Republic of Mining

Marathon Gold ‘prime takeout candidate’: National Bank of Canada analyst (Northern Miner – July 11, 2019)

July 12, 2019

Northern Miner

Marathon Gold (TSX: MOZ) is on track to release a new resource estimate in September for its Leprechaun deposit in the company’s Valentine Gold camp in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The latest drilling has expanded the high-grade area within Leprechaun’s Main Zone corridor to a strike length over 480 meters with a width of 30 to 100 metres and extending to a depth of 350 metres.

Leprechaun is one of four near-surface deposits, mainly pit-shell constrained, at Marathon’s Valentine Gold camp, and remains open at depth and along strike. The four deposits stretch over a 20-km system of gold-bearing veins.

Area Play: The Val d’Or, Quebec Camp in Canada is Heating Up – by David Erfle (Kitco News – July 12, 2019)

July 12, 2019

https://www.kitco.com/

Full Disclosure: I have purchased shares of ECR.V and BTR.V in the open market and have also recommended them both to my subscribers.

In the early 20th century, the discovery of the Cadillac Fault ushered in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue Gold Rush and the geological anomaly continues to have a major impact on Quebec’s mining history.

The massive fault is roughly 160 kilometers long and extends from the town of Val d’Or, in Quebec, to Kirkland Lake, in Ontario. Its name derives from the township of Cadillac, where it was first discovered.

Although its name in French means “valley of gold,” there is no valley in Val d’Or, however, there is still plenty of gold remaining in the surrounding area. The town of roughly 32,000 inhabitants was founded by miners in 1934 and its economy depends chiefly on mining gold, zinc, lead, molybdenum, and copper. The lumber business is also important to the economy of Val-d’Or, as the forests of the Abitibi region provide 65% of the lumber produced in Québec.

Key permit for copper project in Peru fuels fears of new round of unrest – by Marco Aquino (Reuters U.S. – July 10, 2019)

July 11, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

LIMA (Reuters) – Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra’s decision to grant a green light for a long-delayed copper project is emerging as a key test of his ability to ease opposition to mining that has derailed billions in investments in the world’s No. 2 producer.

Opponents of Southern Copper Corp’s $1.4 billion proposed Tia Maria mine readied plans on Wednesday for an indefinite strike, a day after Vizcarra’s government granted the company a construction license that two of his predecessors had declined to issue.

Tia Maria is expected to add 120,000 tonnes of copper annually to Southern Copper’s production portfolio at the “very competitive cash cost” of $1 per pound, Moody’s Investors Service said.

Top 10 Canada-based diamond companies – by Trish Saywell (Northern Miner – July 2019)

July 11, 2019

Northern Miner

The Northern Miner has compiled a list of the top-10 diamond companies with headquarters in Canada, arranged by market capitalization, as of early July 2019.

1. Lucara Diamond – Market cap: $623 million

Lucara Diamond (TSX: LUC) is part of the Lundin Group of companies and owns the Karowe diamond mine, in Botswana, which has been in production since 2012, and is one of the world’s foremost producers of large, high quality, Type IIA diamonds in excess of 10.8 carats. These include the historic 1,109 carat Lesedi La Rona (the second-largest gem diamond ever recovered), and the 813 carat Constellation, which was sold for a record US$63.1 million.

Since starting production, the company has sold 180 diamonds for more than $1 million each, and 10 single diamonds for more than $10 million apiece. The company has paid out more than US$249 million in dividends, a sum that exceeds the total capital invested to build the mine.

Mining will drive double-digit economic growth in Nunavut this year: report – by John Thompson (Nunatsiaq News – July 11, 2019)

July 11, 2019

https://nunatsiaq.com/

Nunavut’s mining boom will help the territory see enviable economic growth for the foreseeable future, according to a new forecast by the Conference Board of Canada.

But the report’s authors don’t expect this growth to make a big dent in the territory’s unemployment rate, which currently stands at nearly 2.5 times the national average.

“Most of the new jobs created in Nunavut’s mining industry will, unfortunately, go to non-residents as companies are forced to bring in workers from other parts of Canada due to a lack of specific mining skills within the resident population and to the remoteness of the mine sites,” the report states.

CEO at Canadian miner Hudbay steps down, industry veteran steps in – by Nichola Saminather and Debroop Roy (Reuters Canada – July 10, 2019)

July 11, 2019

https://ca.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Canada’s Hudbay Minerals Inc said on Wednesday that Chief Executive Officer Alan Hair has stepped down after more than 20 years with the company and named Peter Kukielski, who was backed by its second largest investor in a proxy battle, as interim CEO.

As part of its proxy fight, private equity firm Waterton Global Resource Management had nominated five directors to the company’s board. Three of them, including Kukielski, were elected in May following a settlement that ended the drawn-out battle.

Much of Waterton’s ire surrounded Hudbay’s reported talks to buy Chile’s Mantos Copper for about $780 million last year and what it described as an erosion of shareholder returns under its management and board.

Brazil Judge Orders Mining Company To Pay For Damage From Dam Disaster – by Merrit Kennedy (National Public Radio – July 10, 2019)

July 10, 2019

https://www.npr.org/

A Brazilian judge has ordered mining giant Vale S.A. to pay for all damage caused by a ruptured dam that unleashed a torrent of mine waste and killed at least 247 people in January.

The disaster in the small city of Brumadinho was one of Brazil’s worst-ever industrial accidents. Twenty-three people are still missing from the rupture that engulfed many of the company’s workers and nearby residents in the muddy waste.

Judge Elton Pupo Nogueira ruled that Vale should be held responsible for the cost of repairing all damage caused by the incident. The judge did not give a dollar figure for how much the company should pay, saying the tragedy’s consequences cannot be quantified only by technical-scientific criteria, according to a statement on the court’s website.

Dushnisky sets sights on shaping AngloGold Ashanti for a new gold industry order – by David McKay (MiningMX.com – July 10, 2019)

July 10, 2019

MiningMX.com

Outside, Johannesburg is thronging with activity. One of Dushnisky’s predecessors, Mark Cutifani, once confided that in his early days at AngloGold he was trepidatious about the drive over Nelson Mandela bridge that leads into Ntemi Piliso Street where AngloGold’s Turbine Hall office is located in downtown Johannesburg, with pedestrians giving new expression to jay-walking.

The view of Dushnisky, however, is that the chance to run AngloGold was too good an opportunity to let pass. “I don’t regret a day I was at Barrick (where he was president), but I also knew that I was at a point in my career where there wouldn’t be a lot of opportunities to shape the future of a company that was of Barrick scale.”

One of the facts of AngloGold’s corporate life is that it’s the world’s third largest gold producer, but ranks 14th in terms of market capitalisation.

Mission to rare metal asteroid could spark space mining boom – by Denise Chow (NBC News – July 10, 2019)

July 10, 2019

https://www.nbcnews.com/

All that glitters … may be gold. At least that’s what scientists think about a shiny, Massachusetts-size asteroid that may be chock-full of precious metals.

NASA recently approved a mission to visit the metallic space rock, which orbits the sun in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The mission — the first to a metal asteroid — could reveal secrets about our solar system’s earliest days while setting the stage for a future space mining industry.

“We think the metallic class of asteroids are the remains of ancient cores of planets,” said Jim Bell, a planetary scientist at Arizona State University in Tempe and deputy principal investigator of NASA’s Psyche mission.

Wyoming may hold the key to the rare earth minerals trade war with China – by Bryan Borzykowski (CNBC.com – July 10, 2019)

July 10, 2019

https://www.cnbc.com/

Wyoming is best known for its picturesque views and towering mountain ranges, but if Randy Scott has his way, it’ll become famous for something else: rare earth minerals.

These resources have been in the spotlight since China, the country that dominates global supply, threatened in May to cut off supply to the U.S. as part of the U.S.–China trade war.

Since 2011, when Scott became the president and CEO of Littleton, Colorado-based Rare Earth Resources, the veteran mining executive and metallurgical engineer has been trying to get a massive stash of rare earth — a metallic element that’s used in cellphones, electric vehicle batteries, fluorescent lights, defense, clean energy and much more — out of Bear Lodge, a small mountain range tucked away in the northeast corner of the state, about 40 miles from South Dakota’s border.

COLUMN- Shanghai bears send tin tumbling to three-year lows – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – July 8, 2019)

July 10, 2019

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON, July 8 (Reuters) – The tin market was last week rudely awakened from its previous range-trading slumber. On the London Metal Exchange (LME), three-month tin collapsed 7% over the course of Tuesday to $17,585 per tonne, the lowest print since August 2016.

It has since clawed its way back to a current $18,350 but looks susceptible to further selling by technical and momentum funds. The chart picture looks even worse in Shanghai, where the bear attack was sprung amid a build in short positioning and a spike in trading activity.

Such extreme moves are not unusual in the tiny tin market, where a bit of volume can push prices a long way. It’s tempting to explain the price collapse through a fundamental prism of rising LME stocks and Chinese exports but, as ever with the tin market, appearances can be highly deceptive.

Hudbay CEO steps down after weathering Waterton proxy fight – by Danielle Bochove and Aoyon Ashraf (Bloomberg News – July 10, 2019)

July 10, 2019

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

Just months after withstanding a hard-fought proxy battle, the chief executive officer of Hudbay Minerals Inc. is leaving the Toronto-based miner.

Alan Hair, who has been with the company for more than 20 years, has stepped down, the company said Wednesday in a statement. Board member Peter Kukielski will step in as interim CEO while the company searches for a permanent replacement.

It’s been a tumultuous year for Hudbay, which saw one its largest shareholders, Waterton Global Resource Management, wage a public battle for sweeping changes to the miner, including, originally, Hair’s resignation. Waterton had sought to install Kukielski as CEO.

Acacia Mining, independent consultant push Barrick Gold to increase takeover offer – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – July 10, 2019)

July 10, 2019

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Barrick Gold Corp. has been given more time to table a formal takeover bid for Acacia Mining PLC, as its London-based subsidiary pushes for a materially higher offer.

On Tuesday, just hours before a deadline set by a British takeover panel was set to expire, Barrick was granted a 10-day extension to consider a report by an independent mining consultant that argues Acacia is worth about 38 per cent more than Barrick is willing to pay.

In a release, Acacia said that SRK Consulting (UK) Ltd. has calculated the “preferred” value for Acacia to be 271 pence ($4.45) a share. In May, Toronto-based Barrick said it was willing to pay 0.153 of its own shares for each Acacia share it doesn’t already own, or roughly 197 pence a share.

Indian billionaire defends controversial coal mine in Australia (Business Times – July 10, 2019)

July 10, 2019

https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/

THE Indian billionaire behind the controversial Carmichael coal mine in Australia is hitting back at criticism the endeavour will be both unprofitable and too dirty.

In an interview in New Delhi, Gautam Adani took aim at two major faults opponents have flung at the development: that the mine’s low-quality coal won’t earn enough money to justify his US$2 billion investment, and that the world must abandon the fuel in favour of renewable energy to avoid catastrophic climate change.

“If the project wasn’t viable, we wouldn’t have pursued it,” said Mr Adani, whose net worth of US$9.6 billion makes him India’s sixth-richest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. “Renewable energy is good for the nation, but it can’t meet our baseload power needs.”

Medallion considering US, Canada for rare-earth plant – by Mariaan Webb (MiningWeekly.com – July 9, 2019)

July 10, 2019

https://www.miningweekly.com/

TSX-V-listed junior Medallion Resources, which is pursuing production of magnet metals, believes the time is right to start selecting potential sites for a rare-earth plant as part of a strategy to rebuild a North American rare earth value chain.

The company is seeking third-party proposals to advance the development of a North American extraction plant, with one proposal calling for the evaluation of logistics and plant sitting operations in the US and Canada, while the other calls for the development of the process engineering design for Medallion’s rare-earth flowsheet.

Rare earths have been front and centre in recent months, as a result of the trade friction between China and the US. These metals are also increasingly important to the electrification of transportation, particularly electric vehicles.