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Lithium prices have crashed this year, squeezing margins at Australian miners – by Clint Jasper (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – September 2, 2024)

https://www.abc.net.au/

It is an essential element of the green energy transition and just a few years ago Australia was in the front seat of a lithium boom, but a new wave of supplies has put their competitive edge under pressure.

Consumers are increasingly opting to drive EVs, and governments continue to invest in solar and wind projects, yet lithium miners have spent the last year watching the price of their ore sinking. Last week, the financial pain inflicted by a year of declining lithium prices was revealed as Australia’s major producers opened their balance sheets up for investors.

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Afghanistan’s Mineral Resources: Opportunities And Challenges – OpEd – by Naseeb Ullah Achakzai (Eurasia Review – September 2, 2024)

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Afghanistan being a landlocked country has huge strategic importance followed by immense mineral deposits. It is estimated that it has untapped resources worth of 1 to 3 billion USD. These resources include Oil, Gas, Lithium, Copper, Coal, Gold, Cobalt, Rare Earth Minerals, Aluminum, Uranium, Zinc, Iron Ore, Timber, Chromite, Marble, Limestone, Sandstone, Barite, Sulphur, Gypsum, and Nickel.

The states equipped with technology have opportunities to harvest these resources in the presence of myriad of challanges. Once tapped, these resources can alter the fate of war torn and poverty stricken Afghanistan.

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Will Japan Turn to Deep Seabed Mining to Secure Critical Mineral Supply Chains? – by Oliver Banks and Ariel Silverman (The Diplomat – September 03, 2024)

https://thediplomat.com/

Despite the apparent benefits, there are significant legal gaps and technological limitations that must be addressed before this mineral wealth on the seafloor can be brought to market.

In late June, Japanese researchers found around 230 million metric tons of critical minerals on the seabed within Japan’s Exclusive Economic Zone. The resources include enough cobalt to meet the country’s consumption needs for 75 years and over a decade’s supply of nickel. These minerals are crucial components of electric vehicle car batteries central to the low-carbon energy transition.

This discovery is also good news to critics in the West anxious to strip China of its monopolistic control over supply chains for components crucial to high-tech goods and defense technologies.

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China’s Africa interests driven by race for renewables – by Lauren Johnston (Asia Times – September 3, 2024)

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Africa could learn from others how to manage mineral relations with China – looking to what Indonesia did with nickel, for example

How is the race for green energy shaping relations between China and Africa? The global climate crisis has created a push for renewable energy technology – like solar or wind power – which would lessen reliance on polluting energy sources. China saw some years ago that it had a chance to lead in such a new industry.

Africa is home to a lot of the important minerals needed to create renewable technologies – like copper, cobalt and lithium, key ingredients in battery manufacture. The race for green energy is therefore leading to a rush for these minerals in Africa, led by China, the US and Europe.

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Gold to hit $2,700 in early 2025 amid softening cyclical environment – Goldman Sachs – by Jordan Finneseth (Kitco News – September 3, 2024)

https://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) – Commodities are often seen as a safer go-to investment than stocks during times of economic strife as they make up the base materials that fuel the engines of society, but according to Goldman Sachs, the current environment is risky for most popular commodities, and gold offers the best protection against the loss of value.

“We strongly believe in the diversifying role of commodities in investment portfolios based on several structural drivers, including commodities’ hedging role against supply disruptions, not an uncommon occurrence in energy, and the potential for sharp rallies in select industrial metals driven by a combination of long supply cycles and structural green metals demand growth associated with energy security and decarbonization investment,” analysts at Goldman Sachs wrote in their recent commodities update.

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Deep-sea mining: Why it is time to sink this ship – by M Rajshekhar (Carbon Copy – August 31, 2024)

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A recent scientific discovery of polymetallic nodules producing “dark oxygen” at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean provides another reason why deep sea mining shouldn’t be allowed

This July, a scientific paper in Nature announced an extraordinary discovery. On the sea-bed of the Pacific Ocean’s Clarion-Clipperton Zone, 13,000 feet below the sea’s surface, far beyond the reaches of sunlight, said the paper, metallic lumps have been splitting seawater to produce oxygen.

The paper hit headlines in no time. Until now, it has been assumed that photosynthesis — first by tiny microorganisms known as the archaeans and then by plants and trees — produced the oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere. Some of this oxygen, it was also thought, diffuses into oceans’ surface waters. And that, a part of it sinks down, all the way to the sea-bed, supporting life there.

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Editorial: Mining-powered rockets vs dockets – by Colin McClelland (Northern Miner – September 2, 2024)

https://www.northernminer.com/

As we look in the waning days of summer to the United States’ Southwest in this edition, it strikes us that there’s been a staggering number of days that only saw three mines start production in Canada’s southern neighbour.

It’s something like 6,600 days – or 18 years – according to a recent study by S&P Global. The most recent major approval for a new mine now in production is Lundin Mining’s nickel-copper Eagle mine in northern Michigan, which began commercial output in 2013, more than a decade ago.

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Big Labour’s big break – by Vanmala Subramaniam (Globe and Mail – September 2, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

In 1937’s Oshawa GM strike, The Globe’s publisher backed the losing side – but didn’t interfere with a newsroom whose labour coverage would change radically in the decades to follow

In April, 1937, at the General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ont., workers frantically scrambled to move hundreds of cars off the factory floor, working all night at the command of their managers. The cars were lined up and then driven along a highway leading to Toronto – 75 cars an hour, travelling through the night. These same workers, up to 3,000 of them, were poised to go on strike the next day, forming picket lines around the soon-to-be-empty plant.

The remnants of the Depression lingered: a lagging economy and fast-declining social conditions. Almost a third of the labour force had been out of work, and a fifth had depended on government support merely to survive. Workers were frustrated, and unions capitalized on that anger, leading the charge in demanding higher wages and shorter work hours.

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Guilbeault’s decree to save caribou would turn Quebec village into ‘ghost town,’ mayor says – by Antoine Trépanier (National Post – August 28, 2024)

https://nationalpost.com/

‘I don’t see how a municipality could survive when 600 citizens are out of work. I can’t imagine that,’ Lise Boulianne said

OTTAWA — The mayor of Sacré-Coeur, a small village of 1,700 people in northern Quebec, says her municipality would empty out and could become a “ghost town” if federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault were to pass his decree to save the woodland caribou in Quebec.

In an appearance before the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, Mayor Lise Boulianne called on the minister to change his mind and abandon the plan.

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Some want a robust gold industry in Nova Scotia. Others say good riddance – by Taryn Grant (CBC News Nova Scotia – September 03, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/

Industry says provincial government is hindering its efforts

A year after Nova Scotia’s only active gold mine shut down, people in the industry say the provincial government is standing in the way of eager prospectors. Others, including environmentalists and Mi’kmaq, are opposed to any new mines and are hoping the closure marks the end of the province’s long history of gold production.

St Barbara, an Australian firm, is the main player in Nova Scotia’s modern gold rush. The company owns the Touquoy mine, which operated from 2017 to 2023, and the company has a vision for three more open-pit gold mines along the Eastern Shore.

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Equinox Gold cuts the ribbon on Greenstone mine – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – August 29, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Mining, community leaders reflect on arduous path to reach gold production

When Long Lake #58 Chief Judy Desmoulin views what’s been accomplished with the opening of a massive open-pit gold mine outside Geraldton, she offers a template of what can be accomplished in Canada when all parties work together to reach consensus.

“This is the model that needs to happen everywhere, with every industry.” Desmoulin took to the podium on Aug. 29 for the official opening of Equinox Gold’s Greenstone Gold Mine, one of the largest open-pit operations in Canada and the Vancouver company’s flagship mine.

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BHP has nothing good to say about nickel prices – by Frik Els (Mining.com – August 27, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

BHP’s relationship with its Western Australian nickel operations has been something of an on-and-off affair. In 2014, Melbourne-based BHP excluded Nickel West from its South32 spin-off, created to house the company’s non-core assets. Today South32 is worth $9.5 billion, 50% more than on its debut, and senior management in Perth may well feel that in the end that was a blessing.

Later that year the world’s top mining company, more than $30 billion clear of its nearest rival, also waved away bidders for Nickel West, said to be Glencore and Chinese nickel group Jinchuan, in a sale put as high as $1 billion.

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US Sees Bipartisan Backing for Africa Critical Minerals Plan – by Matthew Hill (Bloomberg News – August 28, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — A senior US State Department official reassured African governments that an initiative to help counter China’s influence through developing infrastructure on the continent will continue even after a change in administration.

The flagship of the plan — a railway project known as the Lobito corridor that connects copper and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo to an Atlantic port in Angola — is already far advanced, Helaina Matza, acting special coordinator for the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, told reporters on Wednesday.

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Protest concert in Carmacks, Yukon, calls for a ban on heap leaching – by Caitrin Pilkington (CBC News North – August 27, 2024)

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

Headliners included Snotty Nose Rez Kids and Love and a .38

First Nations across the Yukon are coming together in support of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun following the Eagle Gold mining disaster. On Aug, 24, crowds from across the Yukon gathered in Carmacks for a concert series — called Cyanide in the Water —in support of the First Nation, and to protest heap leach mining facilities in the territory.

The idea for a concert came to Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation Chief Nicole Tom in the weeks following the heap leach failure on June 24, which saw hundreds of millions of litres of cyanide-contaminated solution escape containment at the mine site.

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Indigenous investment in resource projects ups demand for specialized legal know-how – by Jeffrey Jones (Globe and Mail – September 2, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Relationships are evolving quickly between Indigenous communities and Canadian businesses seeking to develop energy and natural-resource projects on their territories – and that’s boosting demand for specialized legal know-how.

In past decades, oil, mining and pipeline companies often sought to push their developments through by designing them in-house, then seeking support and access agreements from First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities. If they got pushback, some offered financial incentives or ownership stakes, and the results were hit or miss. Some of the misses were extremely costly.

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