodity markets may stumble with a slowdown in China’s growth, the Japanese nuclear crisis, North African and Mid-East turmoil and Europe’s debt.

Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney thinks the global commodity boom will continue for many years, though with plenty of volatility on the way, based on economic expansion in the Asia-Pacific region and in Latin America.

And Rio Tinto Group CEO Tom Albanese, leader of one of the world’s top three mining firms and frequent visitor to China, outlines the main driving force for higher base metals and iron ore prices:

About 2.5 billion Asians are yearning after more cars, refrigerators, roads, bridges and infrastructure, communications, aircraft and homes, absorbing lots more steel, copper, zinc and many other metals. India and other populous Asian countries are urbanizing on the Chinese model and adding to the pressure.

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