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COLUMN-Base metals hope for manufacturing recovery in 2020 – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – January 7, 2019)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, Jan 7 (Reuters) – Well, at least there was nickel. Looking back on 2019 it was nickel that provided most of the thrills and a fair share of the spills in the base metals complex.

The rest of the London Metal Exchange pack was largely moribund. Full-year performances ranged from up 5% (copper) to down 15% (tin) with aluminium, zinc and lead closing December barely changed from the start of January.

The obvious culprit for such a subdued performance was President Trump, given the pervasive uncertainty generated by the United States’ trade stand-off with China.

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Gold Hits Highest Since 2013 as Goldman Backs Bullion in Crisis – by Ranjeetha Pakiam, Elena Mazneva and Justina Vasquez (Bloomberg News – January 6, 2020)

https://finance.yahoo.com/

(Bloomberg) — Gold surged to its highest since 2013 as rising tensions in the Middle East stoked demand for havens, with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. seeing more room to run. Palladium extended gains to a fresh record.

Bullion neared $1,600 an ounce after Tehran said it would no longer abide by any limits on its enrichment of uranium following the killing of General Qassem Soleimani. President Donald Trump said he’s prepared to strike Iran “in a disproportionate manner” if it retaliates against any U.S. target. Gold may prove a better bet than oil amid rising tensions, according to Goldman analysts.

“History shows that under most outcomes gold will likely rally to well beyond current levels,” analysts including Jeffrey Currie and Damien Courvalin said in a note. That’s “consistent with our previous research, which shows that being long gold is a better hedge to such geopolitical risks.”

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Can a Coal Town Reinvent Itself? – by Eduardo Porter (New York Times – December 6, 2019)

https://www.nytimes.com/

A coal town in southwestern Virginia has been trying for years. Hope is running thin.

GRUNDY, Va. — Jay Rife surveys the landscape — hundreds of flat, grassy acres reclaimed from a spent mountaintop mine once operated by the Paramont Coal Company. A few handsome homes stand on one end of the project.

An 80,000-square-foot shell, to house some future manufacturing operation, is being built on another. For the intrepid, there are trails for all-terrain vehicles. There’s an R.V. park. The whole site has been wired for broadband. Elk have been imported from Kentucky for tourists to look at.

Buchanan County, where Grundy sits, has spent $35 million to $40 million on the development, called Southern Gap, some seven miles from town along U.S. 460. Mr. Rife, the head of the county’s Industrial Development Authority, says the project “is going to be the salvation of Buchanan County.” Few places have had as many shots at deliverance. None, so far, have succeeded in stemming Grundy’s inexorable decline.

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Anxiety about the environment has become the plague of our times – by Rosie DiManno (Toronto Star – January 3, 2020)

https://www.thestar.com/

When I was in Grade 1, our teacher informed us that the sun was actually a star and would burn itself out within a billion years. Which sent me into paroxysms of terror. WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE.

For months afterwards, on overcast days, even when a cloud passed over the sun for a few seconds, I was convinced the end was nigh. Oceans would boil, Earth would become uninhabitable. A neurotic kid, me.

Miss Waddell was off the mark. Scientists say our sun will continue to shine blessedly for another 4 billion years or so before it begins to dim, the hydrogen at its core running out so that it can’t burn helium, and it morphs into a red giant.

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Canada, U.S. agree on strategy to reduce need for rare-earth metals mined by China – by Robert Fife (Globe and Mail – December 27, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Canada and the United States have signed a memo of understanding to reduce their reliance on China for rare-earth minerals that are critical to high-tech and military products, such as smartphones, electric cars and weapons guidance systems.

Officials in both countries have been working since August to develop an action plan for specialty mineral projects and strategic investments in North American processing facilities, as well as greater research and development in extraction of rare-earth materials.

The memorandum was signed on Dec. 19 and aims to secure “resilient supply chains for critical energy minerals” for key sectors, including aerospace, defence and clean technology, according to a statement by Canada’s Natural Resources ministry and the U.S. Department of Energy.

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Outlook 2020: Diamond crisis averted, bigger crisis looms – by Michael McCrae (Kitco News – December 26, 2019)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) – The closing of the Argyle Mine in Australia should jump-start the suffering diamond market, said Paul Zimnisky, independent diamond analyst and consultant, who talked to Kitco earlier this month.

Last month, Rio Tinto announced November’s tender from its exhausted Argyle Mine, which produces around 90% of the world’s pink diamonds, which are the most expensive gems on the market. Argyle mine is also the world’s biggest diamond producer by volume, largely accounting for low-value diamonds.

“I think that’s probably by far the most anticipated supply catalyst for the industry,” said Zimnisky. Oversupply hit the diamond market hard in 2019. De Beers reported a 26% revenue drop, and Quebec diamond-producer Stornoway was forced to file for creditor protection due to weak revenues.

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Coastal GasLink halts construction after access road is blocked – by Brent Jang (Globe and Mail – January 6, 2020)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

TC Energy Corp. will be forced to halt construction on a section of its $6.6-billion Coastal GasLink pipeline this week amid an escalating dispute with Indigenous hereditary chiefs.

Construction workers, who have been away on holidays, are scheduled to return to the area on Monday, but won’t be able to gain access because of a blockage along a remote logging road.

On Dec. 31, a B.C. Supreme Court judge extended an injunction against Coastal GasLink protesters, saying the project has been harmed by the Wet’suwet’en Nation’s blockades. But hereditary house chiefs disagree with the court ruling and in an attempt to turn the tables, they issued their own “eviction notice” on Saturday on the Wet’suwet’en’s unceded territory near Houston, B.C.

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Unstable Mineral Supply Threatens Electric Car, Green Projects, Justifies Undersea, Space Mining; Report – by Neil Winton (Forbes Magazine – January 3, 2019)

https://www.forbes.com/

The advent of the electric car is threatened by a few known knowns like range anxiety, high prices, and a thin recharging network, but now, according to a report from the University of Sussex, lurking in the background are possible shortages of the raw materials at the heart of this low-carbon revolution, which threaten to derail the whole project.

Making sure of adequate supplies is so important, mining under the sea, or even on other planets, would be justified, according to the report.

The automotive industry in Europe has been spending massively to embrace the electric car. On Thursday, Europe’s number one auto maker, Volkswagen, raised the stakes of its electric plans by bringing forward its target of producing one million electric cars a year by two years, to the end of 2023. By 2025 this will reach 1.5 million a year.

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Pirie’s 2020 vision: Jobs, growth – by Elena De Luigi (Timmins Daily Press – December 31, 2019)

https://www.timminspress.com/

More jobs and industry projects are coming to Timmins in 2020, according to Mayor George Pirie. In an interview, he told The Daily Press his New Year’s resolutions for the city involve stimulating the economy with more jobs and industry projects to move the city forward.

Pirie detailed a number of initiatives, including an announcement on the status of IAMGOLD Corporation’s Côté Lake Gold Project. The billion-dollar mining project is close to getting its environmental permits approved while continuing its development by de-risking, drilling and adding resources.

Access to Côté Lake was also the reason the city asked the Ministry of Transportation to increase the speed limit from 80 to 90 kilometres per hour on Hwy. 101 West.

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Agnico CEO Sean Boyd on succession planning, investing in the North, and working in -79C wind chill – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – January 2, 2020)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Whoever assumes the top executive spot at Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. will have a tough act to follow. Sean Boyd, 61, is by far the longest-serving senior gold executive in Canada – and arguably the most successful.

An accountant by training, Mr. Boyd was originally the company’s outside auditor, then its chief financial officer and, after the death of company founder Paul Penna, he became its chief executive in 1998.

In the two decades since, the Toronto-based miner has grown from being a small producer with a single mine in Quebec, into the world’s third-most-valuable gold company, with nine mines in three countries. Its share price has gone from $6 to $80.

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U.S., Iran flare-up wipes out global stocks’ new year gains and hoists oil to $70, gold to 7-year high – by Ritvik Carvalho (Financial Post/Reuters – January 6, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

LONDON — Tensions in the Middle East after the killing of a top Iranian general by the United States erased new year gains for a gauge of world shares on Monday as investors pushed safe-haven gold to a seven-year high, and oil jumped to its highest since September.

The United States detected a heightened state of alert by Iran’s missile forces, as President Donald Trump warned the U.S. would strike back, “perhaps in a disproportionate manner,” if Iran attacked any American person or target.

Iraq’s parliament on Sunday recommended all foreign troops be ordered out of the country after the U.S. killing of the Iranian military commander and an Iraqi militia leader in a drone strike on a convoy at Baghdad airport.

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2019 was a dream come true for gold bugs — 2020 could be even better – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – December 30, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

What a difference a year can make — just ask a gold bug. As 2018 drew to a close, the price of the yellow metal was struggling to break US$1,300 per ounce and precious metals mining companies were stuck in the doldrums: Barrick Gold Corp., for example, was trading at $17.88 while Detour Gold Corp was sitting at $10.88, having just emerged from a contentious battle with its shareholders.

As 2019 ends, it’s a totally different story: Gold broke through the US$1,500 per ounce barrier in August for the first time in six years before settling just below that threshold, sparking a run on gold mining equities that was bolstered by a string of transformational mergers. That included deals involving Barrick and Detour, which sat in the $24 and $25 range, respectively, in late December.

But even as gold’s hot run tempered slightly to end the year, its most enthusiastic investors say its prospects have seldom been so positive. They argue that the same factors that helped gold perform so well in 2019 — including trade tensions, potential interest rate cuts, a volatile stock and bond market and geopolitical uncertainties such as Brexit — remain in place to a certain degree and are setting the stage for a massive rally in 2020.

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[Arizona Mining] A Sacred Place And A Sacred Quest To Save It – by Osha Gray Davidson (HuffPost US – December 27, 2019)

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

The Oak Flat land in Arizona is holy to the Apaches. A mining company wants to blow a two-mile-wide hole in it.

Some of Wendsler Nosie Sr.’s earliest memories are set in Arizona’s Tonto National Forest. “I was about 3 or 4 years old,” the now 60-year-old Apache man recalls on a sparkling fall day, sitting beside his granddaughter at a picnic table under a tall oak tree. “We used to stop here at Oak Flat and my mother would pray.”

The Oak Flat area, which lies within the national forest, is sacred to the Apache people and central to the tribe’s origin story. For centuries before European settlers came, young girls gathered at this place ― called Chi’chil Bildagoteel in Apache ― for their coming-of-age ceremony. Apaches still visit in the spring to collect medicinal plants and in the fall to harvest Emery oak acorns, a protein-rich staple.

But if Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of international mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, gets its way, a large part of the site will disappear forever, sinking into a hole two miles wide and deep enough to hold three Statues of Liberty stacked on top of one another.

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Empty Gestures on Climate Change – by BJØRN LOMBORG (Project Syndicate.org – December 20, 2019)

https://www.project-syndicate.org/

When climate campaigners urge people to change their everyday behavior, they trivialize the challenge of global warming. The one individual action that citizens could take that would make a real difference would be to demand a vast increase in spending on green-energy research and development.

MALMÖ – Switch to energy-efficient light bulbs, wash your clothes in cold water, eat less meat, recycle more, and buy an electric car: we are being bombarded with instructions from climate campaigners, environmentalists, and the media about the everyday steps we all must take to tackle climate change.

Unfortunately, these appeals trivialize the challenge of global warming, and divert our attention from the huge technological and policy changes that are needed to combat it.

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COLUMN-Unexpected bump on the EV road hits battery metals – by Andy Home (Reuters – December 18, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Dec 18 (Reuters) – It’s been a tough year for electric vehicle (EV) metal bulls. The previous speculative heat surrounding any and every material that goes into an EV battery has dissipated over the course of 2019. Two years ago the spot lithium price in China was $26 per kilogram. Today it is assessed by Fastmarkets at below $8.

Cobalt, a key input for lithium-ion battery chemistry, has experienced a similar boom and bust cycle, the price of standard grade metal sliding from over $44 per lb in the second quarter of 2018 to a current $15.75.

Nickel has fared better but only thanks to strength in its traditional end-use sector, stainless steel, rather than any pull from the battery sector. Both lithium and cobalt are living with the consequences of previous price exuberance in the form of a supply surge that has swamped processing capacity and left an overhang of stock.

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