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Time to Reinvigorate the U.S. Uranium Mining Industry – by Duggan Flanakin (Real Clear Energy – December 12, 2024)

https://www.realclearenergy.org/

Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow.

As Donald Trump returns to the White House, his nomination of Christopher Wright to serve as Secretary of Energy points to a major effort to revive domestic uranium mining. That’s especially good news, given the Biden Administration’s recent decision to discontinue importing uranium from Russia.

Further complicating the worldwide uranium supply chain, the military authorities in Niger, who now control that nation’s uranium mining operations, are putting the squeeze on French reliance on Niger’s uranium for its nuclear reactors. Niger, which produces about 5% of the world’s uranium, had been supplying 15% to 20% of France’s uranium imports.

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Child labour: Nigeria’s lithium mines reveal the dark side of our electric future – by Jerry Fisayo-Bambi and Ruth Wright (Euro News – December 13, 2024)

https://www.euronews.com/

Children as young as five-years-old were found to be working in one illegal mine.

Electric vehicles, laptops, battery packs, smartphones…it’s a long list of items we rely on every day that rely on a key material: lithium. But have you stopped to think who mines for this precious metal? In northern Nigeria, it has been found to be children. Lithium mining is dangerous and exhausting work.

Miners descend several feet into dark pits then wield axes to hack through rocks. In some old but viable mines, they crawl through yards of snaky, narrow passages, wedging themselves between unstable mud walls before starting to dig. Abdullahi Sabiu has spent years in these pits after he started working the mines at 20.

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Norilsk Nickel plans to sell all it produces in 2025 – by Anastasia Lyrchikova (Kitco/Reuters – December 13, 2024)

https://www.kitco.com/

Russia’s Nornickel, the world’s largest producer of palladium and a major producer of refined nickel, on Friday said it plans to sell everything it produces in 2025, despite challenging conditions in the metals markets.

Nornickel is not subject to direct Western sanctions, though restrictions against Moscow have prompted some Western companies to avoid buying Russian metal and complicated payment flows, leading Nornickel to redirect sales to Asia.

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Women take on mining giants in sexual harassment class action cases – by Hilary Whiteman (CNN.com – December 12, 2024)

https://www.cnn.com/

Brisbane, Australia (CNN) — Lawyers for women who claim they’ve been sexually harassed while working for global mining giants BHP and Rio Tinto say they’ve been inundated with emails since filing two class action cases in an Australian court.

The separate lawsuits, which were filed in the Federal Court in Sydney and revealed Wednesday by law firm JGA Saddler, alleges widespread and systematic sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the two companies’ worksites over the last two decades.

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OPINION: Study overstates lithium mining benefits – by Edward Bartell (This Is Reno – October 1, 2024)

https://thisisreno.com/

Edward Bartell is an Orovada rancher. His family ranch neighbors the Thacker Pass project in Humboldt County.

I am writing in response to the recent hype in numerous newspapers about the alleged benefits the Thacker Pass Lithium Mine will contribute to Nevada’s economy. Lithium Americas Corporation (LAC), which is developing Thacker Pass, is aggressively hyping a study pointing to these alleged benefits.

What LAC fails to mention is this study was conducted last year before the complete price collapse and assumes lithium prices to be more than double what they actually are. The touted study assumes lithium prices to be $24,000 per metric ton.

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Obituary: Diamond hunter Chris Jennings played a key role in finding Diavik deposit in Northwest Territories – by Matthew Hart (Globe and Mail – December 12, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

On Nov. 12, 1991, the Australian minerals giant BHP issued a spare, eight-sentence press release that dropped like a bomb on Canadian mining. At a tiny lake 300 kilometres northeast of Yellowknife, the company and its Canadian partners had discovered microdiamonds.

Canada would become a major diamond producer, but at the time the news stunned the mining community. Diamonds in the Arctic? A group of men and women who had spent their lives ransacking Canada for minerals gathered for a late-night meeting in Toronto as they tried to understand the news.

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Lithium leap: Brazil makes journey to become a leading supplier – by Anne Barbosa and Adriana Carvalho (S&P Global – August 15, 2024)

https://www.spglobal.com/

Brazil’s legislative overhaul in lithium export regulations has transformed the country into a burgeoning hub for lithium production, unlocking vast economic potential and attracting global investments.

“Thanks to a legislative change made four years ago regarding lithium exports, we can now transform this mineral asset into an economic resource,” Fernando Passalio, secretary of state for economic development of Minas Gerais, told S&P Global Commodity Insights.

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Agnico Eagle wants to buy its gold exploration neighbour in western Quebec – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – December 13, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Agnico eyes O3 Mining’s Marbon deposit with $204-million cash offer

Agnico Eagle is looking to expand its mining footprint in the Abitibi region. The Kirkland Lake and Detour Lake gold miner is making a takeover bid for O3 mining, a neighbouring gold company on the Quebec side of the prolific Abitibi mineral belt.

Agnico announced Dec. 12 that it has entered into a definitive support agreement to acquire all of the outstanding common shares of O3 in an offer valued at $204 million. The proposed deal is built around the acquisition of O3 Mining’s main asset, its Marban Alliance property, located outside Val d’Or, that is next to Agnico Eagle’s Canadian Malartic mine complex.

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South32 eyes Alaska’s copper under potential Trump policy changes – by Editor (Mining.com – December 11, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

Australia’s South32 is hopeful about a potential policy shift under Donald Trump’s second administration that could unlock access to the Ambler Mining District, a copper-rich region in northwest Alaska.

The company and its Canadian partner Trilogy Metals hold development rights and would benefit if plans for a controversial industrial road to the area gain approval. The 211-mile (340-km) road, which would enable mining operations in the region, was blocked in June by Interior Department due to environmental concerns.

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Chile Copper Firms Begin Talks on Combining Smelter Efforts – by James Attwood (Bloomberg News – December 11, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Codelco and Enami, Chile’s two state copper companies, are discussing the possibility of combining their respective efforts to expand smelting capacity into a single project, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

A new working group is looking into collaboration between a project to overhaul a shuttered Enami smelter and a separate proposal to build a new plant being organized by Codelco, said the people, who asked not to be identified given the talks are private and at an early stage.

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Jobs of the Future: Kenjgewin Teg, Legend Mining partnership ‘breaking down barriers’ to Indigenous unemployment – by Casey Stranges (Northern Ontario Business – December 9, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Mentorship and training partnership touted by organizers as a “bridge” to employment for Indigenous youth in Northern Ontario

Scott Rienguette, general manager for Sudbury-based Legend Mining, says he’s on a mission to show Indigenous youth that the only barriers they’ll face entering the skilled trades are the ones they build themselves.

The Sudbury-based mining company has partnered with Kenjgewin Teg, an Indigenous learning institute on Manitoulin Island, to help get practical, hands-on training to people outside Northern Ontario’s large mining centres.

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The Gold Rush at the Heart of a Civil War – by Declan Walsh (New York Times – December 11, 2024)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Famine and ethnic cleansing stalk Sudan. Yet the gold trade is booming, enriching generals and propelling the fight.

The luxury jet touched down in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on a mission to collect hundreds of pounds of illicit gold. On board was a representative of a ruthless paramilitary group accused of ethnic cleansing in Sudan’s sprawling civil war, the flight manifest showed. The gold itself had been smuggled from Darfur, a region of famine and fear in Sudan that is largely under his group’s brutal control.

Porters grunted as they heaved cases filled with gold, about $25 million worth, onto the plane, said three people involved with or briefed on the deal. Airport officials discreetly maintained a perimeter around the jet, which stood out in the main airport of one of the world’s poorest countries.

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Silver could outperform gold again next year, spot price forecast to hit $40/oz in 2025 – Heraeus – by Ernest Hoffman (Kitco News – December 11, 2024)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) – While a likely U.S. recession in Q2 would impact industrial demand for silver, most of the gray metal’s recent strengths are expected to carry over into the new year, and the price of silver is projected to outperform gold in 2025, according to analysts at Heraeus Precious Metals.

In their Precious Forecast 2025, the analysts said that if market conditions unfold as expected, they believe silver will outgain gold once again in 2025. “This year, the silver price has seen the largest percentage gains across the precious metals (+26.82% to the end of November),” they noted.

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Vale lays off staff as mining operations worldwide reckon with low nickel prices (CBC News Sudbury – December 11, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

The company says it’s letting ‘non-operational’ staff go as it moves to a ‘decentralized structure’

Vale is cutting jobs throughout its global operations to remain competitive as the price of nickel continues to slump. The company is refusing to say how many of its Sudbury employees are included in this round of layoffs.

In a statement it says “people in non-operating roles” will be leaving as the mining giant moves towards a “new decentralized structure.”

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London Symposium: ‘Mining must move at the pace of business, not bureaucracy,’ Ontario’s Pirie says – by Colin McClelland and Henry Lazenby (Canadian Mining Journal – December 11, 2024)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Ontario’s bid to lead in the critical minerals boom in Canada is fuelled with funding increases and deregulation goals in a new mining code. Yet the province must still widen education and mining’s appeal, industry leaders said last week in London.

This year saw Iamgold start the $3 billion-capex Côté mine followed by Equinox Gold’s 400,000-oz.-a-year Greenstone gold mine as Queens Park counted around $44 billion promised by car makers such as Toyota and Stellantis for new battery plants and assembly lines. The developments coincided with efforts to quicken permitting and feed northern minerals to southern factories.

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