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‘A stampede of stupid’: Alberta’s energy sector fighting Ottawa on three fronts – by Geoffrey Morgan (Financial Post – April 10, 2019)

https://business.financialpost.com/

“You may have noted that Albertans are not fans of Ottawa these days, which is the G-rated way to put it,” Rachel Notley told a Senate committee

CALGARY – New laws that would impede Alberta’s oil and gas from getting to export markets represent “a stampede of stupid,” Rachel Notley said Tuesday.

Notley, the NDP leader currently running for re-election to the Alberta premier’s office, testified before a Senate committee hearing Tuesday on Bill C-48, a federal bill that would place a moratorium on oil tankers moving crude off the northern part of British Columbia’s coastline.

“At the end of the day, this has a gargantuan impact on Alberta,” Notley said during her presentation, which blasted both the content and the spirit of the bill.

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Why will the carbon taxers stop now? – by Kelly McParland (National Post – April 10, 2019)

https://nationalpost.com/

We have a carbon tax — now what? That’s what worries a lot of people who wonder how high a price should be paid for a point of principle

The carbon tax that took effect in four provinces a week ago is a much-needed achievement for the federal Liberals. Whether it proves anything more than ephemeral remains to be seen.

All 10 provinces now have a price on carbon in one form or another. The addition of Ontario, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Manitoba to the list — in each case over provincial objections — fulfills a pledge by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and marks the culmination of aspirations that began more than 25 years ago under a previous Liberal regime.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna welcomed the event with the declaration that “it’s a fact that pricing pollution is the most cost-effective way to cut pollution. Our plan will also leave eight out of 10 families better off, with an Ontario family of four receiving a … rebate of $307.”

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Rio Tinto to join World Bank’s green mining program (Reuters U.S. – April 9, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Rio Tinto said on Tuesday it will join a World Bank initiative intended to help developing countries sustainably mine lithium, cobalt and other minerals critical to the global electrification trend.

Rio’s participation in the program, known as Climate-Smart Mining and set to launch in May, comes as miners face increasing pressure from investors and non-governmental organizations to make supply chains more sustainable while reducing climate impact.

The program “will innovate and deploy financing specifically designed to manage the clean energy transition – responsibly, pragmatically and sustainably,” Arnaud Soirat, Rio’s head of copper and diamonds, said in a Tuesday speech at CRU’s World Copper Conference in Santiago.

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Mining association no longer just about Sudbury: SAMSSA undergoing major changes to broaden reach – by Karen McKinley (Northern Ontario Business – April 8, 2019)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA) is undergoing some major changes to broaden their reach. Among those changes will be a complete name change and new outreach strategy.

The mining service sector in Northern Ontario isn’t just about Sudbury, anymore, so it is making major changes to position itself as the unified voice for the whole of Northern Ontario.

“We want to be a pan-Northern Ontario association,” said Paul Bradette, director of business development. “The board had discussed this with members last September and approved a growth strategy.” He added the acronym has diminished, adding most people wouldn’t know what it stood for.

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‘The Asian century’: East has surpassed West, whether the West knows it or not, says Peter Frankopan – by Greg Klein (Resource Clips – April 4, 2019)

http://resourceclips.com/

Less than two years ago tensions along an especially sensitive border area sparked fighting between Chinese and Indian troops. Outside Asia, who knew? “As most of the world focused on the Twitter account of the US president and the circus surrounding Brexit, the threat of the two most populous countries on earth going to war was not just a possibility, it looked like becoming a fact,” writes Peter Frankopan.

An uneasy truce eventually stalled hostilities but the West’s ignorance of the wider world remains. That’s both symptom and cause of the West’s decline, the author says.

Relatively few Westerners realize the extent of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Actually a complex suite of alliances concerning resources, infrastructure, trade, security and even culture, the BRI forms just part of an Asian awakening that’s shifting the planet’s centre of importance while strengthening Eastern influence beyond Asia and Africa to make inroads into Europe, the Americas, the Arctic, cyberspace and outer space.

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Adani A Step Closer To Constructing Its Controversial Australian Coal Mine (Bloomberg News – April 9, 2019)

https://www.bloombergquint.com/

Indian mining conglomerate Adani has taken a step closer to the construction of its controversial coal mine in Australia after the federal government gave a green light to the billion dollar project’s groundwater management plans.

Adani group entered Australia in 2010 with the purchase of the greenfield Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin in central Queensland, and the Abbot Point port near Bowen in the north.

The massive coal mine in Queensland state has been a controversial topic, with the project expected to produce 2.3 billion tonnes of low-quality coal.

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Anglo American says tech overhaul to boost productivity by 30 percent – by Dave Sherwood and Fabian Cambero (Reuters U.S. – April 8, 2019)

https://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – Anglo American, one of the world’s top miners, says productivity could jump by as much as a third at its Chilean copper mines within three years as it rolls out new technologies, the head of the company’s copper division said in an interview.

Copper chief Hennie Faul said Anglo American was re-tooling its smaller, lower output El Soldado mine in central Chile this year for use as an experimental technology center, allowing it to conduct full-scale testing of new products and ideas in real-time.

“This is not just incremental. It can have increases in productivity of between 20 to 30 percent,” he said, adding the technologies were still in the testing stage and that their effectiveness would vary by deposit.

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Mining City History: Augustus Heinze and the Panic of 1907 – by Richard I. Gibson (Montana Standard – April 8, 2019)

https://mtstandard.com/

Local geologist and historian Dick Gibson has lived in Butte since 2003 and has worked as a tour guide for various organizations and museums. He can be reached at rigibson@earthlink.net

Butte’s riches and people have had some far-reaching impacts. Brooklyn-born F. Augustus Heinze arrived in Butte in 1889, and with help from a $50,000 inheritance, soon established the Montana Ore Purchasing (M.O.P.) Company and by 1894 had opened a huge new mill-smelter complex just south of Meaderville on the east side of the hill.

The MOP bought ore from smaller companies to process until Heinze had his own mines, including the Rarus. It’s well known that Heinze went on to exploit the rule of the apex to allege that veins reached the surface within his claim boundaries, winning huge riches in the courts to add to his other mining ventures.

In 1902, Heinze combined all his interests in the United Copper Company, which had a production capacity of about a third of that of the Amalgamated (Anaconda) Company.

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A Million Tons of Copper Is on the Way: It May Not Be Enough – by Laura Millan Lombrana and Jack Farchy (Bloomberg News – April 8, 2019)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Giant mines currently under construction will churn out an additional 1 million tons of copper through 2023, but that won’t be enough to fully close an expected gap between supply and demand in the next few years.

Industry analysts and executives descending on Santiago this week for the Cesco conference, one of the industry’s biggest events, are in bullish spirits: a key indicator of the market for semi-processed copper ore — known as concentrates — is pointing to the tightest market in more than five years, and banks and brokers such as Morgan Stanley and Macquarie Group Ltd. rank the metal as one of their top picks.

“We are looking at a classic resource cycle,” said Colin Hamilton, managing editor for commodities at BMO Capital Markets. “No one has copper coming now, when it is needed, but everyone has projects coming 2022-2023 –- potentially after we’ve had to drive some substitution.”

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In Asbest, Russia, Making Asbestos Great Again – by Andrew Higgins (New York Times – April 7, 2019)

https://www.nytimes.com/

ASBEST, Russia — Sniped at for decades by health advocates, Russia’s doggedly defiant producer of asbestos — a substance banned as a killer by more than 60 countries — thinks it has perhaps finally found the perfect figure for a campaign to rehabilitate the product’s deeply stained image: President Trump.

“Trump is on our side,” said Vladimir V. Kochelayev, chairman of the board of Uralasbest, one of the world’s few remaining producers of asbestos, citing what he said were reports that the Trump administration was easing restrictions on asbestos use.

The United States stopped mining asbestos in 2002, but the material still pours onto the world market from a huge hole in the ground in Russia’s Ural Mountains.

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Mine Tales: Payson’s long history included a thriving mining center – by William Ascarza (Arizona Daily Star – April 7, 2019)

https://tucson.com/

The town of Payson, established in the early 1880s, has contributed to Arizona history in multiple ways, including being located near the well-known Pleasant Valley War waged from 1887 to 1892.

It also contributed to Arizona’s economy with a robust logging and cattle industry while billing itself as the “World’s Longest Continuous Rodeo” established in 1884.

Located almost in the geographic center of Arizona in the low, rolling, granite hills between the Mazatzal Mountains and Sierra Ancha Mountains, Payson has acquired the attribute, “the Heart of Arizona.”

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Brazil tribal lands under new threat from farmers, miners – by Bruno Kelly and Sergio Queiroz (Reuters Canada – April 8, 2019)

https://ca.reuters.com/

RAPOSA SERRA DO SOL, Brazil (Reuters) – A decade after the Macuxi people won a bloody legal battle to expel rice planters from their reservation in a remote part of Brazil, their hold over ancestral lands has come under threat again from new right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro.

The sprawling 1.7 million hectares (6,600 square miles) of savannah on the border with Venezuela — a reservation called Raposa Serra do Sol — is home to 25,000 native people whose main livelihood is raising cattle.

But the land remains coveted by commercial farmers and mining prospectors who believe the area is rich in minerals such as gold, diamonds, copper, molybdenum, bauxite and even niobium, a metal used to strengthen steel that Bolsonaro considers “strategic.”

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Is Wyoming the next Appalachia? – by Bob LeResche (Casper Star Tribune – April 6, 2019)

https://trib.com/

Wyoming’s Powder River Basin has produced the lion’s share of America’s thermal coal over recent decades. At its peak, coal directly employed nearly 7,000 workers and another 16,000 related jobs. Clearly, since the late 1970s Wyoming’s coal economy has been a boon to her citizens.

But markets changed, management miscalculated and the corporations that grew the Powder River Basin economy began to fail. In 2015-2016, the three largest mining companies in Wyoming — Alpha, Peabody and Arch — filed Chapter 11 bankruptcies.

In late 2018, another large company, Westmoreland, filed. And at this writing, the last of the big miners, Cloud Peak, is on the verge of throwing in the towel. They have granted their executives the usual “retention” bonuses, eliminated retiree health care and pensions, hired a financial adviser and been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

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BHP to cut over 700 jobs, including in Singapore: Report (Strait Times – April 8, 2019)

https://www.straitstimes.com/

Mining giant plans to axe white-collar jobs as early as next week to streamline operations

MELBOURNE – The world’s biggest miner, BHP Group, is poised to cut over 700 white-collar jobs, The Australian newspaper reported, adding that the process could start as early as next week.

Last week, BHP chief financial officer Peter Beaven revealed plans of cuts of up to 20 per cent to his 900-strong finance team at an internal town hall meeting, the newspaper said.

BHP’s technology group will also face cuts in workforce as part of a restructuring that could see up to 30 per cent of its 2,000-strong Australian and Singapore workforce leave the group, the report said.

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Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion Coming Soon – by David R. Baker (Bloomberg News – April 3, 2019)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Clean-energy visionaries have long argued that the world needs a better battery capable of selling skeptical consumers on electric cars and running the grid on renewable power. And yet the battery of the future—at least for the coming decade—will almost certainly be the battery of the past.

The humble lithium-ion battery has built up such a commanding lead in the market that competing technologies may struggle to catch up. That lead will only widen as a wave of planned new lithium-ion factories comes online in the next five years.

The batteries pouring from new factories in China, the U.S., Thailand and elsewhere will further drive down prices, which have already plunged 85 percent since 2010. And the billions spent on factories will create a powerful incentive for the industry to keep tweaking lithium-ion technology, improving it bit by bit, rather than adopting something else.

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