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Environmental assessment sinks proposed Ajax mine near Kamloops (CBC News B.C. – December 14, 2017)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/

The provincial government has opted not to issue an environmental assessment certificate for a proposed open-pit copper and gold mine near Kamloops, prompting applause from the city and local First Nations.

The 1,700-hectare Ajax mine proposed by KGHM would have been located about 10 kilometres southwest of Kamloops on the traditional territories of the Stk’emlupsemc te Secwépemc Nation (SSN), Ashcroft Indian Band, Lower Nicola Indian Band and Whispering Pines/Clinton Indian Band.

According to a statement from the provincial environment and mines ministries, an environmental assessment found too many negative impacts for the proposal in areas such as air quality and local ecosystems.

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Long-awaited link to First Nation – by Larry Kusch (Winnipeg Free Press – December 12, 2017)

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

Berens River residents hope all-weather road boosts economy, tourism

The once-isolated Berens River First Nation celebrated the completion of a $200-million all-weather road Tuesday and the hope it will spur ecotourism and other economic opportunities.

The 2,000-member community greeted provincial Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler with soup, bannock with butter and jam, and tea after his four-hour trek from Winnipeg. “It’s supposed to be very beautiful in the summer, but driving up in winter was just magnificent,” Schuler said upon his arrival.

Berens River Mayor Allan Atlookan said community elders have spoken about a year-round road link for decades. Some have died before they could witness the realization of that dream. “It’s over 40 to 50 years in the making,” he told reporters in a telephone conference call.”It is an opening to the world out there for not just the local… people, but for tourism. The doors are starting to open up for us.”

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Australia cobalt rush accelerates on electric vehicle demand, DRC troubles – by Melanie Burton (Reuters Canada – December 15, 2017)

https://ca.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australia, home to the world’s second-biggest cobalt reserves, is seeing a rush of interest in projects still years from production as makers of batteries used in electric vehicles (EVs) seek supplies of the metal from a more costly but less risky source than top miner, the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As auto makers seek to develop greener cars, shares in Clean TeQ CLQ.AX – owner of one of the largest cobalt deposits in Australia – have trebled this year. Minnows Cobalt Blue COB.AX, Australian Mines AUZ.AX, Artemis Resources ARV.AX and Aeon Metals AML.AX have also seen shares surge.

On Friday, Aeon, developing a copper-cobalt project in Queensland, raised A$30 million ($23 million) from institutional investors.

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America’s mining policy undermines national security – by Jeff A. Green (The Hill – December 14, 2017)

http://thehill.com/

Jeff A. Green is president and founder of J.A. Green & Company, a bipartisan government relations firm based in Washington D.C.

After nearly two decades of war, the American military must address a readiness crisis. Both Congress and the Trump administration are working to rebuild the military’s front-line forces. But readying America’s industrial base to support the force of the future requires further action.

The Department of Defense should be gravely concerned that disruptions in America’s mineral supply chain could undermine our national security. The U.S. military uses 750,000 tons of minerals each year to keep our country and troops safe. However, the U.S. is now entirely reliant on other countries for at least 20 minerals needed to build fighter jets, engines, radar, missile defense systems, satellites, precision munitions and other key technologies.

These key minerals enable the “overmatch” that Secretary of Defense James Mattis demands, which ensures we can not only win any war, but win it in overwhelming fashion.

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Why investing in coal is risky business – by Catherine McKenna (Globe and Mail – December 15, 2017)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Catherine McKenna is Minister for the Environment and Climate Change

This week, we marked the two-year anniversary of the Paris climate accord with big news. The Powering Past Coal Alliance, which was recently launched by Britain and Canada as a global effort to phase out coal-fired electricity, grew to more than 50 members, including 33 countries and 24 businesses.

But while momentum is clearly building to end pollution from burning coal, a change of that magnitude takes time. As environmental organizations reported this week, some Canadian companies are among those investing to expand coal power overseas.

While companies are responsible for their own decisions, this news does not represent the growing trend worldwide. Many other companies and investors are moving in the opposite direction. They see opportunities not in the expansion of coal burning – which is a hazard to our health and a driver of climate change – but in the economic opportunity of clean growth.

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Human activity takes a toll on caribou habitat in Nunavik – by Sarah Rogers (Nunasiaq News – December 14, 2017)

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/

Researchers at Université Laval say human activity in northern Quebec is damaging and reducing the extent of caribou habitat, along with the health of the herds that migrate through Nunavik each year.

A new study attempts to quantify that impact by looking at how the animals have shifted their ranges as roads and mines are developed in the region.

The two main migratory caribou herds in Nunavik have seen their populations drop dramatically in recent years. The George River herd has plummeted from 800,000 animals in 1993 to just 9,000 in 2016, while the Leaf River herd has dropped from 600,000 caribou in 2001 to less than 200,000 today.

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Eastmain Resources advances multiple projects in Canada’s newest gold camp – by Trish Saywell (Northern Miner – December 13, 2017)

Goldcorp (TSX: G; NYSE: GG) put the underexplored James Bay gold district of northern Quebec on the map as a highly prospective new gold camp in 2014, when it poured the first gold from its Eleonore gold mine. Last year the mine, 800 km north of Montreal, produced 274,000 oz. gold and this year is expected to produce 315,000 oz. gold.

But a number of juniors are active in the area, too, some of them in a joint-venture partnership with Goldcorp on a property called Eleonore South, about 5 km to the south of the Eleonore mine and adjacent to the southeastern border of the gold major’s Eleonore property.

Eastmain Resources (TSX: ER; US-OTC: EANRF) and Azimut Exploration (TSXV: AZM) own 36.7% and 26.6% of the joint-venture project, respectively, with Goldcorp owning the remaining 36.7%.

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COLUMN-As Glencore restarts capacity, is time up for zinc rally? – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – December 14, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Dec 14 (Reuters) – When Glencore announced it was curtailing 500,000 tonnes of capacity at its zinc mines in October 2015, the price of three-month zinc on the London Metal Exchange was $1,700 per tonne.

The price is now $3,175 per tonne, hovering within striking distance of last month’s 10-year high of $3,326. Glencore can’t take full credit for the bull surge of the last two years but its curtailments acted as a powerful accelerator to a structural shift towards supply deficit.

So what happens next, now the company has just announced the first restart at the Lady Loretta mine in Australia? The market seems unfazed. Indeed, LME zinc rallied on the news, the bear sting masked by a headline decline in forecast production next year.

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World-first mining case launched in PNG – by Tom Lodewyke (Lawyers Weekly – December 14, 2017)

https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/

Citizens of Papua New Guinea have launched landmark legal proceedings against the country’s government over a deep seabed mining project.

Coastal communities in Papua New Guinea (PNG) recently commenced proceedings against the PNG government over the Solwara 1 project, the world’s first deep seabed mine.

The Centre for Environmental Law and Community Rights (CELCOR) in Port Moresby is representing four community plaintiffs. They are seeking information on the legality of the mine’s approval, as well as the likely environmental, social, cultural and economic impacts.

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Chile politics put Potash in tight spot on SQM stake sale – by Dave Sherwood and Felipe Iturrieta (Reuters U.S. – December 14, 2017)

https://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – The chance to own a stake in Chile’s SQM, one of the world’s top lithium producers, has attracted several potential suitors as prices for the so-called white gold – a key ingredient in electric car batteries – have skyrocketed.

But the buyer of the 32 percent of SQM being sold by Canadian Potash Corp of Saskatchewan‘s, which needs to divest the stake as part of a merger, will need to navigate tricky politics well before any deal is inked.

With a presidential election in Chile on Sunday, conservative billionaire Sebastian Pinera has emerged as the favorite with investors, but neither he nor his opponent in the second-round runoff, center-left candidate Alejandro Guillier, have expressed a favorable view of the scandal-plagued miner.

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Mining Mogul Murray Gets Coal in His Stocking—and Wants More – by Tim Loh (Bloomberg News – December 14, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The day after Donald Trump’s election, coal mogul Robert E. Murray praised him in Biblical terms, saying the Republican had the courage and zeal to put miners back to work.

“God picked the most imperfect people on the planet to carry out his will,” the chief executive officer of Murray Energy Corp. said at the time. “Who better than Donald Trump?”

More than a year after his election, the president hasn’t disappointed. Trump has already “cleaned up” more than one-third of a three-and-a-half page list of policy proposals that Murray gave the White House, the coal executive said in an interview. He’s hardly been the only energy executive pushing Trump to shift U.S. policies more in favor of fossil fuels, but few have been as vocal.

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Sibanye-Stillwater deal consigns Lonmin to history – by Neil Hume and Henry Sanderson (Financial Times – December 14, 2017)

https://www.ft.com/

South African miner Sibanye-Stillwater has made a £285m all-stock offer for platinum producer Lonmin, signalling an end to a century-old company that is one of the world’s largest producers of the metal.

London-listed Lonmin has struggled to make money as the price of platinum dropped 45 per cent over the past five years.

Sibanye, an acquisitive South African company run by Neal Froneman, made an offer for Lonmin that will give shareholders 0.967 new Sibanye-Stillwater shares for each Lonmin share, implying a premium of 57 per cent to Wednesday’s closing price.

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PolyMet proposes $544 million to cover Minnesota mine’s early environmental risks – by Josephine Marcotty (Minneapolis Star Tribune – December 13, 2017)

http://www.startribune.com/

PolyMet Mining Corp. says it will put up $544 million in financial protections for the first three years of construction and mining at its proposed copper-nickel facility in northern Minnesota to insulate taxpayers from any environmental damage that could result.

The so-called “financial assurance” is the last piece required in PolyMet’s application for a permit to construct a $650 million mine and processing plant near Hoyt Lakes, the company said.

The assurance estimate in PolyMet’s financial proposal, which is considerably higher than the company predicted a year ago, now goes under state review.

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Mining’s Bohemian boomtown: The tiny mining town of Joachimsthal was an inspiration for many famous scientists – by Cecilia Keating (CIM Magazine – December 04, 2017)

http://magazine.cim.org/en/

Despite its low profile today, Jáchymov, a small spa town in the mountains of Bohemia in northwest Czech Republic, has an illustrious history. For more than four centuries, its mines were central to scientific discoveries made, and research done, by Georgius Agricola, Marie Curie and J. Robert Oppenheimer, including the discoveries of several minerals and elements.

Rich silver deposits were discovered in the town in 1512 and over the ensuing decades thousands arrived to exploit them, with the town’s population jumping to 18,200 in 1534, up from 5,000 in 1520. It was christened Joachimsthal (meaning “St. Joachim’s Valley”) in 1520 by its rich owners, the Counts of Schlick.

The Schlicks quickly became one of Europe’s richest families, and started minting coins out of the area’s silver called thaler – the origin of the word dollar. Coins were shipped to Leipzig, an important trading hub, and were accepted across Europe.

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Gold Holding Gains As Markets Doubt Fed Rate Hikes Next Year – by Neils Christensen (Kitco News – December 14, 2017)

http://www.kitco.com/

(Kitco News) – Gold prices have pushed off recent lows as markets continue to doubt that the Federal Reserve will be able to raise interest rates three times next year, according to analysts.

Gold is holding on to modest gains Thursday as investors continue to digest what some have described as a hawkish tone from the U.S. Federal Reserve. After raising interest rates Wednesday, the U.S. central bank said that it expects to raise interest rates three times next year. The Fed also increased its economic outlook, saying that it sees the U.S. economy growing 2.5% in 2018.

February gold futures last traded at $1,255 an ounce, up 0.55% on the day. Jasper Lawler, senior market analyst at London Capital Group, said that the U.S. dollar is not focusing on the Fed’s projections and instead is focusing on weak inflation pressures.

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