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[Australia Mining] Native title: How the West lost its land act – by Damien Murphy (Brisbane Times – December 31, 2017)

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/

For nearly two decades the pastoral and mining industries had fought a long bitter fight against Aboriginal land rights but by the 1990s implementation of the Native Title Act 1993 was one of the Keating government’s big endeavours.

The Mabo decision in late 1993 had rewritten the rule books. The establishment of the National Native Title Tribunal saw state co-operation the immediate challenge.

Queensland – under the Labor government of Wayne Goss – proved friendly and Cabinet endorsed Paul Keating’s offer to meet at least 50 per cent of the compensation, legal and administrative costs likely to arise in determining what land was open to native title claim.

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South African dealmaker takes a punt on platinum – by Henry Sanderson and Neil Hume (Financial Times – January 1, 2018)

https://www.ft.com/

He is known in banking circles as Neal “the deal” Froneman, and for good reason.

Since 2015, the South Africa-born mining engineer has launched four takeover offers, turning Sibanye-Stillwater, the company he runs, into a major force in the precious metals market.

But Mr Froneman’s appetite is far from sated. In December, he made his boldest move yet, launching a £285m all-share offer for Lonmin, the London-listed miner on the brink of collapse.

If the deal is approved by regulators and shareholders, Sibanye will become the second-largest producer of platinum in the world, a remarkable result for a company that was formed only five years ago out of two unwanted gold mines spun off from South African producer Gold Fields.

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Barrick Gold eyes deals with rewritten M&A playbook – by John Tilak (Reuters Canada – December 22, 2017)

https://ca.reuters.com/

TORONTO (Reuters) – Barrick Gold Corp ABX.TO is actively reviewing acquisitions and in the past 18 months considered at least one transformational deal, as it seeks to boost looming production declines and drive growth, four people familiar with the company’s thinking told Reuters.

It marks a shift for Barrick, which has focused on selling assets to reduce debt in recent years, and signals a possible return to familiar territory as the world’s largest gold producer warms back up to dealmaking.

A series of asset sales, including a 50-percent stake in Argentine gold mine Veladero to Shandong Gold Mining Co Ltd 600547.SS for $960 million earlier this year, has helped put Barrick on a stronger footing and top its debt reduction target this year.

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Sabina gets final project certificate, major investment for Nunavut gold mine – by Walter Strong (CBC News North – December 21, 2017)

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

Formal approval comes day after company announced it had secured a $66M investment

A day after Sabina Gold and Silver announced it had secured a $66 million investment from a Chinese backer, the company was able to report it had received its final project certificate from the Nunavut Impact Review Board for its Back River gold mine project.

On Monday, Sabina announced Zhaojin International Mining was investing in the project through a share purchase. Once the deal is complete, the Chinese company will hold 9.9 per cent of the company, with the option to increase that holding to 19.9 per cent through future financing.

With the final project certificate in hand, the only regulatory permits remaining are two water licenses for mine construction and operation, and other less significant permits. With $38 million in cash and equivalents on hand and $66 million coming from Zhaojin, the company still has some work to do in financial markets. Sabina pegs capital expenditures to build the mine at $415 million.

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Analysis: Bolivia seeks investors to power up lagging lithium output – by Alexandra Alper (Reuters U.S. – December 27, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

UYUNI, Bolivia (Reuters) – Bolivia hopes surging global lithium demand can lure foreign investors to the country where nearly a decade of state-led development has left output far short of goals for the metal, coveted by makers of batteries for devices from laptops to electric cars.

The poor South American nation boasts nearly a quarter of the world’s known resources of the world’s lightest metal. Still, production lags far behind neighboring Chile and Argentina. Bolivia hopes to sign a deal with at least one foreign partner to invest up to $750 million in factories to meet rising demand from China and other countries for lithium-ion batteries.

The country is eager to cash in on tightening supplies of lithium. Experts say spot prices have more than doubled to around $25,000 per ton from below $10,000 in 2015.

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Miners Invest $5b in Indonesia Nickel Smelters in First 10 Months – by Sarah Yuniarni (Jakarta Globe – December 28, 2017)

http://jakartaglobe.id/

Jakarta. Thirteen mining companies have invested a combined $5.03 billion in the construction of nickel smelters during the first 10 months of this year to comply with Indonesian government requirements, an official at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources said.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo issued a government regulation earlier this year to amend several articles in a 2010 mining regulation, which now requires miners to process raw materials within Indonesia before exporting them. To do this, miners must build smelters to produce value-added products.

“Our new regulation, issued [by the president] this year, contributes to the value-added nickel products and it has had a positive impact on smelter investment this year,” Bambang Gatot Aryono, the ministry’s director general of coal and minerals, told reporters on Wednesday (27/12).

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Can electric cars and an expanding global economy power the next commodity supercycle? – by Geoffrey Morgan (Financial Post – December 27, 2017)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Besides the expected ramp-up in electric vehicle manufacturing, economists are predicting that rising global economic growth will make 2018 the year when base metals shine

Mining executive Russell Hallbauer is palpably excited about the components that go inside electric cars.

The chief executive of Vancouver-based Taseko Mines Ltd. can give a detailed description of the length and thickness of the solid copper bus bar that transmits power from each Tesla car’s lithium ion battery to its wheel motors. “That piece of copper probably weighs 50 pounds,” he said.

Hallbauer’s enthusiasm for electric cars is warranted. The market for such vehicles is expected to grow to 11 million cars sold in 2025 from 330,000 in 2015 , according to Morningstar forecasts, and copper miners such as Taseko expect that will create a lot of demand for copper bus bars.

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The harrowing stories of the worst mining disasters to ever hit Wales (Wales Online.com – December 26, 2017)

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/

More than 6,000 miners are believed have been killed in tragedies down the years

The stories of the most devastating mining disasters to ever hit Wales have been told. In November a poignant ceremony was held in the Rhondda to remember 150 years on from when 178 men and boys died having descended 278 yards below the ground for work at Ferndale and Blaenllechau colliery.

Sadly the disaster is one of a long list of mining disasters that took place across Wales. John Smith runs the extensive research website Welsh Coal Mines and said he, together with another member, was researching every fatal accident ever reported in south Wales.

Mr Smith said the number of miners killed in disasters amounts to “over 6,000” down the years. Using research from the website, which utilises information from newspapers and archives, as well as other sources, here are the stories of the six biggest mining disasters to ever hit Wales.

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Public left footing bill for cleanup at abandoned mines in the West – by Associated Press (Omaha World-Herald – December 31, 2017)

http://www.omaha.com/

CUBA, N.M. (AP) — For decades, yellow- and white-tinged piles of waste from a defunct copper mine have covered the mountainside at the edge of the quintessential New Mexico village of Cuba — out of sight, out of mind and not nasty enough to warrant the attention of the federal government’s Superfund program.

Still, State Land Commissioner Aubrey Dunn said something needs to be done as heavy metals leach from the tainted soil.

“It’s not going to go away,” Dunn said while standing on the expansive sand dune that has developed over the tailings. “There are two choices: Do nothing and look the other way, or start to figure out how to fix it.”

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Newsmakers of 2017: Glencore CEO, Ivan Glasenberg – by David McKay (Miningmx – December 28, 2017)

https://www.miningmx.com/

IN December, Ivan Glasenberg’s Glencore appointed former South African Reserve Bank governor, and ANC stalwart, Gill Marcus, to its board fuelling speculation the group might be turning its attention to future South African opportunities.

The likelihood is this appointment adds to board diversity and its brains trust, but as far as common-and-garden tittle-tattle goes, why not speculate further on Glencore’s apparently unfettered ambition to extend its production and trading base? Without doubt, the firm has been the most bullish of the world’s diversified miners in respect of where the market is heading – a view predicated on its recent transactional history.

The emergence of ‘electric vehicles’ as a new major source for industrial metal demand has also pepped up spirits, especially Glasenberg – although one is duty-bound to question why he is making such a big fuss about it now considering it’s probably been in Glencore’s folder of cracking strategy ideas for quite a while.

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Norilsk Journal; Comes the Thaw, the Gulag’s Bones Tell Their Dark Tale – by Steven Lee Myers (New York Times – February 24, 2004)

http://www.nytimes.com/

The bones appear each June, when the hard Arctic winter breaks at last and the melting snows wash them from the site of what some people here — but certainly not many — call this city’s Golgotha.

The bones are the remains of thousands of prisoners sent to the camps in this frozen island of the Gulag Archipelago. To this day, no one knows exactly how many labored here in penal servitude. To this day, no one knows exactly how many died. The bones are an uncomfortable reminder of a dark past that most would rather forget.

”Here it is generally thought that the history of the camps is an awful secret in the family,” said Vladislav A. Tolstov, a journalist and historian who has lived in Norilsk all his life. ”We all know about it, but we try not to think about it.”

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Can the electric car industry bring this ghost town back to life? – by Sidney Stevens (Mother Nature Network – December 31, 2017)

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/

Like so many mining towns throughout North America, Cobalt, Ontario has seen better days. The silver rush that transformed the modest community, located 300 miles north of Toronto, into a vibrant boomtown during the early 1900s has long since died away.

Today, the sleepy hamlet — some call it a ghost town — still bears scars from those heady, get-rich-quick days. The borough, built atop a honeycomb of abandoned mining tunnels, is not only littered with waste rock and capped mine shafts but also plagued by poverty.

But its fortunes could soon reverse. Cobalt, population 1,100, is poised to flourish once more due to its rich stores of the metal cobalt. Ironically, the town known for its silver was actually named for this shiny, bluish-gray ore. At the time it was mostly ignored. But not anymore.

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Opinion: The rise and fall of great powers – by Andrew Preston (Globe and Mail – December 30, 2017)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Andrew Preston is a professor of American history at the University of Cambridge.

Conventional wisdom suggests the U.S. is in decline, and a rising China will replace it as the world’s superpower. But how realistic is this?

With the world on edge about North Korea, the U.S. President did what he usually does in these situations: flex America’s muscles. In October, Donald Trump deployed three aircraft-carrier groups to the western Pacific, under the command of the U.S. Navy’s mighty 7th Fleet.

Based in Japan, the 7th Fleet is more powerful than many national navies. Once again, the U.S. military was acting as the world’s cop, there to reassure the locals that criminals will be kept in check and that their neighbourhood will remain safe.

The 7th Fleet has had a difficult year, however: Since January, it’s suffered six crashes, five involving ships and one involving a navy transport plane. These incidents didn’t result from engagements with enemy forces, but from accidental collisions with less-menacing vessels: a fishing trawler, a merchant ship, an oil tanker and a tugboat. In one incident, a U.S. warship simply ran aground off the coast of Japan. The Seventh Fleet’s commander has been summarily dismissed.

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‘If we’re attacked, we’ll die together,’ a 16-year-old anti-mining activist told her family. But when the bullets came, they killed only her – by Kate Linthicum (Los Angeles Times – December 27, 2017)

http://www.latimes.com/

Topacio Reynoso was so precocious her mother sometimes joked she was an extraterrestrial. A farmer’s daughter from a remote village in Guatemala reachable by a rugged mountain pass, she was playing perfect Metallica riffs on the guitar by age 12.

She won beauty contests, filled notebooks with pages of heady poetry and moved through life with a fearlessness that made her parents proud — if also nervous. At 14, she devoted herself to opposing construction of a large silver mine planned for a town nearby.

Topacio formed her own anti-mining youth group, wrote protest songs and toured the country talking about the environmental risks she believed the mine posed to her community. During a school trip to Guatemala’s capital, she led her classmates in refusing the small welcome gifts from a congressman who supported the mine. Then she heckled him so mercilessly that he fled the meeting.

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