Republic of Mining

Dubreuilville mine project clears regulatory hurdle – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – January 25, 2019)

January 25, 2019

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Feds approve environmental assessment for Magino open-pit gold mine

Ottawa has given a thumbs-up for Argonaut Gold to proceed with a proposed open-pit gold mine outside of Dubreuilville. Federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna announced Jan. 24 that the Magino Gold Project is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.

The 2,200-hectare property is a former underground gold mine, 40 kilometres northeast of Wawa and 14 kilometres southeast of the town of Dubreuilville. Magino is located just east of Alamos’s Island Gold Mine.

Valued at $427 million, Magino could create up to 550 construction jobs and 350 mining jobs. Argonaut hasn’t provided a date on the start of construction.

Lack of mines to squeeze supply – by Pat Heller (Numismatic News – January 24, 2019)

January 25, 2019

Numismatic News

What a difference a decade makes! Ten years ago, gold and silver prices were on a roll. The price of silver had increased 41 percent from Dec. 5, 2008, to Feb. 11, 2009. The price of gold rose 1 percent from Jan. 7, 2009, to Feb. 11, 2009.

With gold around $900 and silver above $12 per ounce 10 years ago, mining companies were enjoying expanded profit margins above their marginal costs. In that environment, gold and silver mining companies were eagerly looking to find and develop new mines.

Once a potential mine site was discovered, a mining company would bring in an independent geologist to confirm that the minimum amount of recoverable metal would make the development of a mine economically feasible. Demand for geologists to confirm these discoveries was so strong that it was not unusual for the mining companies to wait 18 months before these specialists worked through their backlog of jobs.

Hundreds missing in Brazil after Vale tailings dam breaks, area evacuated – by Anthony Boadle (Reuters U.S. – January 25, 2019)

January 25, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

BRASILIA (Reuters) – A Brazil fire brigade said it was searching for about 200 people still unaccounted for after a tailings dam burst on Friday at an iron ore mine owned by Brazilian miner Vale SA in southwestern Minas Gerais state.

A statement from the fire brigade issued in Belo Horizonte city said scores of people were trapped in areas by the river of sludge released by the dam failure.

Vale said there were employees in the administrative buildings of the dam that were covered by the surge of mud and water and there could be casualties in that area. There was no immediate word of fatalities.

Column: Global aluminium production growth brakes sharply – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – January 24, 2019)

January 25, 2019

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – Global aluminium production grew at its slowest pace in a decade in 2018, and most of that was in the first half of the year. Output totalled 64.34 million tonnes, according to the International Aluminium Institute (IAI), up by just 1.5 percent on 2017. Production did no more than flat-line over the second half of 2018.

It was the weakest production performance since 2009, when the industry was battered by the global financial crisis, a collapse in prices and multiple smelter closures. Even China, the world’s dominant producer, ran out of expansion steam last year with growth of 1.6 percent, while the rest of the world managed just 1.4 percent.

For the world outside China it was a year of unusually high disruption rates but for smelters everywhere the real problem is price. As articulated by U.S. producer Alcoa last week, at current prices some 30-40 percent of the world’s smelters are losing money.

Volkswagen jumps into the EV batteries making wagon – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – January 25, 2019)

January 25, 2019

http://www.mining.com/

German auto maker giant Volkswagen has just upped its bet on electric vehicles (EVs) by announcing it will begin manufacturing batteries and charging stations for those cars, which the company plans to also start mass producing soon.

The Wolfsburg-based company said it would invest 870 million euros (about $985 million) by 2020 to develop e-vehicle components, adding that its components division, which makes engines and steering parts, will now be in charge of producing, packing and overseeing recycling of battery cells and packs.

VW has been actively promoting the electric push by creating global production capacities for the construction of 1 million electric cars. Late last year, it announced it would spend nearly $50 billion to refocus on the making of electric cars, autonomous vehicles and new mobility services.

Battlefield correspondent: Rex Murphy sees human casualties in the war on Canada’s resource industries – by Greg Klein (Resource Clips – January 24, 2019)

January 25, 2019

http://resourceclips.com/

Resource extraction was vital to the generations who built this country,
Murphy emphasized. “It is only in a country as prosperous as our own that
we get to the point where we denigrate and derogate the essential industries
that brought us precisely to where we are.”

There’s something inspiring about a Newfoundlander—a Newfoundlander born in Newfoundland before it even joined Canada—coming to the West Coast largely to defend Alberta’s oil and gas sector.

Actually Rex Murphy’s message applies to Canada’s resource industries overall, focusing on the people who work in them, their families and others who helped build the country. He sees the chasm between those who find fulfillment in employment and those who would shut down the industries that provide it.

A National Post columnist who’s somehow tolerated by the CBC, Murphy proved a huge hit with an overflow crowd at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference 2019. “As a journalist, I’m in a room full of achievers,” he quipped. “This is a very awkward spot.” But unlike most journalists, he neither ignores nor celebrates an enormous shift in Canadian society.

Periodic table: new version warns of elements that are endangered – by David Cole-Hamilton (The Conversation – January 24, 2019)

January 25, 2019

https://theconversation.com/

It is amazing to think that everything around us is made up from just 90 building blocks – the naturally occurring chemical elements. Dmitri Mendeleev put the 63 of these known at the time into order and published his first version of what we now recognise as the periodic table in 1869. In that year, the American civil war was just over, Germany was about to be unified, Tolstoy published War and Peace, and the Suez Canal was opened.

There are now 118 known elements but only 90 that occur in nature. The rest are mostly super-heavy substances that have been created in laboratories in recent decades through nuclear reactions, and rapidly decay into one or more of the natural elements.

Where each of these natural elements sits in the periodic table allows us to know immediately a great deal about how it will behave. To commemorate the 150th anniversary of this amazing resource, UNESCO has proclaimed 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table.

Mining company optimistic about N.W.T. proposed power expansion – by Richard Gleeson (CBC News Canada North – January 25, 2019)

January 25, 2019

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

Environmental group says money could be better spent helping communities off the power grid

A company that’s trying to revive mining in the Yellowknife area is optimistic about funding for the Taltson hydroelectric system — the biggest infrastructure project in the Northwest Territories.

“We’re obviously happy to see somebody starting to pay attention to power in the North,” said Joe Campbell, the executive chairman of TerraX Minerals.

The company is exploring 776 square kilometres of land in and around the city. It’s part of the historic Yellowknife greenstone belt that gave rise to the two gold mines — Con and Giant — and supported the city for more than 50 years.

De Beers left out in cold as Zimbabwe awards diamond licences to Chinese, Russian firms – by Memory Mataranyika (MiningMX.com – January 24, 2019)

January 25, 2019

MiningMX.com

ZIMBABWE has licensed two diamond companies from China and Russia as the only foreign firms allowed to explore and mine for diamonds in the country after approving its Zimbabwe Diamond Industry Policy late last year.

President Emerson Mnangagwa has increasingly favoured Russia and China in his investment dealings as other international investors raise concerns over the slow pace of reforms, and the country’s worsening currency problems. Zimbabwe is readying the re-introduction of the Zimbabwe dollar in the next 12 months.

Mines Minister, Winston Chitando, said in an interview that De Beers and Vast Resources have not been given the green light for diamond exploration and mining.

U.S. copper projects gain steam thanks to electric vehicle trend – by Ernest Scheyder (Reuters Canada – January 24, 2019)

January 25, 2019

https://ca.reuters.com/

YERINGTON, Nev. (Reuters) – Once seen as a laggard in the global mining industry, U.S. copper deposits have quietly drawn more than $1.1 billion in investments from small and large miners alike as Tesla and other electric carmakers scramble for more of the red metal.

Four U.S. copper projects are set to open by next year – the first to come online in more than a decade – with several mine expansions also underway across the country, home to the world’s fifth-largest copper reserves, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The rising popularity of electric vehicles – which use twice as much copper as internal combustion engines – and increasingly pro-mining policies in the U.S. while other nations exert greater control over their mineral deposits are fueling the spending, according to mining executives and investors.

At Davos, the world is aflame. Everywhere else, things are awesome – by Terence Corcoran (Financial Post – January 25, 2019)

January 25, 2019

https://business.financialpost.com/

Nothing is off the list of threats that are circling the planet. But what about all our progress?

Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, interviewed broadcaster Sir David Attenborough at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos this week.

Reaching deep for the hard question, Prince William asked: “David, recently you were in Poland and you spoke out very powerfully at the UN climate change conference there. How urgent is that crisis now?” Sir David did not fail to take up challenge: “It’s difficult to overstate it.”

But let me try, he might have added. “We are now so numerous, so powerful, so all pervasive, the mechanisms that we have for destruction are so wholesale and so frightening, that we can actually exterminate whole ecosystems without even noticing it.”

Rickford promises progress in the Ring of Fire – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – January 24, 2018)

January 25, 2019

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Indigenous communities to reap the rewards, benefits of natural resource development

Provincial cabinet minister Greg Rickford offered a stay-tuned response to the government’s plans to advance the construction of an access corridor to the Ring of Fire.

The minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, and Indigenous Affairs was in Sudbury to reaffirm the Ford government’s commitment to opening up the mineral deposits in the remote James Bay region.

In his Jan. 23 remarks at the Procurement, Employment, Partnerships Conference in Sudbury, Rickford referred to the James Bay mineral belt as a “region of prosperity” that’s been “complicated and overburdened with bureaucracy.”

Barrick CEO on Zambia tax dispute: Threats don’t solve problems (BNN Bloomberg – January 25, 2019)

January 25, 2019

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

Barrick Gold Corp.’s new chief executive officer, Mark Bristow, said his company is seeking solutions to a dispute over mining taxes in Zambia.

“We’re engaged with the government in a constructive way,” he told reporters at a press conference in the Ivory Coast’s economic capital, Abidjan. “We don’t believe that threatening one’s partner is a constructive way to go about solving problems.”

Mining companies in Zambia, Africa’s second-biggest copper producer, have warned that the tax hikes will harm the industry and some producers have said they’ll curtail operations as a result of the changes. First Quantum Minerals Ltd. in December said it would cut 2,500 jobs in the country, before backtracking this week on the plan.

CEO: Newmont Likes Goldcorp’s Exploration-Pipeline Potential – by Allen Sykora (Kitco News – January 23, 2019)

January 24, 2019

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) – Newmont Mining Corp. (NYSE: NEM) is encouraged by the exploration potential of some of the properties that it will acquire from Goldcorp Inc. (TSX: G, NYSE: GG), assuming that a planned merger goes through, says Gary Goldberg, Newmont’s chief executive officer.

The CEO spoke with Kitco News Wednesday about the mega-merger that was announced on Jan. 14. The mostly all-stock transaction valued Goldcorp shares at $10 billion and would create the largest gold-mining company in the world, to be named Newmont Goldcorp.

Goldberg and other top Newmont officials are on an extensive road trip, discussing the merger with investors and others. Company officials have been trying to share what assets they like and which they think might need more work, the CEO said.

[Zinc] The conditions are ripe for a spike in the price of this metal – here’s how to invest – by Dominic Frisby (Money Week – January 23, 2019)

January 24, 2019

Money Week

Zinc is the subject of today’s Money Morning. We consider the metal, its uses, the state of the market – and we end with some possible ways to play the market, including two speculative miners. Why zinc specifically? Because there is a potential shortfall in supply which could lead to a spike in the price.

Why is zinc in the doldrums?

Let’s start with the metal itself. After iron, copper and aluminium, zinc is the fourth most used metal in the world. Its main use is in the construction industry: the frames of buildings, bridges, roofs, staircases, beams and piping all contain zinc. A coating of zinc over iron or steel protects the metal beneath from rusting.

It is also used in alloys (brass and bronze), in compounds with a range of applications, particularly in batteries – from everyday AAs and AAAs to silver-zinc batteries in aerospace – and, increasingly, in fertiliser.