BARCELONA, Sept 15 (Reuters) – Europe’s power crisis, production cuts and shortages of aluminium have left consumers in a quandary about Russian supplies of the metal vital for the region’s transport, construction and packaging industries.
Some are choosing to shun Rusal’s metal, while others are more sanguine – pointing to the fact that neither the company nor its metal is under sanctions imposed on other Russian companies after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
The surge in prices of lithium, the key battery material used to power electric cars, is seemingly unstoppable.
Lithium carbonate hit a fresh record of 500,500 yuan ($71,315) a ton in China Friday, according to data from Asian Metal Inc. Prices more than tripled in the past year, inflating the cost of batteries used in electric vehicles, with recent gains driven by strong demand and disruptions at a domestic producing hub.
Consumer support for new-energy vehicles has been gathering pace amid a global transition away from fossil fuels.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/
Province is home to 2 rare earth processing plants
If Canada acts now, it could be a competitor in the electric vehicle battery supply chain, boosting the economy and adding jobs — and Saskatchewan could play a pivotal role.
That’s according to a report released Wednesday by Clean Energy Canada alongside the non-profit Trillium Network for Advanced Manufacturing, looking at Canada’s potential in the electric vehicle sector. The report says that sector could add up to 250,000 jobs by 2030 and $48 billion to the economy each year.
https://www.northernminer.com/
Quebec, more than any other province in Canada, has been ahead of the curve in working to join the EV economy. Its vast hydroelectricity infrastructure gives it an advantage in clean, low-carbon energy that is essential to “green” manufacturing, and it has supported the nascent battery industry with significant public investment.
It was also the first to outline plans for critical minerals exploration and production as well as for the development of a complete battery supply chain in-province — from mining through processing to manufacturing.
Electric robots will soon be crawling along the sea floor and sucking up precious metals through a giant straw in a controversial trial to mine some of the ocean’s deepest, most pristine environments.
Deep-sea mining operator The Metals Company has been granted approval by the International Seabed Authority to begin testing its collection system in Pacific waters. It will be the first time since the 1970s that this has been allowed to occur.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
Canada Silver Cobalt Works finishes commissioning of its facility
Canada Silver Cobalt Works announced that its Temiskaming Testing Labs (TTL) in the town of Cobalt is fully operational and ready for processing mineralized material into silver dore bars.
The B.C.-based company is billing the rebuilt mineral processing facility as a zero discharge plant. Upgrades have been made to the second crushing circuit within the 20,000-square-foot building. A new gravity plant was also installed.
DONKIN, N.S. – A Cape Breton coal mine that was shuttered two years ago amid slumping coal prices and repeated government stop-work orders following roof falls has resumed operations.
Nova Scotia’s Labour Department says inspectors with its occupational health and safety team were on-site Tuesday as work began at the Donkin coal mine. The department says it will continue to conduct regular announced and unannounced inspections at the underground operation.
Gold plunged to its lowest since April 2020 on Thursday amid expectations of more aggressive interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve despite a fresh round of mixed data on the US economy.
Spot gold dipped 0.4% to $1,688.24 per ounce by 11:50 a.m. ET, having already fallen below the $1,700 mark earlier in the week. US gold futures had a more significant decline of 1.8% to $1,677.40 per ounce.
JAKARTA — The Indonesian unit of Brazilian mining giant Vale is embarking on three nickel processing projects worth a combined $8.6 billion with partners including Chinese battery materials producer Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and potentially U.S. automaker Ford Motor.
Vale Indonesia on Tuesday signed a preliminary agreement for the latest of the three projects — all on the island of Sulawesi — with Huayou. It comprises a plan to develop a nickel smelter with high pressure acid leaching (HPAL) technology near Vale Indonesia’s major operations in Sorowako, South Sulawesi province.
Beware of the uranium bubble. Investor enthusiasm for uranium stocks has increased their value by about one-third in the past few weeks.
They’ve actually been on a tear for a year. The latest bump followed Japan’s announcement last month that it will reopen nuclear power plants that have been mothballed since the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant disaster.
https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/
In 1992, a labour dispute that would last 18 months tore Yellowknife apart, culminating in an explosion that killed nine miners. The fallout of one of Canada’s largest mass murders still lingers in this northern city.
Today, Yellowknife only tangentially resembles its history as a gold mining town. The city sits atop the Canadian Shield, a large expanse of ancient bedrock, one of the world’s richest areas in terms of its mineral ores.
But a dilapidated mining headframe is one of the last vestiges of the area’s days as a gold mining capital. The city’s biggest gold mine has been closed for decades.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
A Canadian-owned mining company and two executives at its zinc mine in Burkina Faso have been convicted of involuntary homicide in connection with a flooding disaster that killed eight mine workers.
The flooding, which followed a sudden torrential rainfall at the site in April, trapped the workers underground and led to a 66-day search that eventually found them dead, several hundred metres below ground, after 165 million litres of water had been pumped out of the mine.
Jagersfontien, a small town in the middle of South Africa with over a century of mining history, awoke to a tragic failure of responsibility on 11 September 2022 when torrents of muddy water cascaded over the embankments that were meant to hold it back. The flood killed one person and devastated many homes.
The muddy water was the residue left over from the extraction of diamonds. The Jagersfontein mine traces its origins to a 50-carat diamond discovery in 1870. Mining began in earnest shortly after that and continued until 1971. Notable diamonds uncovered included the Excelsior and Reitz diamonds.
LONDON, Sept 14 (Reuters) – A massive and rapid deployment of renewable energy is central to Europe’s drive to end its dependency on Russian fossil fuels. Solar energy will be “the kingpin of this effort”, according to the European Commission.
The only problem is that the global solar supply chain is currently dominated by China, a dependency that will only grow if Europe continues losing industrial metals production capacity at current rates.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/
Canada needs a strategy quickly in order to capitalize on payoffs in jobs and economic growth
As climate change shows its growing destructive power in floods and droughts worldwide, even strong advocates for the transition from using fossil fuels to battery-powered electric vehicles know EVs won’t be enough to fix the problem.
But as the North American auto show opens to glitz and fanfare, a new report from two reputable Canadian research groups says that Canada has a brief window to be a major player in transforming an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually into something more climate friendly — and to make money doing it.
