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Timmins at the centre of new gold mining documentary – by Maija Hoggett (Northern Ontario Business – March 6, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Click here for Part 1 and 2: https://bit.ly/2UqZJr2 and https://bit.ly/2TySjp5

With gold running deep through the region’s veins, a new documentary is focussing on Timmins’ rich history with the industry. Northern Gold is an original two-part documentary series debuting on TVO this week.

“It is, in a nutshell, about the history of mining in Northern Ontario told through the lens of one mining town, Timmins, Ontario,” explained director/producer Catie Lamer.

Knowing that TVO was looking at exploring gold as a theme, Lamer started digging into different histories. In Northern Ontario, she said, they found an “untold hidden history” of its impact in gold mining and how the industry shaped Ontario and Canada’s economy.

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Why Barrick wants to merge with Newmont: Gold is harder to find and mining it is more expensive – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – March 6, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

Barrick Gold Corp.’s sudden expansionist desires are driven by the same concerns as the rest of the industry — it’s getting harder to find gold and more expensive to mine it, according to John McCluskey chief executive of Alamos Gold Inc.

Barrick is pursuing a $17.8-billion hostile bid for its arch rival, Newmont Mining Corp., in a deal that would combine the two largest gold companies into a firm of unparalleled size.

If successful, it would have numerous consequences for the rest of the gold industry, potentially laying the groundwork for future asset sales and consolidation, and also potentially pulling new generalist investors into the high-risk, high-reward precious metals sector.

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Northern miners exploring for investors at Prospectors and Developers conference – by Eric White (CBC News Sudbury – March 5, 2019)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

More dollars available for mining exploration, but cannabis stocks luring away many investors

Pat Dubreuil is working late nights this week in Toronto. The president of Sudbury-based Manitou Gold is courting investors who might want to inject cash into two potential gold mines in the north.

And at the annual conference of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, that usually means late night conversations over drinks. “Quite a few relationships and deals are built over a good craft beer. That’s the nature of the business,” says Dubreuil.

“You can do the math real quick on the back of a napkin and understand what’s going on and what the plan is.” On top of touting the drilling results from Manitou Gold’s properties near Dubreuilville and Dryden, Dubreuil is also talking of his company’s partnership with artificial intelligence exploration pioneer GoldSpot.

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NEWS RELEASE: New Coalition says East-West route to Ring of Fire needed now (March 5, 2019)

(Toronto, March 5, 2019) – The East-West Ring of Fire Road Coalition (EWRFC) is a new organization at the world’s largest mining conference, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference (#PDAC2019) advocating for an “East – West road” to access the Ring of Fire.

The EWRFC contends this route will benefit the greatest number of Ontario communities, providing all-season road access, increasing the range of economic opportunities associated with the Ring of Fire – a massive deposit of the mineral chromite, with an estimate value of $60 billion.

The EWRFC was conceived to represent municipalities, First Nation communities and businesses in Northwestern Ontario supporting the construction of a four-season access road into the Far North. Which will build on the current success of First Nation businesses in Sioux Lookout.

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Junior mining sector facing mass exodus, says Kaiser – by Henry Lazenby (Mining Journal – March 5, 2019)

https://www.mining-journal.com/

About half the current population of TSXV junior miners don’t have enough cash to keep the lights on for another year, investment guru John Kaiser said at PDAC 2019. While junior resource company funding recovered from 2016 to mid-2018, it had since been weak, putting many in the sector on a “path to extinction”.

Kaiser said the cannabis-crypto bubble that had in the past few years sucked the oxygen out of the juniors’ room had now passed and was no longer an excuse. But what exactly would bring investors with risk capital back to resource juniors remained a very complex issue, he said.

Kaiser believes institutional money will not come back to the sector until a distinct multi-year uptrend has become visible, something which in his view is unlikely to happen for metals other than gold in a current macro environment of trade protectionism. This was potentially bad news for “optionality plays” in the short term, he said.

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Barrick, Newmont work toward joint-venture deal – by Niall McGee and Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – March 6, 2019)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The chief executives of Barrick Gold Corp. and Newmont Mining Corp. are working to reach agreement on a critical joint-venture deal that could stave off a high-stakes takeover battle, but deep divisions remain between the world’s largest gold producers.

Barrick CEO Mark Bristow and Newmont CEO Gary Goldberg were scheduled to meet in New York on Tuesday evening to discuss terms of a possible joint venture (JV) at their adjacent Nevada mining operations, according to a source familiar with the talks who was not authorized to speak publicly. Major shareholders of both companies are urging executives to solve long-standing disagreements over the proposal.

Newmont on Monday rejected Barrick’s US$17.8-billion all-stock, zero premium takeover offer, and instead proposed a joint-venture agreement in Nevada between the two companies. Newmont proposed an ownership split of 55 per cent in favour of Barrick with both companies sharing management responsibilities.

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Brazil minister calls Vale ‘important’ even as prosecutors probe miner – by Nichola Saminather (Reuters U.S. – March 5, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

TORONTO (Reuters) – Brazil’s mining minister on Tuesday defended iron ore miner Vale SA as vital to the country’s economy, even after prosecutors accused the company of pressuring auditors to suppress evidence that its Brumadinho dam was unstable, months before the dam collapsed in January, killing hundreds.

Minister of Mines and Energy Bento Albuquerque said Vale executives are likely to learn from the disaster, which killed more than 300 and sparked an outcry for tighter mining regulations.

The January disaster was the second deadly burst in less than four years in Brazil at a Vale-controlled tailings dam, a type of dam that stores the muddy detritus of the mining process.

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Newmont CEO Eager to Meet with Barrick But Not About Merger – by Danielle Bochove and Ed Hammond (Bloomberg News – March 5, 2019)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

After more than a week of tough talk firing back and forth, the leaders of the two biggest gold producers are finally coming to the table.

Newmont Mining Corp. Chief Executive Officer Gary Goldberg said he will be meeting with Barrick Gold Corp.’s Mark Bristow later Tuesday in New York to talk through their differences. However, he said in a Bloomberg TV interview that he won’t be discussing Barrick’s bid for his company, but rather Newmont’s proposal for a joint venture around the two companies’ assets in Nevada.

Goldberg said he heard from Bristow earlier and that “I’m looking forward to catching up with him later today here in New York. This will be the discussion on the joint venture with what we proposed yesterday.’’ Barrick spokeswoman Kathy du Plessis didn’t immediately have a comment.

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Column: China’s supercharged imports fail to stir lead market – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – March 5, 2019)

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – China imported 128,000 tonnes of refined lead last year, bringing the two-year cumulative total to 206,000 tonnes. The only precedent for this pace of import was 2009, when China soaked up 157,000 tonnes of refined lead.

It’s a problematic comparison though, given lead prices and arbitrage were distorted back then by the global financial crisis and Beijing’s resulting rush to support its own producers. The import surge dried up in 2010 and China became a net exporter of refined lead to the rest of the world over the 2013-2016 period.

The scale of imports since then is a clear sign there is a real physical shortfall in China, normally the sort of narrative to excite metals bulls. This being lead, however, you’d be hard pushed to discern even the faintest flicker of bullish enthusiasm in either the Shanghai or London futures markets.

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Alternative technology and tailings dam disasters – by Jax Jacobsen (The Ecologist – March 2019)

https://theecologist.org/

Jax Jacobsen is a mining and energy journalist, and a regular contributor to Mining Magazine. She has also written for Canadian Institute of Mining Magazine, Natural Resources Magazine, the Montreal Gazette, and other publications. In 2013-2016, she was S&P Global’s Canadian mining correspondent.

Brazil witnessed its worst ever mining disaster earlier this year, after Vale’s tailing dam in the Brazilian town of Brumadinho in Minas Gerais collapsed without warning.

Estimates tag the number of deaths at 142, while nearly 200 remain missing. Hundreds were evacuated this week near the dam area of another mine in Minas Gerais as a precaution.

This tailings dam collapse comes less than four years after another devastating tailings mine disaster destroyed the town of Samarco, also in Brazil, also managed by Vale (though in a joint partnership with BHP). The Samarco tailings dam failure killed 19, and caused widespread environmental destruction through the state of Minas Gerais.

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Bezos, Bloomberg And Gates Back Revolutionary Exploration Tech – Irina Slav (Oil Price.com – March 5, 2019)

https://oilprice.com/

A startup by the name of KoBold Metals is using big data analytics and modeling to create the equivalent of Google Maps of the earth’s crust with a very specific purpose: “to explore for new sources of ethical cobalt from reliable jurisdictions.”

Some 60 percent of the world’s cobalt, as a by-product of copper and nickel mining, is located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which doesn’t exactly have an excellent track record in areas such as child labor, to mention just one. Calls for finding a more ethical way to source cobalt and other battery metals have been numerous, but until now, following them has been problematic because of the lack of alternatives.

However, the financial backers of KoBold Metals, among them Bill Gates, Ray Dalio, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg, seem to believe technology has advanced sufficiently to make it possible to tap hitherto undiscovered cobalt deposits outside the DRC.

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Eabametoong chief skips mining conference citing government silence on Ring of Fire (CBC News Thunder Bay – March 6, 2019)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/

Elizabeth Atlookan says she’s disillusioned with the state of negotiations with Ontario

The annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention wraps up in Toronto Wednesday, but one First Nations leader says she gave it a pass this year.

Eabametoong chief Elizabeth Atlookan typically attended the event because it was a forum for meetings between Matawa chiefs and government officials, sometimes regarding the Ring of Fire, she said in a release posted March 1 on the community’s web site.

But the Progressive Conservative government of Doug Ford has failed to respond to repeated requests to continue meeting with the chiefs since coming to power in June of last year, she said.

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New report urges slowdown at Nunavut’s Mary River iron mine – by Jane George (Nunatsiaq News – March 5, 2019)

https://nunatsiaq.com/

The more Baffinland Mining Corp.’s Mary River iron mine in north Baffin ramps up production, the fewer relative benefits will flow to Inuit, a new report concludes.

“The most important thing is that ramping up production in the short term will result to significant loss of benefits to Inuit in particular and the territory more generally,” said Trevor Taylor, the Iqaluit-based vice-president of conservation for Oceans North, which commissioned the report.

The report, prepared by John Loxley, an economist from the University of Manitoba, found that Inuit occupy “a very small share of the jobs at this mine” and the rapid expansion of the workforce will in all likelihood further reduce the Inuit share.

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What Humphrey Bogart Can Teach the Gold Diggers – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – March 5, 2019)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Barrick and Newmont have far more to gain from cooperating than bickering with each other. Here’s one way to get past their squabbles.

In the classic John Huston film “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” a group of gold prospectors strike it rich before squandering their good fortune in a tangle of greed, distrust, murder and paranoia.

Something similar is happening to Barrick Gold Corp. and Newmont Mining Corp. in Nevada. Disagreements about how to manage and develop what’s arguably the world’s best-endowed area of gold deposits look set to ensure that both companies continue in an awkward and bad-tempered cohabitation, rather than growing rich together.

Every parent who’s dealt with siblings yelling “Mine!” at each other knows the way to end this sort of squabble: Take away the toys. As it happens, that might be a way to solve this fight.

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Codelco’s lithium push fades in favor of copper – by Dave Sherwood and Fabian Cambero (Reuters Canada – March 5, 2019)

https://ca.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – With the global race to secure lithium heating up in 2016, Chile’s president Michelle Bachelet wanted to be sure her country seized the moment. Home to half the world’s lithium reserves, Chile tapping its state-run miner Codelco to ramp up production seemed a sure bet.

Chile’s most trusted public enterprise, she said, could hunt for private partners to help it mine its own lithium for the good of all Chileans, and take part in the global boom for the battery metal used to power electric vehicles.

A review of regulatory filings, court documents and interviews with Codelco officials shows the strategy was deeply troubled from the start. Dwindling support inside Codelco to prioritize lithium projects over copper, company insiders said, was compounded by legal and regulatory hurdles that stalled development of the company’s two flagship salt flats known as Pedernales and Maricunga.

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