Twitter

Metals sector in costly battle to turn green – by Eric Onstad and Zandi Shabalala (Reuters U.S. – October 25, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Metals producers, from miners to smelters, are grappling with increasingly tough and costly environmental demands imposed by banks seeking cleaner investments.

While the transition may prove overwhelming for smaller producers, larger companies are playing a long game, casting ahead to a period where greener technology helps slash their costs.

Sustainability has been a long-standing issue in metals, covering a wide range of issues including corruption, board structure, jobs, communities around mines and mine waste.

Read more

Teck Resources to lay off staff, cut spending as global uncertainty weighs on commodity prices – by Staff (Financial Post – October 24, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

Teck Resources Ltd. said it would eliminate jobs, start a cost-cutting program and defer some planned capital projects amid global economic uncertainty that’s weighing on commodity prices.

The Vancouver-based company is aiming to reduce around $500 million from its spending plan through the end of 2020, according to its third-quarter results statement.

“Over the past few years, we have focused our attention on maximizing production to capture margin during periods of higher commodity prices,” said Don Lindsay, president and CEO of the company. “However, current global economic uncertainties are having a significant negative effect on the prices for our products, particularly steelmaking coal.”

Read more

Brazil’s Vale earnings miss expectations, cites dam shutdown progress – by Christian Plumb and Roberto Samora (Reuters U.S. – October 24, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazilian miner Vale (VALE3.SA) on Thursday reported a weaker-than-forecast 15% gain in quarterly earnings as the iron ore exporter tries to overhaul its operations to avoid a recurrence of the dam burst that killed more than 250 people in January.

Vale’s net profit rose to $1.654 billion from $1.408 billion in the year-ago period, missing the $2.72 billion mean of analysts polled by Refinitiv, as an increase in iron ore prices was partially offset by a slump in production following the incident.

Vale, which is still wrestling with the aftermath of the deadly dam collapse near the town of Brumadinho, said it was making progress with its effort to decommission, or shut down, other such dams as Chief Executive Eduardo Bartolomeo reiterated the company’s “commitment to safety.”

Read more

‘It’s time Canadian companies stand up’: Agnico-Eagle CEO vows to make the case for energy and mining – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – October 25, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

Boyd said he plans to be particularly vocal about the need for federal government investment in Canada’s Arctic

Two days after a federal election left Canada fractured along regional lines, and divided on many issues including whether to build energy pipelines, Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. chief executive Sean Boyd said he plans to begin advocating more forcefully for resource development.

The comments came in an interview with the Financial Post on Thursday, when Agnico reported record quarterly gold production of 477,000 ounces, and which has helped propel the company’s stock up by 40 per cent surge this year.

As the company grows into its role as one of Canada’s largest mining companies, Boyd said he plans to be particularly vocal about the need for federal government investment in Canada’s Arctic. His company has spent the past decade building two mines in Nunavut, which still largely lacks roads, energy grids, higher education resources and other infrastructure, and said it plans to use the experience to propound the benefits of mining.

Read more

Noront officials grilled on proposed Soo smelter – by Jairus Patterson (CTV News Northern Ontario – October 24, 2019)

https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/

Thursday night in Sault Ste. Marie, residents had an opportunity to speak with Noront Resources officials regarding the ferrochrome smelter that is expected to be built in the city over the next decade as part of the Ring of Fire project.

For five hours, the Noront team was grilled by the public with concerns regarding the proposed smelter. CTV News spoke with Noront President and Chief Executive Officer Alan Coutts at the event. Coutts said his team was asked a lot of questions.

“Some that we can answer and some that we can’t answer yet. We’re taking notes, we’re trying to engage. We’re trying to provide the information that we can,” The information was presented in an open house format in a hotel boardroom with everyone free to move around. It is a set up many residents say just did not work.

Read more

From Wyoming to Australia, Coal’s Heartlands Are Retreating – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – October 24, 2019)

https://www.bloombergquint.com/

(Bloomberg Opinion) — From the Rocky Mountains to the Rhineland and Australia’s Great Dividing Range, the great tide of the coal industry is receding.

The entire Powder River Basin, the region spanning the states of Montana and Wyoming that provides about half of America’s thermal coal, is “distressed,” Moody’s Investors Service wrote in a report last week.

All companies producing coal there are now focusing on mining coking coal elsewhere in the U.S., the ratings company wrote. Output “will likely fall significantly in 2020,” it said.

Read more

Column: Copper Study Group slashes both supply and demand forecasts – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – October 24, 2019)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – The International Copper Study Group (ICSG) has taken the red ink to both sides of this year’s copper market balance equation. Global consumption is now expected to register anaemic growth of just 0.3% this year, compared with the Group’s May assessment of 2.0%.

Supply is expected to fare even worse. The net outcome of these adjustments is a widening of the Group’s forecast supply deficit this year to 320,000 tonnes, from the 190,000 tonnes estimated in May. Next year’s expected balance has been flipped from a deficit of 250,000 tonnes to a surplus of 281,000 tonnes.

These headline findings should be interpreted cautiously given the statistical problems of calculating a supply-usage balance in a 25-million-tonne market.

Read more

Nuclear energy is a vital part of solving the climate crisis – by John Gorman (Globe and Mail – October 24, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

I never thought I would become a passionate champion for nuclear energy. But after 20 years of advocating for renewable energy, I’ve overcome the misconceptions I had in the past and I am convinced by the evidence we can’t fight climate change without nuclear.

When I was the chief executive of the Canadian Solar Industries Association, I thought the “holy grail” was to make renewable energy cost-competitive so it could fulfill our energy needs. Today, wind and solar are among the cheapest forms of energy in many places around the world. The generous subsidies that fuelled early growth are no longer at play, yet the growth of wind and solar continues.

Despite the strong growth, the percentage of emissions-free electricity in the world has not increased in 20 years. It’s stuck at 36 per cent, according to a recent IEA report.

Read more

Chile´s Codelco shuts Andina mine as general strike hits operations – by Fabian Cambero and Dave Sherwood (Reuters U.S. – October 23, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Chile’s state miner Codelco, the world’s top copper producer, said on Wednesday one of its mines was shut and operations at a smelter drastically reduced amid a general strike as protests and chaos have rocked the South American nation.

Six of Codelco’s eight divisions were carrying on with the “majority of their operations,” the company said in a statement.

The strike had shut down Codelco’s Andina copper mine near Santiago, and had also hobbled its Ventanas copper smelting division, which was operating with a skeleton crew to “ensure the security of its facilities.” The company said its Salvador division was operating “partially.”

Read more

Safe-haven gold aims to reinvent itself as a ‘climate risk mitigation’ asset with ‘net zero’ emissions – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – October 23, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

The industry is repositioning itself as an asset investors would be eager to add to their portfolio to lower the overall emissions of their investments

This September, Newmont Goldcorp summoned a host of local and provincial dignitaries to Chapleau, Ontario, where it christened its Borden gold project, ‘the mine of the future.’

In an industry where a 40-ton diesel truck is considered modest-sized, the company wanted to build Borden into Canada’s first all-electric underground gold mine, a plan that has taken years — since the company was called Goldcorp — and cost hundreds of millions of dollars as executives criss-crossed the world in search of things like an electric haul truck.

“We call it our $300-million pilot project,” Brent Bergeron told the Financial Post in 2018, who at the time headed up Goldcorp’s Corporate Affairs and Sustainability.

Read more

Election has done little to ease anxiety in Canada’s business community – by Heather Scoffield (Toronto Star – October 23, 2019)

https://www.thestar.com/

Financial markets may have shrugged off Canada’s election results on Tuesday in spite of dire warnings from Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer that a Liberal victory would surely mean out-of-control deficits and irresponsible new taxes.

But Justin Trudeau should not for a moment take the markets’ nonchalance as an endorsement of his plans for economic management. The business community is anything but nonchalant, and the East-West schism that the electoral results are already exacerbating only makes matters more uncertain.

It’s true that some traditional critics of big deficits — which, under the new government, will continue — seem largely unperturbed. Both the Bank of Montreal and Scotiabank saw little economic damage from the Liberals’ fiscal plans.

Read more

With no voice in the oilpatch, Liberals face challenge engaging ‘angry and scared’ western provinces – by Geoffrey Morgan (Financial Post – October 23, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

‘We’re into our fifth year of a downturn and people are angry. Not just angry but scared’

CALGARY — The Liberals’ total rout in Alberta and Saskatchewan and the unceremonious unseating of Natural Resources Minster Amarjeet Sohi has posed another headache for the re-elected ruling party — finding a minister who can engage with the country’s biggest oil and gas producing provinces.

The Liberals lost their seats in Calgary, Edmonton and Regina during Monday’s federal election, resulting in a Liberal minority government without representation in the country’s two largest oil and gas producing provinces.

A minority government, potentially aided by parties hostile to the oilpatch, has already cast a gloom over downtown Calgary. The mood was further darkened after Husky Energy Inc. announced Tuesday it was laying off an undisclosed number of employees, adding to Alberta’s high unemployment rate, which stands at 6.6 per cent — a full point above the national average.

Read more

Paved with promises (Part Two): The North’s infrastructure deficit impacts sovereignty, the economy and quality of life – by Greg Klein (Resource Clips – October 7, 2019)

http://resourceclips.com/

Canada would gain a deep-water arctic port, Nunavut would get its first road out of the territory and mineral-rich regions would open up if two mega-proposals come to fruition.

Recent funding announcements to study the Northwest Territories’ Slave Geological Province Corridor and Nunavut’s Grays Bay Road and Port projects could lead to a unified all-season route from a highway running northeast out of Yellowknife to stretch north through the Lac de Gras diamond fields, past the Slave and Izok base and precious metals regions, and on to Arctic Ocean shipping.

In mid-August, as federal and NWT elections neared, representatives from both levels of government announced a $40-million study into a possible 413-kilometre all-season route linking the NWT’s Highway #4 with a proposed Nunavut road. The project would also extend the NWT electrical grid to the Slave region, which straddles both sides of the NWT-Nunavut border.

Read more

Paved with promises (Part One): The North’s infrastructure needs get some attention from campaigning politicians – by Greg Klein (Resource Clips – October 7, 2019)

http://resourceclips.com/

Could this be the time when decision-makers finally get serious about Northern infrastructure? With one territorial election just concluded and a deficit-budget-friendly incumbent federal party campaigning for re-election, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut might have reason to expect definitive action demonstrated by men, women and machinery at work. But while some projects show real progress, much of Canada’s Northern potential remains bogged down in talk and studies.

That’s despite some $700 million allocated to the North in Ottawa’s pre-election budget and months of Liberal spending promises since then. Not all that money was intended for infrastructure, however, and even some of the projects labelled that way turn out to be social or cultural programs.

Not necessarily new money either, much of it comes out of Ottawa’s $2-billion National Trade Corridors Fund, now two years into an 11-year program that promised up to $400 million for transportation infrastructure in the three territories by 2028.

Read more

On ‘Island’ in Russian Arctic, Arrival of Fast Internet Shakes Political Calm – by Anton Troianovski (New York Times – October 21, 2019)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Residents of Norilsk long felt isolated from their country’s turbulence. Then a mining company strung a fiber-optic cable across 600 miles of tundra.

NORILSK, Russia — On a screen, the California sun beams through the palm fronds and the Walk of Fame gleams underfoot. This island of mines and smokestacks in the tundra has high-speed internet now, so Andrei Kurchukov watches videos about America.

Videos by one of his favorite YouTube personalities, Marina Mogilko, feature interviews with fellow Russian expatriates in the United States. “Los Angeles,” she tells her one million followers, is “where Russian dreams come true.” “I watch her and think, alas,” Mr. Kurchukov said. “So what we’re showing about the rotting West is false.”

Closed to foreigners, unreachable by road and shrouded in darkness for 45 days a year, Norilsk, an Arctic nickel-mining hub of 180,000, is Russia’s most isolated major city. Lacking reliable digital communication with the rest of the country — “the continent,” they call it — residents used to fly home with external hard drives full of downloaded books and movies after their trips out.

Read more