Republic of Mining

Joe Biden Thinks Coal Miners Should Learn to Code. A Real Just Transition Demands Far More. – by Mindy Isser (InTheseTimes.com – January 15, 2020)

January 15, 2020

As of 2016, there were only 50,000 coal miners in the United States, and yet they occupy so much of our political imagination and conversation around jobs, unions and climate change. During the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump ran on bringing coal jobs back to the United States, and Joe Biden said on December 30 that miners should learn to code, as those are the “jobs of the future.” His comments, made to a crowd in Derry, New Hampshire, were reportedly met with silence.

While coal miners aren’t the only workers in our society, coal miners’ voices do matter, and we can’t leave anyone behind. And it’s clear that they are hurting, a point illustrated by the coal miners currently blocking a train carrying coal in eastern Kentucky, demanding back pay from Quest Energy.

The coal industry is in decline, and mining jobs are disappearing. And the science shows that the vast majority of coal needs to stay in the ground if we want to have a shot at stemming climate change. But does that mean miners need to learn to code in order to earn a living? Coding isn’t necessarily bad or unimportant, and it could potentially be one of many retraining opportunities.

RPT-COLUMN-China’s commodity appetite robust in 2019, undimmed by trade dispute – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.K. – Janaury 14, 2020)

January 15, 2020

https://uk.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Jan 14 (Reuters) – China’s imports of major commodities ended last year with a bang, with strong gains showing the appetite of the world’s largest importer of natural resources remains robust despite the trade dispute with the United States.

The exception was coal, but December’s paltry imports of the polluting fuel were the result of cargoes not being cleared by customs in response to Beijing’s wishes to put a cap on purchases from overseas.

Once again the standout was crude oil, with December imports coming in at 10.78 million barrels per day (bpd), down slightly from November’s record 11.13 million bpd. The total for the year was 10.2 million bpd, up 9.5% from 2018 and the 17th straight year that annual imports have set a record high.

M&As in the copper space could surge in 2020, especially if Chinese companies come to the party – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – January 15, 2020)

January 15, 2020

https://business.financialpost.com/

As the U.S. and China prepare to sign the first phase of a trade deal, copper prices are on the rise, hitting an eight-month high at US$2.83 per pound on Tuesday. Yet, many analysts are taking a circumspect view of the impact that a U.S.-China trade deal will have on copper.

“I think there’s certainly near-term impact, but I’m not sure it really is going to resolve core issues between the two countries,” said Pierre Vaillancourt, a senior analyst at Haywood Securities.

Still, he added, “We see positive supply and demand trends regardless of where trade is.” It ties into a growing if cautious optimism for the copper sector after a lacklustre year in which prices fell five per cent — averaging US$2.82 per pound in the first quarter of 2019 and US$2.67 per pound in the fourth quarter. RBC Capital Markets analysts last week predicted that M&A in the copper space could surge in 2020, especially if Chinese companies remain hungry.

Failure of Eskom to be “the death knell” of SA mining sector, says Exxaro’s Mgojo – by David McKay (MiningMX.com – January 15, 2020)

January 15, 2020

MiningMX

EXXARO Resources CEO, Mxolisi Mgojo, said that without a properly functioning power utility company – Eskom – South Africa’s mining industry would cease to function.

“The current state of Eskom is going to be the one thing that is going to be the death knell of this industry,” Mgojo was cited by Bloomberg News to have said in an article republished by Yahoo Finance. Mgojo is also the president of the Minerals Council South Africa.

Mgojo was commenting at a conference organised by Business Unity South Africa, the country’s largest business lobby group. “Without fixing Eskom we don’t have a mining industry. It is as dire as that.”

New Coal-Killing Energy Storage Challenge Also Dings Natural Gas – by Tina Casey (CleanTechnica.com – Janaury 9, 2020)

January 15, 2020

https://cleantechnica.com/

It’s no secret that the Trump Administration has presided over the collapse of the US coal industry, but do they have to rub it in? The answer appears to be yes. On Wednesday, newly minted Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette announced an all-hands-on-deck initiative to push the energy storage envelope farther into coal-killing territory. For good measure, the new $153 million “Energy Storage Grand Challenge” will probably bump off natural gas, too. And all this under a President* who pledged to save coal jobs!

The Jig Is Up: Trump Hates Coal, Loves Energy Storage

Considering all the promises Trump made to coal miners, their families, and their communities, one would think that a major coal-killing announcement would get buried in a Friday evening news dump. After all, energy storage is the key that accelerates the renewable energy revolution.

Nope. Secretary Brouillette made the announcement in the brilliant light of day exactly in the middle of the week, on Wednesday afternoon at CES 2020 in Las Vegas. The annual event, which is owned and produced by the US Consumer Technology Association, bills itself as “the world’s gathering place for all those who thrive on the business of consumer technologies.”

Nunavut review board seeks comments on Baffinland production extension (Nunatsiaq News – January 14, 2020)

January 15, 2020

https://nunatsiaq.com/

The Nunavut Impact Review Board is accepting comments on Baffinland Iron Mines Corp.’s request to extend its production limit at its Mary River mine.

The board issued a call for comments from interested parties on Jan. 8. Comments will be accepted until Feb. 3. Baffinland requested this extension, to continue mining up to six million tonnes of iron ore per year through 2020, on Dec. 16.

This follows a production cap increase granted in 2018, up from the 4.2-million-tonne cap set in the project certificate amendment that allowed trucked shipping to Milne Inlet under the company’s “early revenue phase.” That two-year production cap expired on Dec. 31, 2019.

OPINION: BlackRock’s green investing strategy is not a moral awakening – by Ian McGugan (Globe and Mail – January 15, 2020)

January 15, 2020

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Larry Fink, arguably the world’s most powerful investor, has just delivered his annual letter to chief executives. This year, the chairman of giant money manager BlackRock Inc. used his institutional pulpit to thunder about the mounting dangers of climate change and preach the virtues of sustainable investing.

It is all good, praiseworthy stuff from a company with nearly US$7-trillion in assets under management. Just don’t assume it means a major shift in policy.

Take, for example, Mr. Fink’s announcement that BlackRock’s actively managed funds are in the process of dumping bonds or stocks issued by companies that generate more than 25 per cent of their revenue from thermal coal production.

We have good reasons to be alarmed about nuclear reactors – by Rosie DiManno (Toronto Star – January 15, 2020)

January 15, 2020

https://www.thestar.com/

Let me tell you about nuclear reactors and me. Because suddenly, on Sunday, a nuclear calamity was on everybody’s mind, GTA residents jolted into a queasy awareness of the aging Pickering facility when emergency officials “accidentally” issued a false alarm during testing of the alert system.

A vast complex hunkered down on the shore of Lake Ontario which, we learned just a day later — lousy timing — the Doug Ford government now intends to extend the life of the facility beyond its planned 2024 shuttering. One of the largest nuclear power stations in the world — with six active CANDU reactors — and one of the oldest. Should have been taken offline years ago, as environmentalists urged.

It does not engender much faith in the competence of the nuclear station’s management when they botch a simple communications exercise. Two hours passed before they reversed the erroneous warning. What if it had been a real emergency? Is it seriously possible that Ontario Power Generation is still relying on Amber Alert-type notification for the public’s protection?

The Sunday alert’s real lesson — Canada’s nuclear reactors are safe – by Jonathan Kay (National Post – January 15, 2020)

January 15, 2020

https://nationalpost.com/

A strange, short-lived mini-panic afflicted Ontario on Sunday. And to the extent anyone was genuinely scared, some of the blame likely goes to The Simpsons.

“An incident was reported at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station,” read an emergency alert broadcast to millions of cellphones at 7:23 a.m. “There has been NO abnormal release of radioactivity … People near the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station DO NOT need to take any protective actions.”

Perhaps it says something about how my mind has been infected by cynical cultural tropes, but by the time I’d gotten to the end of the brief public message, I was channelling the false assurances offered to Simpsons-land TV viewers by Montgomery Burns about an imminent apocalypse at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant: “Oh, ‘meltdown.’ It’s one of these annoying buzzwords. We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus.”

Congo opens Chinese-owned Deziwa copper and cobalt mine – by Stanis Bujakera (Reuters U.S. – January 15, 2020)

January 15, 2020

https://www.reuters.com/

DEZIWA MINE, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – The Democratic Republic of Congo’s state mining company Gécamines on Wednesday opened the Deziwa copper and cobalt mine and processing plant, part of a joint venture majority-owned by China Nonferrous Metal Mining Company (CNMC).

The Deziwa deposit, around 35 kilometres east of Kolwezi, is estimated to hold 4.6 million tonnes of copper and 420,000 tonnes of cobalt. Somidez, the joint venture controlling it, is held 51% by CNMC and 49% by Gécamines.

An $880 million project which started construction in May 2018, the Deziwa mine aims to produce 80,000 tonnes of copper and 8,000 tonnes of cobalt per year, according to Somidez.

SAUL LASKIN’S LAKEHEAD: FIRST OF MIDCANADA’S SIX BIG CITIES (MACLEAN’S Magazine – March 1, 1969)

January 15, 2020

http://www.macleans.ca/

THE NEAR NORTH

IT GETS COLD at the Lakehead. But it’s an almost joyous kind of cold, for it brings the snow-mobiles whizzing out of people’s backyards and down the snow-clogged streets, as thick as bicycles in Amsterdam. Besides, four of the best ski slopes in Ontario are within 20 minutes of downtown, and every discount store stocks snowshoes. Winter is a matter of perception. You can either curse it, escape it or try to ignore it. At the Lakehead, people try to enjoy it.

This may be part of the reason why Port Arthur’s Mayor Saul Laskin is sold on the feasibility of the mid-Canada development corridor. The idea stands or falls, after all, on the proposition that people can live comfortably in mid-Canada. Laskin and 110,000 other Lakehead residents have been doing it for years.

This may come as news to southern Canada. The national media seem to have evolved a silent conspiracy to ensure that the fact of northwestern Ontario’s existence doesn’t leak to the outside world. There is probably no area of Canada more justifiably conscious of being ignored. During Centennial year, when the Canadian Government Travel Bureau distributed a “Come to Canada” brochure through the U.S., they included Kapuskasing and Moosonee on the map, but failed to mention Port Arthur. When MP Robert Andras last year suggested carving an 11th province out of northern Ontario and northern Quebec, no one in his riding saw fit to hoot him down; by now they’re used to Going It Alone in northwestern Ontario.

Half a century ago, locals celebrated — and grumbled about — the birth of Thunder Bay – by Jaie Bradburn (TV Ontario – January 10, 2020)

January 15, 2020

https://www.tvo.org/

In 1970, two cities and two townships merged, creating Ontario’s sixth-largest city. But not everyone welcomed the arrival of the brand-new municipality

At midnight on January 1, 1970, a ceremony was held at the arch that had, until that moment, marked the boundary between the cities of Port Arthur and Fort William. Previously known as the Welcome Arch, it would henceforth be called the Unity Arch, marking a symbolic end to the long rivalry that had, as the Globe and Mail observed, seen the two communities “fighting over land, new businesses, railway lines, and sometimes just for the hell of it.”

As church bells rang and fireworks went off, a sign on the arch flashed “Happy Birthday Thunder Bay.” With that, Ontario’s newest city was born. But, amid the celebrations, there was a great deal of grumbling over how the amalgamation process in the Lakehead area had unfolded.

Beginning in the Victorian era, the twin cities on Lake Superior had developed a deep rivalry that frequently prevented any form of co-operation. Each had its own transit system: passengers had to get off at the boundary and pay another fare before crossing into the other city. Taxis from one city couldn’t seek fares in the other.

Race to refine: the bid to clean up Africa’s gold rush – by David Lewis and Peter Hobson (Reuters Canada – Janaury 15, 2020)

January 15, 2020

https://ca.reuters.com/

ENTEBBE (Reuters) – In a refinery just outside Uganda’s main airport, workers slip bars of freshly refined gold into clear plastic bags sealed with a sticker of the national flag – black, yellow and red – and the label “Ugandan’s Treasure.”

Uganda produces little gold of its own. Alain Goetz, who set up the refinery, says that by branding gold from abroad as Ugandan, the operation is merely imitating others – for example, the Swiss don’t mine the gold they refine in Switzerland.

A pink building guarded by dogs at Entebbe on the shores of Lake Victoria, the refinery, African Gold Refinery (AGR), is part of a trend across Africa. Small-scale mining is booming, and new gold refineries are opening by the dozen, to process metal produced by informal diggers in Africa and beyond.

Organization gearing up to promote Indigenous-mining relationships – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – January 14, 2020)

January 14, 2020

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Centre of Excellence for Indigenous Minerals Development will be based in Sudbury

Dawn Madahbee Leach is hopeful that a newly forged partnership between Waubetek Business Development Corp. and Rio Tinto will be just the first of many positive working relationships between Indigenous people and the mining industry.

In November, the global mining giant announced it would invest $1 million over five years into Waubetek’s Centre of Excellence for Indigenous Minerals Development, which is being established in Northern Ontario.

“Our partnership aims to grow the opportunity for Indigenous communities to participate in a meaningful way in the benefits that can come from responsible mineral development,” said Simone Niven, Rio Tinto’s group executive of corporate relations, in a Nov. 27 news release announcing the partnership.

With Copper Stockpiles Tapped Out, Banks See a 2020 Price Spike – by Yvonne Yue Li (Bloomberg News – Janaury 13, 2020)

January 14, 2020

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — The price of copper, a barometer for the global economy, could jump in 2020 with capital spending for new production down and stockpiles tapped out at a time when U.S.-China trade tensions are easing.

The threat of a long trade war limited mining activity and kept manufacturers from adding to their stocks. The result: Inventories at warehouses tracked by the three international exchanges, a last resort for supply, have shrunk by about 37% since July to just shy of 300,000 tons, equivalent to just 1.2% of global consumption. Meanwhile, mine production fell 0.4% last year from 2018.

That has large international banks largely bullish on the metal. Citigroup Inc. sees demand in China, the top consumer, jumping 2.6% after barely rising in 2019, powered by power grid and automaker investments. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts see prices at $7,000 a metric ton in 2020, according to a December report. That follows a 3.5% gain to $6,174 in 2019.