Republic of Mining

Germany’s plan to exit coal by 2038 becomes law – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – July 3, 2020)

July 3, 2020

https://www.mining.com/

Germany’s lower house of the parliament passed on Friday a bill to phase out coal-fired power stations in the country by 2038.

The new law entails over 50 billion euros ($56 billion) for mining companies, power plant operators, affected regions and employees to mitigate the impact of moving from coal to renewables as power source.

“The fossil fuel age is irrevocably coming to an end in Germany with this decision,” Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told lawmakers inside the chamber, urging opponents not to “talk it down”.

Supreme Court rejects Indigenous groups’ appeal to halt Trans Mountain expansion – by Emma Graney (Globe and Mail – July 3, 2020)

July 3, 2020

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Three British Columbia Indigenous groups have vowed to keep fighting the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion after they were dealt a major legal blow on Thursday, when the Supreme Court of Canada decided it would not hear their appeal of the project’s approval.

The groups said the top court’s decision – posted on the Supreme Court website without further detail – threatens not just their traditional lands but the very fabric of reconciliation in Canada.

The Coldwater Indian Band, Squamish Nation and Tsleil-Waututh Nation sought leave to appeal in April, after the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that cabinet’s approval of the pipeline project in June, 2019, was reasonable under the law.

Opinion: Don’t bet on the silver boom – by John Dizard (Financial Times – July 3, 2020)

July 3, 2020

https://www.ft.com/

The industrial metal will not be dragged up by gold

If gold was the metal that drove the conquistadors mad, in recent decades silver has had the power to induce near-psychotic states among its holders. I almost wrote “investors”, but that is too dispassionate a term for the true believers in silver.

In recent months, gold has become a respectable part of institutional core strategies, providing a useful anchor to windward in the post-coronavirus markets.

The price of silver, though, has been left behind by the now fashionable cohort of gold bugs. Silver is still up for the year in dollar terms at just above $18 per troy ounce. The gold/silver ratio reached its all-time peak on March 18, when the silver price collapsed to $11.94. At that point the spot price of a troy ounce of gold was worth 126.5 ounces of silver.

Goal of tailings management should be zero harm – report (Mining.com – July 1, 2020)

July 2, 2020

https://www.mining.com/

An international group of 142 scientists, community groups and NGOs from 24 countries has published a set of 16 guidelines for the safer storage of mine waste.

The guidelines aim to protect communities, workers and the environment from the risks posed by thousands of mine waste storage facilities, which are failing more frequently and with more severe outcomes.

“Safety First: Guidelines for Responsible Mine Tailings Management” argues that the ultimate goal of tailings management must be zero harm to people and the environment and zero tolerance for human fatalities.

Pay attention to the gold sector: ‘It is moving fast’ as investors pile into gold equities – Lion Selection Group – by Anna Golubova (Kitco News – July 1, 2020)

July 2, 2020

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) The gold market is moving fast this year and unless investors pay attention to the price action, especially in the gold equities space, they might end up missing out, said Lion Selection Group executive director Hedley Widdup.

Gold prices are up more than 16% since the start of the year, seeing massive gains on the back of the COVID-19 fears as well as extensive monetary policy stimuli across the globe, Widdup told Kitco News on Tuesday.

“What we’ve seen recently due to the COVID-19 was completely unpredictable and unparalleled in terms of economic history,” Widdup said on the sidelines of the Mines and Money Online Connect. “COVID-19 has spread fear across the global markets, which led to global responses from central banks and governments to provide stimulus in various ways. Both of those things are very good for gold.”

Pandemic Helps Russia Tighten Its Grip on a Key Strategic Metal – by Yuliya Fedorinova and Felix Njini (Bloomberg News – July 2, 2020)

July 2, 2020

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/

(Bloomberg) — As the coronavirus pandemic pummeled demand from key customers in the auto industry, Russia’s biggest mining company quietly tightened its grip on the palladium market.

MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC was already the No. 1 miner of the metal used in autocatalysts, but the crisis has allowed it to gain market share. That’s because Nornickel’s Russian operations have barely missed a beat, while its main rivals in South Africa are struggling to ramp up production after shuttering mines during a national virus lockdown.

“Norilsk Nickel has always been considered as the last company to die,” said Artem Bagdasaryan, an analyst at BCS Global Markets. “The pandemic only highlights it.”

Forbes falls to cancel culture as it erases environmentalist’s mea culpa – by John Robson (National Post – July 2, 2020)

July 2, 2020

https://nationalpost.com/

It’s big news when somebody prominent apologizes for being badly wrong on a major public matter, promises to do better going forward and urges others to do the same, right? Unless the person commits heresy like, say, Michael Shellenberger.

In case you missed it, and they did their best to make sure you did, Shellenberger is an excruciatingly woke environmentalist and progressive. By his own account “At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution.

At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s co-operatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.”

Ginoogaming First Nation Chief Celia Echum won back land owed to her community – by Willow Fiddler (Globe and Mail – June 18, 2020)

July 2, 2020

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

At 5 foot 2, Ginoogaming First Nation Chief Celia Echum was below average in height. But despite her diminutive size, she held enormous influence in her community.

In 2016, Ms. Echum initiated a claim seeking compensation for land that Ginoogaming was entitled to under Treaty No. 9 but did not receive. Once settled, the claim will see the Anishinaabe community in northwestern Ontario gain almost 25 per cent more land.

Peter Rasevych, one of Ms. Echum’s nephews from Ginoogaming, was a boy when his Aunty Celia, as she was known to many, began serving the people of Ginoogaming. She received her community health representative (CHR) certificate from Laurentian University in the late 1970s.

A Miner Blew Up Ancient Human History. Now An Industry May Pay – by David Stringer, Matthew Burgess and Thomas Biesheuvel (Bloomberg News – June 30, 2020)

July 2, 2020

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Scraping away delicately at the reddish-brown earth of northwestern Australia’s vast Pilbara region, a team of archaeologists uncovered a record of life dating back more 40,000 years.

Buried in natural shelters at the base of a cliff were thousands of stone and wooden tools, the sharpened fibula bone of a kangaroo and braided strands of hair.

They worked quickly inside the Juukan Gorge rock shelters to recover the artefacts — and needed to. The team was a salvage squad, sent in with a tight deadline to excavate a site in the path of an encroaching iron ore mine and approved for destruction.

History preserved: Iron Ore Heritage Recreation Authority turns restored structure over to city – by Jackie Jahfetson (The Mining Journal – July 1, 2020)

July 2, 2020

https://www.miningjournal.net/

MARQUETTE — Driving west into Marquette along U.S. 41, passers-by come across a stone structure that resembles an igloo on the Iron Ore Heritage Trail.

Were those curious aware at one time the kiln was used to burn wood into charcoal which fed blast furnaces that converted iron ore and limestone into pig iron during the late 19th century?

After the last of the 43 Carp River kilns collapsed in a heavy wet spring snowstorm in 2016, the historical sandstone structure has been resurrected and was officially turned over to the city of Marquette Monday during a ceremony.

Want richer First Nations? Say ‘yes’ to pipelines – by Mark Milke and Lennie Kaplan (Financial Post – July 2, 2020)

July 2, 2020

https://business.financialpost.com/

Mark Milke is executive director of research and Lennie Kaplan chief research analyst at the Canadian Energy Centre, an Alberta government corporation funded in part by taxes paid by industry on carbon emissions.

According to the 2016 census, 380,000 Indigenous Canadians live on reserve, many of them far from the economic opportunities that cities provide.

Given concerns about economic conditions on many reserves, one of this era‘s most pressing policy problems is how to provide economic opportunity to First Nations far from urban centres.

One answer: Allow the natural resource economy on or near First Nations to flourish. A perfect example is underway in British Columbia, with the construction of the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

Former Pickle Lake mine still has more high-grade gold to give – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – June 29, 2020)

June 30, 2020

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Auteco Minerals accelerates exploration program, sees mine potential at Pickle Crow

An Australian gold explorer poking around the former Pickle Crow Mine in northwestern Ontario believes it might have a mineable gold deposit.

After started an inaugural round of drilling at the Pickle Crow project in late May, Auteco Minerals is stepping up its exploration efforts by hauling a second rig to the property, east of the community of Pickle Lake.

In a June 29 news release, Auteco is expanding its drill program from 5,000 metres to 10,000 metres. A 24-man camp is being delivered to the property next week to support the company’s activities.

OPINION: The Big Debate: Should nuclear energy be part of a Green New Deal? – by Jatin Nathwani (Yes) and M.V. Ramana/Schyler Edmundson (No) (Toronto Star – June 30, 2020)

June 30, 2020

https://www.thestar.com/

YES: “Truth is the daughter of time,” Francis Bacon noted four centuries ago. Perhaps the time has come to acknowledge the near existential threat posed by climate change to our collective well being and recognize the importance of one compelling solution — nuclear energy — in solving this problem.

The primary culprit is well-known: emissions from fossil fuels must be eliminated. The problem has been in the making for over five generations and we do not have the luxury of time to mitigate the risk of destabilizing the climate system that can deliver misery on a very large scale: floods, fires, famines, tsunamis, and extreme weather events that test the boundaries of human habitation.

What is needed, with urgency, is a fundamental reboot of the global energy system. In 1990, the share of global primary energy stood at 85 per cent fossil fuels and all other sources (hydro, nuclear, geothermal, wind, solar, bioenergy) at 15 per cent.

SolGold goes after rival Cornerstone Capital Resources – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – June 30, 2020)

June 30, 2020

https://www.mining.com/

SolGold (LON, TSX:SOLG) is trying to buy Canada’s Cornerstone Capital Resources (TSX-V: CGP), which owns a minority stake in the Alpala copper-gold project, part of the Ecuador-focused miner’s Cascabel asset.

The C$140 million ($102m) all-stock offer, SolGold’s second attempt to take over the Ontario-based junior, would see the bidder pay C$3.90 for each Cornerstone share. That is a 22% premium to its closing price of C$3.19 on Monday.

Chief executive Nick Mather said the deal would boost the junior’s footprint in copper-rich, but underdeveloped Ecuador, while simplifying the structure of the $2.85 billion project. He highlighted that the business combination would reduce the risk of dilution and future development costs for Cornerstone shareholders.

Over a century of giving: How a pharmacist turned mining speculator became Santa Claus for hundreds of Timmins children – by Tijana Mitrovic (CIM Magazine – June 29, 2020)

June 30, 2020

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

For over a hundred years, the children of Timmins’ Schumacher neighbourhood have received a little something under their Christmas trees from a special benefactor, a mining entrepreneur named Frederick W. Schumacher.

Schumacher, a Danish immigrant, was working as a pharmacist and patent medicine wholesaler in Waco, Texas, in the late 19th century when he ordered a full train-car of Peruna medicine, meant to cure excessive congestion known as catarrh.

When Dr. Samuel Hartman, the high-society doctor of Columbus, Ohio, who invented Peruna, heard the size of the order, Hartman decided to personally deliver the shipment to Texas. Upon meeting Schumacher, Hartman asked Schumacher to come to Ohio and work for him.