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Vale spending $150 million on first phase of Thompson mine extension project – by Ian Graham (Thompson Citizen – June 29, 2021)

https://www.thompsoncitizen.net

Vale is spending $150 million on the first phase of the Thompson mine extension project, which will extend current mining activities by 10 years, the company announced June 29.

“Aggressive” exploration drilling of known orebodies is also continuing, which could mean ore extraction could continue well past 2040, Vale says.

Work to be completed during the first phase of the project includes construction of new ventilation raises and fans, increasing backfill capacity and adding power distribution infrastructure. Vale expects the changes to improve current production levels by 30 per cent.

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NEWS RELEASE: Marten Falls First Nation Joins Class Action Litigation on Drinking Water Advisory and calls on the Government of Canada for Critical Housing and Infrastructure Appropriations (Martin Falls First Nation – June 29, 2021)

THUNDER BAY, ON, June 29, 2021 /CNW/ – Marten Falls First Nation has agreed to join the class-action litigation on drinking water advisories in First Nation communities, which will be led by Olthuis, Kleer, Townshend (OKT) LLP and McCarthy Tétrault LLP. Marten Falls has decided to participate in this class-action lawsuit because it has been under a boil water advisory for over 20 years. The lack of potable water in the community has resulted in illness, an unnecessary loss of opportunities amongst community members, and a burdensome distribution process.

The administration of clean drinking water to community members has been onerous. Bottled water is flown into the community and distributed to community members at the airport. Marten Falls is responsible for paying the upfront costs of these water resources and their transportation, which can cost up to $40,000 per month.

Although the federal government reimburses Marten Falls for these expenses, the cost of buying and transporting water puts a significant strain on the community’s limited financial resources. The reimbursement process is also slow and partial since the community shares water with non-band members in the community like teachers, contractors, and guest workers who are not covered. To put this into perspective, from 2014-2015, Marten Falls had to wait an entire fiscal year to be reimbursed for its bottled water.

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Strike at Vale’s Sudbury Operation Strains Battery Nickel Supply – by Mariana Durao and Yvonne Yue Li (Bloomberg News – June 29, 2021)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — A strike at Vale SA’s Sudbury operations in Canada is taxing a nickel market that’s key to powering electric vehicles.

Sudbury is one of the world’s few producers of nickel pellet, a form used to produce alloys for aerospace, electronic and nuclear industries. Production at Vale’s northeast Ontario operation halted when unionized workers went on strike on June 1. The disruption is driving consumers to tap battery-grade nickel briquette as an alternative.

That shift is increasing competition for briquette, pushing up North American premiums, or extra charges consumers pay on top of nickel prices on the London Metal Exchange, as stockpiles of the metal dwindle. Inventories of briquette, the main form of nickel stored at LME warehouses, have fallen 9% since a peak in April and are now at the lowest in more than a year.

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Dr. Nadia Mykytczuk – Mine remediation expert appointed CEO of MIRARCO in Sudbury – by Darren MacDonald (CTV News Northern Ontario – June 28, 2021)

https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/

SUDBURY — Dr. Nadia Mykytczuk has been named the interim president and CEO of MIRARCO in Sudbury.

MIRARCO is a mining research group that works to develop sustainable, long-term practices and technology for the industry. As interim CEO, Mykytczuk will provide support to the Goodman School of Mines at Laurentian University.

An environmental microbiologist, she received the Laurentian University Innovation Award in 2018, which is awarded to a researcher whose work has resulted in an innovative technology, process or product that benefits both the university community and society at large.

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Krasnoyarsk Govt to support Nornickel in sevenfold expansion of Taimyr South Cluster mining operations including Zapolyarny upgrade – by Paul Moore (International Mining – June 28, 2021)

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MMC Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel and one of the largest producers of platinum and copper, and the Government of the Krasnoyarsk Territory have signed an agreement on cooperation in the implementation of investment projects in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

The document was signed on June 28 in the representative office of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in Moscow by Vladimir Potanin, Nornickel President, and Alexander Uss, Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

The agreement is intended to support businesses that run investment projects in the region. One of such projects is Nornickel’s plans for construction of new mining facilities and an upgrade of the Zapolyarny Mine, collectively an expansion referred to as the South Cluster and part of Nornickel’s Polar Division on the Taimyr Peninsula.

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FBI hunt for Civil War gold detailed in unsealed affidavit – by Chris Dolmetsch (Bloomberg News – June 28, 2021)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Was a ton of vanished Union gold stolen by a secret group of Confederate sympathizers and hidden in a rural Pennsylvania cave at the height of the Civil War?

That’s what an FBI agent was seeking to find out in 2018 when he applied for a search warrant to dig at the site in Elk County, northeast of Pittsburgh, according to a court filing unsealed on Thursday.

In an accompanying 30-page affidavit, Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Jacob Archer cites tips from treasure hunters, old newspaper clippings and magazine articles as “probable cause” that a ton or more of gold mined in California and destined for the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia when it disappeared in 1863 was buried in cave located inside a 217,000-acre state forest.

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Most Belarus potash exports not affected by EU sanctions – by Harry Miller (Canada News Media – June 25, 2021)

https://canadanewsmedia.ca/

The European Union’s ban on imports and transit of potash from Belarus will not affect most exports of the crop nutrient from the world’s top producer, provided the restriction stays in its current form, potash transporters and analysts said.

The curbs apply to Belarus Potash Company (BPC) which exports potash — Minsk’s main foreign currency earner — mostly via the Baltic port of Klaipeda in EU-member Lithuania.

But its main export product, namely potash with 60% potassium content, is not on the EU’s list of sanctioned items, the industry analysts pointed out.

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Investors Are Backing Uranium For Reliable Emission Free Electricity – OpEd – by Ronald Stein (Eurasia Review – June 29, 2021)

https://www.eurasiareview.com/

Ronald Stein is Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure of PTS Advance, headquartered in Irvine, California.

As a reaffirmation of what Abraham Lincoln said back in 1858, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time”, investors are not being fooled by the rhetoric that weather can provide for our electricity needs.

Share prices in uranium miners are on the rise, much to the horror of the weather dependent wind and solar industries.

The market seems to be taking the threat of looming net-zero emissions targets seriously. Knowing that the only serious measure of meeting any such target is nuclear power, the smart money is backing any company with uranium mining interests or even the mere prospect of developing such an interest.

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Lithium nationalism taking root in region with most resources – by Jonathan Gilbert and Daniela Sirtori-Cortina (Bloomberg News – June 29, 2021)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

Politicians in Latin America, a region that accounts for more than half the world’s lithium resources, are looking to increase the role of the state in an industry that’s crucial for weaning the world off fossil fuels.

In Argentina, state energy companies are entering the lithium business as authorities make a bid to develop downstream industries. In Chile, a leading presidential candidate wants to do something similar just as the nation drafts a new constitution that may lead to tougher rules for miners.

To be sure, no one in power is talking about expropriating assets in production and much of the anti-investor rhetoric in Chile is coming from opposition groups.

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OPINION: The end of coal in Canada is near – and it’s about time – by Editorial Board (Globe and Mail – June 29, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The end of coal in Canada has unfurled over years. Ontario was early: The province in 2003 pledged to eliminate coal-fired power, which supplied a quarter of its electrical demand.

By 2014, coal was powering zero per cent of the province – replaced with natural gas, wind, solar, hydro and, above all, zero-carbon nuclear.

More recently, Alberta decided to also do away with coal power. In 2015, about half of the province’s electricity came from coal. Since then, spurred by policies including strong provincial rules limiting emissions from power generation, coal has quickly faded. By 2023, Alberta will be fully off coal power – seven years ahead of schedule.

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As residential school grave tally rises, this will be a summer of despair – by Doug Cuthand (Saskatoon StarPhoenix – June 25, 2021)

https://thestarphoenix.com/

Our elders told us what hellholes these institutions were: Places of violence, disease, religious indoctrination and cultural genocide.

A few weeks ago, Canadians were struck with the announcement that 215 unmarked graves had been discovered at the Kamloops residential school in British Columbia. It set off a wave of shock across the nation, but for many first Nations people it was a foreboding of what would come.

The report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission pointed out that while the official count of children who died at Canadian residential schools was around 3,000, the true amount would be double or more.

Across the country, federal and provincial governments have stepped up and made funds available for First Nations to get access to ground-penetrating radar to search the old school sites for human remains.

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Why some of the world’s biggest companies are increasingly worried about water scarcity – by Sam Meredith (CNBC.com – June 29, 2021)

https://www.cnbc.com/

LONDON — Major companies from across a range of sectors are increasingly concerned about the cost and availability of the world’s ultimate renewable resource: water.

The availability and relatively low cost of water does not tend to capture much attention until it effectively runs out. Yet, with the climate crisis seen as a “risk multiplier” to water scarcity, analysts warn that even companies with relatively limited financial exposure to water risk should brace for disruption.

It comes at a time when water prices are rising around the world. The average price of water increased by 60% in the 30 largest U.S. cities between 2010 and 2019, according to data compiled by Barclays, while California Water Futures have regularly jumped as much as 300% in recent years.

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Move to net zero ‘inevitably means more mining’ – by Jonathan Amos (BBC.com – May 24, 2021)

https://www.bbc.com/

The public will need to accept greater mining activity if the world is to meet the challenge of going green.Resource experts say the current supply of various metals and minerals cannot support a global economy producing net zero carbon emissions.

Extraction rates have to be raised, the scientists argue, if only in the short term. Eventually, large-scale recycling should be able to satisfy the demand for key commodities such as lithium.

New mining initiatives are often met with resistance because of the negative impacts they can have on the wider environment and on health. And some activities have drawn particular ire because they’ve become associated with labour abuses.

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How Ivanhoe’s giant new Congo mine stacks up against copper mining’s top tier – by Frik Els (Mining.com – June 24, 2021)

https://www.mining.com/

When Ivanhoe Mines’ Kamoa-Kakula project in the Democratic Republic of Congo went into production a month ago it was the biggest new mine to do so since Escondida in Chile in November 1990.

Escondida hit its stride eight years later, producing 867,000 tonnes on its way to a peak of more than 1.4m tonnes a decade later. With more than 50 years left, the BHP-Rio Tinto owned operation may remain unsurpassed over its life in terms of sheer size.

A new report by BMO Capital Markets analyst Andrew Mikitchook outlines a similarly rapid growth path for Kamoa-Kakula, with the DRC mine entering peak production of 841,000 tonnes by 2028.

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U.S. looks to Canada for critical minerals to support EV battery plans – by Riley Beggin (Detroit News/The Columbian – June 27, 2021)

https://www.columbian.com/

WASHINGTON — U.S. policymakers hoping to power an electric vehicle boom acknowledge the country lacks a robust and reliable supply chain for the minerals needed to power next-generation cars.

That reality — exposed by the economic aftershocks delivered by the COVID-19 pandemic — looms as a national security risk the administration plans to remedy, in part, by working with like-minded nations. Increasingly, Canada appears to be among the first in line.

The White House is signaling plans to increase collaboration between the U.S. and Canada on critical minerals, according to a recent supply chain review that highlighted the country’s mineral assets.

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