February 23, 2012 – Republic of Mining

[Sudbury’s Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation] CEMI gets a new president – Star Staff (Sudbury Star – February 23, 2012)

February 23, 2012

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

Sudbury’s Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation has a new leader.

Douglas Morrison, a mining industry veteran, has been appointed as president and CEO of the mine research centre based at Laurentian University. He assumes his new duties March 1.

In a release, Morrison said he wants “to engage with the best scientists and engineers the academic community has to offer and engage our industrial experience to convert this knowledge into practical solutions that can be implemented as routine into mining operations.

“We also want to collaborate with as many mining research organizations as we can so we do not duplicate what has already been done, but also bring fresh minds to bear on problems that the industry has struggled with for many years, combining long years of experience with the youth and enthusiasm of today’s students for the benefit of the industry as a whole.

Northern leaders frustrated by Queen’s Park ignoring Northern concerns – by Len Gillis (Timmins Times – February 22, 2012)

February 23, 2012

http://www.timminstimes.com/ lgillis@timminstimes.com

Some suggest inviting Premier McGuinty to a Northern Ontario summit

Northeastern Ontario’s municipal leaders, our elected voices across the North, are worried that their voices are falling on deaf ears at the higher levels of government.

The problem is so bad that Northern leaders are discussing whether to pool their money to hire professional lobbyists to speak out on behalf of the North at Queen’s Park.

The issue was debated at length this past week when the Northeastern Ontario Municipal Association (NEOMA) held its Winter-Spring meeting at the McIntyre auditorium.

The key concern is whether government is listening to Northern municipalities on such issues as severely limited logging in the Abitibi River Forest and the perceived need to protect caribou habitat. In both cases, the municipalities are worried that southern Ontario policies are being imposed on Northern Ontario without regard to the economic realities of the north.

Ring of Fire Road – by Jodi Lundmark (tbnewswatch.com – February 22, 2012)

February 23, 2012

http://www.tbnewswatch.com/

The Ring of Fire will be top of mind for local delegates heading to the Ontario Good Roads Association Conference in Toronto next week.

“The projects that are up there are going to make this province rich,” said Mayor Keith Hobbs.

The economic impact on Sudbury for value-added services in the mining sector is $5 billion. In Thunder Bay, it’s around $450 million, which the mayor says is a good start, but is just that – a start.

“There’s more businesses coming in all the time; more junior exploration companies are setting up shop in Thunder Bay. We have to make sure it happens on a large scale,” he said.

Hobbs will be joined at the conference by Councillors Joe Virdiramo, Iain Angus, Brian McKinnon, Aldo Ruberto and Ken Boshcoff as well as city manager Tim Commisso and Fort William First Nation’s economic development officer Ed Collins.

Record Nickel Supply Expanding Glut Thwarts Bull Market Rally: Commodities – by Jae Hur and Ichiro Suzuki Bloomberg.com – February 22, 2012)

February 23, 2012

www.bloomberg.com

Mining companies and refineries are producing more nickel than at any time in history, expanding a glut that threatens to reverse this year’s rally.

Production will exceed demand by 45,000 metric tons, a 73 percent jump from 2011, Barclays Capital estimates. That’s equal to 46 percent of stockpiles tracked by the London Metal Exchange. Refined output will rise 12 percent, the most in at least eight years, according to Morgan Stanley. Prices, which rose 7.8 percent to $20,170 a ton this year, may fall as much as 13 percent to $17,630 a ton by Dec. 31, the median of 11 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg shows.

Metals have returned to a bull market from a 22 percent slump last year on an improving outlook for global growth with manufacturing in the U.S. capping the biggest two-month increase in more than two years in January and unexpectedly gaining in China. With new supply expected from Australia to Madagascar to Brazil, consumption still won’t expand fast enough to absorb the extra metal. Most markets for stainless steel, accounting for 76 percent of nickel demand, remain “depressed,” Deutsche Bank AG said in a report Feb. 15.

NEWS RELEASE: MiningWatch Canada Welcomes Drummond Commission’s Recommendation to Examine Mining Taxes

February 23, 2012

Thursday, February 16, 2012

(Ottawa) For over a decade, MiningWatch Canada has been saying that Ontarians should be getting a better share of the resource wealth that is extracted in the province. The coalition of social justice, environmental and Indigenous groups welcomed the recommendation to eliminate a key tax break for mining companies and to review the mining tax system in the recently released report from the Commission on the Reform of Ontario’s Public Services, chaired by Donald Drummond.

The report recommends that the province “eliminate the Ontario resource tax credit and review the mining tax system to ensure that the province is supporting the exploration and production of minerals in Ontario while receiving a fair return on its natural resources.”

“Given the province’s economic situation and the current growth in the mining sector, this is an important recommendation that the government should definitely implement in this year’s budget,” urged Ramsey Hart, Canada Program Coordinator at MiningWatch Canada.

The EU’s dubious attack on the oil sands – by Jason Langrish (National Post – February 23, 2012)

February 23, 2012

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Jason Langrish is the executive director of the Canada Europe Roundtable for Business.

Its Fuel Quality Directive is impossible to implement

Today, the European Parliament votes on the Fuel Quality Directive (FQD), a piece of legislation that will in effect classify oil derived from the Alberta oil sands as “dirty,” possessing a higher carbon content than oil derived from other sources.

Canadian climate scientist Andrew Weaver recently published a paper that concluded that the reputation of the oil sands as polluting is overstated. So who are we to believe?

It really doesn’t matter. The reason why the FQD is a bad idea has to do with the questionable aims of the proposed legislation and the near impossibility of implementing it in a meaningful way.

If the EU wants to cut carbon dioxide emissions from upstream production, the FQD is not the right instrument. If oil sands products do not enter the EU they will find other markets, ensuring that there is no reduction in carbon dioxide emissions globally — any carbon dioxide cut the EU would claim from implementation would be false, as the FQD would simply shift the carbon dioxide elsewhere in the global system.

Canada needs an EU win on oil sands – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – February 22, 2012)

February 23, 2012

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

After the mess in the U.S. over Keystone XL, Canada could really use a win on Thursday — or at least the benefit of the doubt — when the European Union votes on whether to label oil from the Alberta oil sands as “highly polluting.”

A vote in favour of the Fuel Quality Directive would signal that attitudes against the oil sands are hardening, even as far away as Europe. It would also stand out as another home run for the environmental movement and its strategy of picking on the Canadian sector to fight its climate-change and off-oil agenda.

A vote against the directive would set a favourable policy precedent for Canada as it courts new markets for oil sands crude. It would also show its intense lobbying and education efforts in Europe over the past few months are working.

The directive, driven by EU Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard, sets a mandatory target for fuel suppliers to reduce the carbon footprint of fuels by 6% over the next decade. The oil sands would be ascribed a higher value greenhouse value (107) than average crude oil (87.5), if byproducts are ever sold there.

Shale oil boom drives down prices versus rest of world – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – February 20, 2012)

February 23, 2012

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

North America’s crude market is increasingly diverging from the international scene, as rising U.S. production and weak demand pose long-term challenges for Canadian-based oil companies.

The U.S. is forecast to lead the non-OPEC world in crude production this year, with Canada not far behind. But that surge in supply is splashing against constraints in pipeline and refining capacity, and against a “peak demand” scenario in which U.S. consumption is not expected to return to the 1985 high water mark any time soon.

That stands in sharp contrast to the international crude market. Globally, high-growth emerging markets like China are driving demand higher, while new production capacity is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few Persian Gulf states. Geopolitical risks – like the standoff over Iran’s nuclear ambitions – add strain to a fundamentally tight market.

The result is a sharp disconnect between international oil prices and what U.S. and Canadian producers can get for their crude, a divergence that will widen if refiners and pipeline companies fail to keep up with rising production.

Ring of Fire lights up Northern Ontario’s mining industry – Ontario Business Report

February 23, 2012

This is an Ontario Government Publication. (2012) http://ontariobusinessreport.com/en/

They went looking for diamonds in the rough, but found something perhaps even more valuable.

In 2002 DeBeers, the world’s leading diamond miner and trader, ventured into Ontario’s far north muskeg near Hudson’s Bay seeking the precious stones. What it discovered instead was copper and zinc.

——————————————————————————–
But that was enough to spark a flurry of other exploration efforts. One potentially commercial find led to another, and by 2008 prospectors struck gold, so to speak. What they uncovered, for the first time in commercial quantities anywhere in North America, was an extremely rare mineral called chromite. The discoveries are so vast that the Ontario mining industry and others speak of a multi-billion dollar deposit that may take generations to fully exploit.
——————————————————————————–

Indeed, the province considers the chromite and related discoveries in a 5,000-sq-km region now known as the Ring of Fire as “historic.” Says former Northern Development, Mines and Forestry Minister Michael Gravelle: “It’s home to one of the most promising mineral development opportunities in Ontario in more than a century.”

FRASER INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE: New Brunswick trumps Alberta as world’s No. 1 spot for mining investment;

February 23, 2012

February 23, 2012

TORONTO–New Brunswick is the world’s most attractive jurisdiction for
mineral exploration and development in the view of the international mining industry, according to the Survey of Mining Companies: 2011/2012, released today by the Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading public policy think-tank.

“New Brunswick shot to the top of the rankings as miners lauded the province for its fair, transparent, and efficient legal system and consistency in the enforcement and interpretation of existing environmental regulations,” said Fred McMahon, Fraser Institute vice-president of international policy research and coordinator of the survey.

“Combine that with a competitive taxation regime and minimal uncertainty
around disputed land claims and New Brunswick has emerged as a superstar in the view of the global mining community.”

New Brunswick vaulted to first place from 23rd last year, unseating Alberta
at the top of the global rankings as that province fell to third overall.
Quebec, which enjoyed a three-year reign at No. 1 from 2007 to 2010,
continued to lose support among mining executives as it fell to fifth place
from fourth in 2011.