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Lithium exploration ramp up: Canada is primed to become a supplier of lithium to help fill the looming gap for the energy transition – by Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco (CIM Magazine – March 20, 2023)

https://magazine.cim.org/en/

In 1950, the authors of a federal government document entitled “The Miscellaneous Non-Metal Mining Industry” noted that Canada had little to no known use for lithium. “Thus, an outside market would have to be found for any production,” the authors concluded.

Such uses for lithium as lubricants, glass, ceramics and pharmaceuticals would subsequently open up niche markets for the white mineral, but over the decades lithium exploration and mining in Canada have remained sporadic, with mines being few and far between.

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Mining lobby warns Ottawa against taking miners for granted in push for more aid – by Naimul Karim (National Post – March 21, 2023)

https://financialpost.com/

Missing link in government strategy is the millions needed to build the mines

The head of Canada’s top mining association said Ottawa’s strategy to build an electric vehicle industry could fail if it doesn’t encourage miners through tax credits and other incentives to construct the mines needed to produce critical minerals that power EVs, such as nickel and lithium.

Existing policies have encouraged the hunt for new mineral deposits in Canada, and have brought investment from big automakers and battery companies such as Volkswagen Group and LG Energy Solutions in the past year, said Pierre Gratton, head of the Mining Association of Canada.

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Glencore Set to Lose Crown as Top Cobalt Miner to China’s CMOC – by Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – March 21, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — A Chinese miner is set to overtake Glencore Plc as the world’s top cobalt producer this year, as the rush for critical green-energy metals intensifies.

The challenger to Glencore’s dominant position is CMOC Group, which first became a major player in the cobalt market when it acquired the Tenke Fungurume mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2016. The company aims to double production this year, as it brings another massive Congolese mine online in the second quarter. That will propel it past Glencore, company filings show.

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Falling Lithium Prices Are Making Electric Cars More Affordable – by Jack Ewing and Clifford Krauss (New York Times – March 20, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Lithium, the common ingredient in almost all electric-car batteries, has become so precious that it is often called white gold. But something surprising has happened recently: The metal’s price has fallen, helping to make electric vehicles more affordable.

Since January, the price of lithium has dropped nearly 20 percent, according to Benchmark Minerals, even as sales of electric vehicles have soared. Cobalt, another important battery material, has fallen by more than half. Copper, essential to electric motors and batteries, has slipped about 18 percent, even though U.S. mines and copper-rich countries like Peru are struggling to increase production.

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Column: The return of the London Metal Exchange’s nickel curse – by Andy Home (Reuters – March 21, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, March 21 (Reuters) – The London Metal Exchange (LME) has discovered that some of its registered nickel is missing. Nine warrants, equivalent to 54 tonnes, have been declared invalid after being found to be “non-conformant with the contract specifications”, the LME said in a March 17 notice. What should have been bags of nickel briquettes grading at least 99.8% pure metal have turned out to be bags of stones.

The incident comes one month after Trafigura took a $577 million charge against cargoes of nickel that turned out to be steel. The trading company alleges “a systematic fraud” and is pursuing legal action against companies associated with Indian businessman Prateek Gupta. A spokesperson for Gupta has said that they were preparing “a robust response” to the allegations.

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The Drift: Sudbury-raised CEO picked to plot the path in the Ring of Fire – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – March 22, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Groomed at Glencore, Kristan Straub now helms Ring of Fire Metals

Talk of a weekend snowstorm about to hit Sudbury rings up pangs of jealousy from Kristan Straub. A weather forecast calling for 30 to 50 centimetres of fresh powder is cause for impending calamity in the ‘burbs of the GTA where the newly appointed CEO of Ring of Fire Metals now resides.

But to Straub, 48, it’s a siren call to the snowmobile trails for the Sudbury-raised outdoor enthusiast. For now, those recreational pursuits will have to be put on hold. On March 1, Straub was introduced as the new boss of the Australian-owned James Bay mine developer, just days prior to the start of the PDAC mining conference in Toronto, one of the industry’s biggest global get-togethers. He was recruited from Glencore where was vice-president of exploration with the nickel team.

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Sudbury, A to Z – by Peter Carter (Pete’s Blog and Grille – March 6, 2023)

http://www.petesblogandgrille.com/

In June of this year, about 200 members of the Canadian Travel Media Association will be meeting in my hometown of Sudbury, Ont., for their annual conference. While I am neither a member of the travel media association nor did the organizers ask my help, I thought I would create this list of things those visitors to Sudbury should know about so they’ll return home knowing that–of all the places on the planet that they have ever visited–my hometown is one of the–if not the–most significant.

I’m serious. What makes a tourist destination worth remembering? Geography? Historic events? Architecture? Local wines? Famous people? Big battles? Stuff you can’t see anywhere else, like the famous terracotta armies buried in the tomb of the first emperor of China around 200 B.C?

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Volkswagen to invest in mines in bid to become global battery supplier – (CTV News – March 17, 2023)

https://www.ctvnews.ca/

BERLIN – Volkswagen plans to invest in mines to bring down the cost of battery cells, meet half of its own demand and sell to third-party customers, the carmaker’s board member in charge of technology said.

Its strategy aligns with a wider trend of carmakers seeking greater control over parts of the supply chain traditionally left to third parties, from energy generation to raw material sourcing, as they compete for scarce resources they urgently need to meet electrification targets.

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‘Original fear of missing out’: Gold price explodes and could test $2k after best week in 3 years – analysts – by Anna Golubova (Kitco News – March 17, 2023)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) The gold market surged as prices saw their best week in three years amidst the fallout of the banking sector. Analysts are not ruling out a test of the $2,000 an ounce level next week as markets look past the Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

The precious metal rose from $1,867 an ounce to above $1,980 this week, posting a gain of more than $110 and its best performance since March 2020. April Comex gold futures were last trading at $1,988 an ounce, up $65 on the day.

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Sudbury’s regreening expertise taking root in Peru (Northern Ontario Business – March 17, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

City of Greater Sudbury signs letter of intent with Peruvian region to promote innovation and cooperation

Sudbury’s environmental remediation expertise is being exported to Peru. The City of Greater Sudbury and the regional government of Moquegua, two international mining centres, have signed a letter of intent of cooperation during the recent PDAC mining show in Toronto earlier this month.

According to a city news release, this alliance letter recently signed is a formal relationship builder between the Nickel City and this region of Peru with the intention that it will mutually “stimulate economic development, workforce development, battery and microchips development, research and remediation technology, and curricula transfer, helping people and businesses on both sides of the Americas thrive.”

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Indigenous ownership models gain steam alongside critical minerals rush – by Alisha Hiyate (Northern Miner – March 15, 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

As this year’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention returned to its March slot in Toronto, welcoming nearly 24,000 attendees, the buzz was undoubtedly around critical and battery metals.

During the event, the federal government doled out money for juniors to advance their projects (including Search Metals, E3 Lithium and FPX Nickel), and federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told reporters that the government would consider financial support for the construction of new mines as the United States has recently started to do.

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OPINION: To develop Ontario’s Ring of Fire, we must develop trust with First Nations – by Virginia Heffernan (Globe and Mail – March 17, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Virginia Heffernan is a mining writer and the author of Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness.

One of the barriers to development in the Ring of Fire, a mineral-rich area in Ontario’s far north, is lack of trust. The Ring of Fire metal deposits lie within Treaty Nine lands.

Signed by the Crown and the region’s First Nations at the beginning of the 20th century, the treaty allowed the Crown to acquire land from Cree and Ojibway peoples in the James Bay Lowlands for white settlement and resource development. In exchange, Indigenous peoples were promised cash payments, reserves to live on, education for their children and hunting, fishing and trapping rights.

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Worry, mistrust meet plans to secure waste from Niger uranium mine (France24.com – March 15, 2023)

https://www.france24.com/en/

Arlit (Niger) (AFP) – Towering mounds dot the desert landscape in northern Niger’s Arlit region, but there is little natural about them — they are heaps of partially radioactive waste left from four decades of operations at one of the world’s biggest uranium mines.

An ambitious 10-year scheme costing $160 million is underway to secure the waste and avoid risks to health and the environment, but many local people are worried or sceptical. From 1978, France’s nuclear giant Areva, now called Orano, worked the area under a subsidiary, the Akouta Mining Company (Cominak).

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Troubled Canadian diamond mine Ekati gets new life as Australian company takes control – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – March 16, 2023)

https://financialpost.com/

Burgundy is paying US$136 million to assume control from Arctic Canadian

The Ekati complex, a star-crossed diamond mining operation in Northwest Territories, is getting a new life. Ekati has changed hands several times in the past decade, and has struggled in recent years. But Australia’s Burgundy Diamond Mines Ltd. sees promise, announcing this week that it would pay US$136 million to assume control from Ekati’s current owner, Arctic Canadian Diamond Co. Ltd.

The deal is expected to close in April. Burgundy, based in Perth and listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, said in a press release that the current life-of-mine plan supports operations until 2028, and that investments could further extend mining. In 2022, Ekati delivered US$494 million in revenue and 4.1 million karats of diamonds were recovered, the press release said.

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State lawmakers join call to feds to intervene in Canadian mining upriver of Alaska – by Sage Smiley (Alaska Public Radio – March 16, 2023)

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Southeast Alaska lawmakers are joining tribal and municipal governments, calling on the federal government to stop – at least temporarily – British Columbia’s mining activities in transboundary watersheds.

Southeast Alaska’s major river systems – the Taku, Unuk and Stikine – originate in British Columbia. Those transboundary watersheds are peppered with mineral claims, active mines and shuttered former mining operations.

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