OUAGADOUGOU, Nov 28 (Reuters) – A gold mining boom in Burkina Faso over the last decade propelled Boukary Diallo from being a vendor on a market stall to running a meat business supplying a mine near Ouahigouya, his home town in the north of the country.
But as the West African country loses territory to Islamist militants and lurches from coup to coup, threatening to turn the boom to bust, Diallo is concerned he will be unable to retain all of his ten employees.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
With a cost estimate of $4.38-billion, remediation of the Giant Mine, one of the most contaminated sites in Canada, is also expected to be the most expensive federal environmental cleanup in the country’s history.
The figure, recently approved by the Treasury Board of Canada, spans costs from 2005 until 2038, when active remediation at the former Yellowknife gold mine is anticipated to end. That includes $710-million the federal government said has already been spent, but does not include costs for long-term care and maintenance.
(Bloomberg) — The warnings keep getting louder: the world is hurtling toward a desperate shortage of copper. Humans are more dependent than ever on a metal we’ve used for 10,000 years; new deposits are drying up, and the type of breakthrough technologies that transformed other commodities have failed to materialize for copper. Until now.
In what could prove a game changer for global supply, a US startup says it’s solved a puzzle that has frustrated the mining world for decades. If successful, the discovery by Jetti Resources could unlock millions of tons of new copper to feed power grids, building sites and car fleets around the globe, narrowing and possibly even closing the deficit.
A company advancing a large nickel-cobalt project in Timmins is already planning its applications for a new provincial fund. Today, Minister of Mines and Timmins MPP George Pirie was at Northern College to launch the Critical Minerals Innovation Fund.
The two-year, $5-million initiative is “to support research, development and commercialization of technologies, processes and solutions for critical minerals,” said Pirie.
Wearing gloves, jewels are draped on velvet in the window of a shop in Antwerp’s diamond district. The Belgian port city has been one of the hubs for the gemstone business since the 15th century.
According to the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, 37 billion euros are turned over here every year, discreetly and confidentially. When asked where the diamonds come from, a jeweler replies with a laugh: “I’d rather not ask.” His reluctance is not entirely unfounded.
https://www.thejakartapost.com/
The recent decision of the panel of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Body against Indonesia’s policy of banning raw nickel export should not in any way distract the government’s focus on its well-designed strategy to develop the processing of nickel and other minerals in the country.
The government should instead appeal against the verdict of the panel which ruled in favor of the European Union’s complaint that the Indonesian raw nickel export ban imposed since January 2020 violated WTO rules.
(Bloomberg) — The Democratic Republic of Congo wants a mining deal it signed with China more than a decade ago to be reworked, with a view to securing all the funding that was pledged for infrastructure projects and a share of windfall profits.
A review of the 2008 minerals-for-infrastructure contract that includes the Sicomines copper-cobalt mining project should ideally be concluded by year-end, Congolese Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde said in an interview in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, during the COP27 climate summit. Additional payments were warranted because the project was making super-profits due to a surge in commodity prices, he said.
After a crushing 11-year downturn, the uranium sector is experiencing the beginning of a revival. Many are hoping that this is the one that turns the sector into a key player in the decarbonized economy of the future.
The last time junior uranium explorers had so much reason to be optimistic was in the years between 2004 and 2008. Duane Parnham, executive chairman and CEO of the Toronto-based uranium junior exploration company Madison Metals, recalls that excitement is what got him into the sector after attending the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) annual convention in 2006.
Pressure on carmakers in the EV battery supply chain is only building.
Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) faced with an 8-fold increase in lithium prices, convulsions on the nickel market and ever-present worries about cobalt supply from the Congo, are being forced to look downstream to secure supply for their ambitious expansion plans.
Andy Miller, chief operating officer of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, told an annual industry gathering in Los Angeles last week that soaring lithium prices and LME nickel market turmoil are signs of the huge momentum that is building in the battery supply chain.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/
Members of Norway House Cree Nation raised concerns about information sharing, environmental impacts and community employment at a consultation for a potential nickel mine in the area.
Last Thursday, Flying Nickel Mining Corporation and the Government of Manitoba hosted a public consultation around the Minago Nickel Project — a possible development following a memorandum of understanding that was signed by the First Nation’s chief and Flying Nickel in February. The mine could be under construction starting in 2024.
Chris Keefer, a physician, is president of Canadians for Nuclear and director of Doctors for Nuclear Energy.
CANDU, the made-in-Canada nuclear reactor technology that powered the Ontario coal phaseout, North America’s greatest greenhouse-gas reduction, is the victim of a bizarre form of reverse protectionism that favours overseas supply chains and technologies over homegrown ones.
The federal government recently announced a 30 per cent “Clean Technology Investment Tax Credit” to incentivize spending on a range of clean-energy technologies, such as wind, solar and storage.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Two law firms have filed suit against Barrick Gold Corp. in Ontario Superior Court on behalf of 21 Tanzanians who allege that they or their family members were killed, injured or tortured by police guarding a Barrick gold mine.
The case, filed on Wednesday morning, is the first to be pursued against Barrick in Canadian courts for alleged human rights violations at its mines abroad. It follows a landmark Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 2020 that allowed a Vancouver-based mining company to be sued in British Columbia for alleged abuses in Eritrea.
LONDON, Nov 24 (Reuters) – It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times. At least when it comes to mining coal. After years of decline, demand for the polluting fossil fuel has surged this year as Europe scrambles to replace Russian gas, and coal miners are making money hand over fist.
With coal prices hitting record highs, companies would normally expand their operations, but projects are being left on the table as most Western banks stand by climate pledges to restrict lending to the sector, according to a dozen mining company executives and investors.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Magna Mining completes acquisition of former Inco mine with growth plans afoot in the Sudbury camp
Sudbury is historically known for nickel. But there remain hundreds of millions of tonnes of overlooked and valuable mineral commodities left behind by mining activity over the decades.
An upstart mining company with ambitions to be Sudbury’s next producer is seizing on an opportunity to bring a former INCO mine back into production, possibly by the end of next year.
Already a wind energy powerhouse, the state of Wyoming’s economy is 65% tied to mining — most of that coal mining. Wyoming has been the top coal-producing state since 1986, accounting for about two-fifths of all coal mined in the United States in 2020, but the industry has seen its reputation blackened.
Industry innovators, however, are tapping coal and its waste streams to extract rare earths, 17 essential elements to realizing an electrified economy. Mining them can be challenging as materials needed are either not yet mined, or are latent in old coal mines.
