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BHP Approached Anglo American Chief Mark Cutifani for CEO Role – by Thomas Biesheuvel and David Stringer (Bloomberg News – September 25, 2019)

https://finance.yahoo.com/

(Bloomberg) — BHP Group has talked to Anglo American Plc Chief Executive Officer Mark Cutifani about running for the top job at the company, according to people familiar with the matter.

BHP made the approaches earlier this year and again more recently, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the process is confidential. Cutifani rebuffed the company’s advances so far, they said. BHP favors an internal hire, but also wants to speak with external candidates, the people said. Spokesmen for Anglo and BHP declined to comment.

Cutifani has said in previous interviews he planned to stay until Anglo finished its $5 billion Peruvian copper project Quellaveco, which may start production in 2022, by which time he will be in his mid-60s.

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From innocents to anxious activists — what are we doing to our kids? – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – September 24, 2019)

https://nationalpost.com/

At a time when the world is safer than any in history, children are being taught that they live on the brink of a variety of existential threats

Fifty years ago, American TV personality Art Linkletter hosted Kids Says the Darndest Things segments on his House Party show, a CBS radio and television feature that ran for 25 years between 1945 and 1969. During the segments, Linkletter interviewed precocious children under the age of 12, mostly about their family lives and the foibles of their parents.

There were no child climate experts to interview, no nine-year-old boys in drag to document as they participated in pageants wearing heavy eye makeup and lipstick, no F-word spewing and dildo-waving pre-teens in movies like Good Boys to muse about.

Even as late as 1998, when comedian Bill Cosby briefly revived Kids Say the Darndest Things, the result was another stream of often hilarious malapropisms, neologisms, downright silly childish observations along with cloying and sometimes boring repartee on how the world works in the minds of seemingly articulate children.

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Hitting Reset on the Ring of Fire – (TV Ontario’s The Agenda With Steve Paikin – September 24, 2019)

 

https://www.tvo.org/theagenda

The Agenda’s Steve Paikin interviews Marten Fall’s Chief Bruce Achneepineskum, Noront Resources President and CEO Alan Coutts and former Supreme Court of Canada Justice, the Honourable Frank Iacobucci who is now Senior Councel at Torys Law Firm in Toronto.

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Vale to restart Onça Puma nickel complex – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – September 24, 2019)

https://www.mining.com/

Brazil’s Vale (NYSE: VALE) has begun working on resuming operations at its $3 billion Onça Puma nickel mining complex, as the country’s Supreme Court suspended injunctions against the miner earlier this month.

Nickel mining at Onça Puma, in Brazil’s northern Pará state, has been halted since September 2017 as the company failed to undergo a requested environmental impact on local indigenous communities affected by pollution caused by the mine.

The complex, which also had to suspend nickel processing in June this year, produced a record 7,100 tonnes of nickel in the third quarter of 2017, up 29% compared with the prior three-month period and up 7.6% from the third quarter of 2016, Vale said at the time.

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Indian rare earth miner V.V. Mineral targets African assets after local ban – by Sudarshan Varadhan (Reuters Africa – September 24, 2019)

https://af.reuters.com/

NEW DELHI, Sept 24 (Reuters) – India’s V.V. Mineral, a beach sand miner hit by a domestic law which effectively banned private companies from extracting rare earth deposits, has applied for licenses to start operations in Kenya and Tanzania, the company’s chairman said on Tuesday.

V.V. Mineral was India’s largest exporter of rare earth minerals such as garnet, ilumenite and rutile over the last decade, but it started facing regulatory and legal trouble in 2013, which culminated in a blanket ban this year on beach sand mining by private companies.

“We have applied for two licenses to extract beach sand minerals in an area covering 300 square kilometers in Kenya, and a 15 square kilometre area in Tanzania,” S. Vaikundarajan, chairman and founder of V.V. Mineral told Reuters.

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Brazil to Push Forward Mining on Indigenous Land Amid Opposition – by Sabrina Valle and Luiza Ferraz (Bloomberg News – September 24, 2019)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The Brazilian government is pushing ahead with a controversial bill that allows mining activity on indigenous lands, and it won’t give local communities any veto power, a cabinet member said.

The private sector will naturally refrain from exploring in areas if indigenous groups are against it, Alexandre Vidigal, the mining secretary at the Energy Ministry, said Tuesday in an interview.

“It is obvious that if an indigenous community opposes a certain mining activity, there won’t be a entrepreneur interested in developing it,” he said on the sidelines of an event in Rio de Janeiro. He expects the government will conclude the text of the bill by the end of the month.

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Miners push for U.S. Congress to vote on electric vehicle supply chain bills – by Ernest Scheyder (Reuters U.S. – September 23, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Mining executives eager to speed U.S. production of lithium and other metals for the burgeoning electric vehicle industry are frustrated that the U.S. Congress has yet to pass legislation designed to streamline mine permitting and fund geological studies, among other steps.

Earlier this year, Washington’s trade war with Beijing threatened to curb Chinese shipments to the United States of rare earth minerals used in defense equipment. China is also the world’s largest electric vehicle battery producer, processor of lithium and consumer of copper.

“We don’t have great clarity on what the legislative timelines are,” said Keith Phillips, chief executive of Piedmont Lithium Ltd (PLL.AX), which is developing a lithium mine in North Carolina. “This pending legislation would be a big positive” to help secure investment.

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Indian government measures disappointed mining industry – by Ajoy K Das (MiningWeekly.com – September 24, 2019)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – The Indian mining industry is unimpressed by the government’s recent cuts in corporate tax rate and lofty pronouncement of increasing mineral output by 200% over the next seven years.

The Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI) said that despite the reduction in corporate tax rate, the Indian mining industry continued to remain burdened with the highest tax rate in the world, with effective rate of 58% in case of existing mines and 54% in case of mines allocated through the auction route.

“The mining sector has a pivotal role to play in the ‘Make in India’ policy of the government. The government aims to increase mineral production by 200% in value terms over the next seven years.

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After Dumping Vale, Church of England Says Miner Has ‘Way to Go’ – by Isis Almeida and Sabrina Valle (Bloomberg News – September 24, 2019)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The Church of England has dumped Vale SA, and it doesn’t look like the Brazilian miner will make it back into the good books any time soon.

The church sold its shares in Vale after a tailings dam collapse in January killed at least 249 people in the Brazilian town of Brumadinho. It has also blocked investments in the miner through an ethical exclusion process, according to Adam Matthews, director of ethics and engagement at the church’s pension board.

There’s a “long way to go” before the church is ready to backtrack, he said by phone before the Financial Times Commodities Americas Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where he is scheduled to speak.

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COLUMNS: We users of mineral resources should also be responsible enough to develop them – by Karl Everett (Duluth News Tribune – September 24, 2019)

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

Karl Everett of Duluth is a professional engineer, geologist, environmental health and safety consultant, and vice president of the Mesabi Range Geological Society.

We don’t need to buy Greenland for mineral resources; we have plenty of mineral resources to develop right here in northern Minnesota. Minnesota is the largest producer in the United States of the ferrous minerals in iron ore and taconite, which provides jobs and revenue in northern Minnesota and accounts for almost a third of the Gross Regional Product.

In addition to iron ore, northern Minnesota has one of the world’s largest copper deposits and the world’s third-largest nickel deposit. These deposits include platinum, palladium, gold, and cobalt. There are also manganese and titanium deposits located in northern Minnesota.

All these mineral resources are adjacent to existing Iron Range mines that have the existing transportation and infrastructure for the development of these sources, including power, rail systems, and port facilities for shipping. The region also has the workforce for mining.

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First Quantum weighing sale of minority stake in Zambian copper assets – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – September 24, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Shares in First Quantum Minerals Ltd. nosedived on Monday after it batted away speculation it could be acquired any time soon, instead saying it has held talks about selling a minority stake in some of its Zambian assets.

Last Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the Toronto-based senior copper miner had attracted takeover interest in light of its floundering share price. The Globe and Mail later reported that Chinese state-owned firm Jiangxi Copper Co. Ltd. had approached First Quantum but hadn’t yet made a formal takeover offer. First Quantum’s share price jumped a total of 20 per cent in the last two trading sessions of last week.

In a statement on Monday, First Quantum said it “has not engaged in any discussions regarding a takeover bid or other change of control transaction and has no knowledge of potential take-over bids, change of control transactions or proposals.”

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Osisko Gold grabs Barkerville, creates North Spirit Discovery – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – September 23, 2019)

https://www.mining.com/

Canada’s Osisko Gold Royalties (TSX, NYSE: OR) is buying all the shares it doesn’t already own in fellow miner Barkerville Gold Mines, in a deal valued at C$338 million (about $255m).

The Montreal-based miner said each Barkerville shareholder would receive 0.0357 common share of Osisko for each share of Barkerville held, implying a value of C$0.58/share, based on Osisko’s Sept. 20 closing price on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The deal gives it access to Barkerville’s touted Cariboo gold project in British Columbia, which Osisko sees as a “potentially world-class asset” with significant infrastructure in place. The company said the asset has similar attributes to Canadian Malartic mine, when it identified the opportunity.

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New ‘green mine’ creates over 200 jobs – by Elena De Luigi (Timmins Daily Press – September 24, 2019)

https://www.timminspress.com/

CHAPLEAU — Up to 250 jobs have been created with the opening of the new Borden mine in Chapleau. The mine held its official inauguration Monday.

As the first electric mine in the world, it features “state-of-the-art” health and safety controls, digital mining technologies and processes and low-carbon energy vehicles.

The underground fleet will eliminate diesel particulate matter from the environment and lower greenhouse gas emissions to help reduce energy costs, protect employee health and minimize impacts to the environment. Marc Lauzier, general manager for the Newmont Goldcorp Porcupine and Borden mines, said Borden sets a global standard for clean mining.

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‘You have stolen my dreams’: Greta Thunberg condemns world leaders for failing to take action on climate change – by Valerie Volcovici and Matthew Green (Globe and Mail – September 24, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Teenage activist Greta Thunberg angrily denounced world leaders on Monday for failing to tackle climate change, unleashing the outrage felt by millions of her peers in the heart of the United Nations by demanding: “How dare you?”

The Swedish campaigner’s brief address electrified the start of a summit aimed at mobilizing governments and businesses to break international paralysis over carbon emissions, which hit record highs last year despite decades of warnings from scientists.

“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” said Ms. Thunberg, 16, her voice quavering with emotion. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” she said.

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NEWS RELEASE: Two of Ontario’s Largest Industrial and Engineering Firms Partner With Noront to Advance Ring of Fire Development (September 20, 2019)

http://norontresources.com/

SAULT STE. MARIE, Ontario, Sept. 20, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Noront Resources Ltd. (“Noront”) (TSX Venture: NOT) announced agreements with Algoma Steel Inc. and Hatch Ltd. today to facilitate development of the Ring of Fire mineral district and the associated Ontario-based processing facilities.

“Noront is partnering with two Ontario-based industrial and engineering giants to advance Ring of Fire development,” said Alan Coutts, President and CEO of Noront Resources. “This is truly a ‘made in Ontario’ collaboration on one of the most economically and socially important projects our province has seen.”

The agreement with Algoma provides Noront with a 5-year, renewable option to lease a brownfield property in Sault Ste. Marie for a period of 99 years. Noront plans to design, construct and operate a ferrochrome production facility which will service the company’s Ring of Fire chromite deposits. This agreement provides Noront and Algoma with an opportunity to re-purpose an existing brownfield location with a view to sharing infrastructure.

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