May 20, 2012 – Republic of Mining

Q & A with Saskatchewan’s Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd – (Regina Leader-Post – May 19, 2012)

May 20, 2012

http://www.leaderpost.com/index.html

According to the Saskatchewan Mining Association, the province currently has more than 25 operating mines producing minerals such as potash, uranium, coal and gold. During the next two decades, mining companies in Saskatchewan will invest more than $50 billion in new projects. To ensure the continued success of the mining sector and its contribution to the economic growth of the province, the Ministry of Energy and Resources has taken several steps to encourage further investment. Energy and Resources Minister Bill Boyd was recently questioned about the Ministry’s endeavours.

Q: In last 4½ years, how has your ministry encouraged investment in Saskatchewan’s mining sector?

A: The ministry has been very active in promoting our rich and diverse mineral resources and encouraging investment in our mineral sector.

Key aspects include: the provision of high quality geoscience information; meeting regularly with companies that are active or interested in becoming active in Saskatchewan’s mineral sector; and participation in national and international conferences and mineral investment attraction missions in partnership with other government agencies such as Enterprise Saskatchewan.

Exploration leads the way for mining’s future – by Tobie Hainstock (Regina Leader-Post – May 19, 2012)

May 20, 2012

http://www.leaderpost.com/index.html

As Saskatchewan moves forward into more of a leadership role in the mining industry, exploration is rapidly becoming an important expenditure.

Why is exploration such a crucial step in mining? The purpose of exploration is to locate large reserves of high-grade minerals while disturbing the environment as little as possible.

This is being made possible through the implementation of new technologies such as GPS surveying, down-hole seismic imaging and airborne technologies. These tools allow exploration companies to find new deposits that would probably not be found by using traditional methods. As with research and development, exploration is a field that requires strong investment levels in order to achieve long-term success.

According to a 2011 report by the Mining Association of Canada, without sustainable and effective exploration, Canadian mineral production will outstrip reserve additions. This would mean that smelters and refiners across the country would be forced to rely on imported raw materials, placing the domestic mining industry at risk, both competitively and strategically.

Mining drives million-dollar [mine supply and service] manufacturing industry in Saskatoon – by Jeannie Armstrong (Regina Leader-Post – May 19, 2012)

May 20, 2012

http://www.leaderpost.com/index.html

Saskatoon has evolved into a major manufacturing centre, with 364 companies employing a workforce of 9,900 people, or 6.7 per cent of the region’s total employment.

The largest three sub-groups within the manufacturing centre are machinery manufacturing, fabricated metal product manufacturing and food manufacturing.

“It’s a big driver in the economy, contributing approximately $1 billion to Saskatoon’s GDP, and $2.8 billion to the provincial GDP,” said Tim LeClair, executive director of the Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority (SREDA).

Saskatoon has been identified as one of the world’s most competitive manufacturing centres, in a recent competitive analysis by KPMG. These advantages include access to a highly-trained workforce, a highly competitive provincial and federal taxation regime with special consideration for manufacturers, a City of Saskatoon incentive policy, proximity to resource sectors in Western Canada and a strong transportation network including rail access to two ocean ports.

Mulcair should drop the ‘Dutch disease’ rhetoric – by Jeffrey Simpson (Globe and Mail – May 19, 2012)

May 20, 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.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair is right with one part of his critique of Western Canada’s oil-driven economy, and wrong about all the rest. On balance, it’s a poor batting average for someone who, some day, hopes to become prime minister.

Mr. Mulcair has been chastising the oil industry, and the governments that regulate it, for not making the industry pay the full cost of emissions that create greenhouse gas emissions.

Even Exxon-Mobil in Houston (and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers) thinks there should be a price on carbon – through a tax or, less preferably, a market-trading system for emissions. Alberta has such a tax, but it is set way too low to be very effective. So Mr. Mulcair is correct that pollution costs should be factored into the product’s final cost. Otherwise, all of society loses from the pollution.

To say, however, that Alberta and Canada are acting like Nigeria in regulating the industry is political nonsense.

The age of extreme oil: ‘This used to be a forest?’ – by Arno Kopecky (Globe and Mail – May 19, 2012)

May 20, 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.

One grey Thursday at the end of April, a plane touched down in Fort McMurray, Alta., carrying four Achuar Indians from the Peruvian Amazon. They had flown 8,000 kilometres from the rain forest to beseech Talisman Energy Inc., the Calgary-based oil and gas conglomerate, to stop drilling in their territory. Talisman’s annual general meeting was coming up, and the Achuar were invited to state their case to chief executive officer John Manzoni in front of the company’s shareholders.

But first, they wanted to see a Canadian oil patch for themselves, and meet the aboriginal people who lived there.

Their host in Fort McMurray was Gitzikomin Deranger, Gitz to his friends – a 6-foot-4 Dene-Blackfoot activist who lives in a comfortably cluttered duplex with his parents and a revolving assortment of relatives. Many of them crowded in to meet the Achuar, who relaxed on Mr. Deranger’s leather couch with surprising ease for people who live in palm huts. He had welcomed them to Alberta with a smudge – having set a small pile of sage to smoulder in a miniature cast-iron pan, he fanned smoke over his guests with an eagle feather.

“Did you kill the bird to get it?” asked Peas Peas Ayui (PAY-us PAY-us AY-wee), the group’s leader, a taciturn man in his mid-40s with gold-capped upper teeth.

[Paul Reid] The man who saved Cliffs – by Darren MacDonald – (Sudbury Northern Life – May 16, 2012)

May 20, 2012

This article came from Northern Life, Sudbury’s biweekly newspaper.

City staffer played key role in Cliffs decision

Just call him the man who saved Cliffs. Paul Reid, a business development officer with the City of Greater Sudbury, was credited May 15 with playing a key role in convincing Cliffs Natural Resources to build its ferrochrome smelter in Sudbury.

Ward 7 Coun. Dave Kilgour, whose ward includes Capreol, said Cliffs came to Sudbury in January or February 2010 to look at another site in the region. “They were on a search across the province for a suitable site, and one of the areas they wanted to look at was in Sudbury,” Kilgour said, following the May 15 city council meeting.

So, Reid and other city staff went with them to tour the site, but Cliffs was disappointed. There wasn’t enough land for the project, and it was too close to residential areas.

“They came in and took a look at it, and for a few reasons, found it wasn’t suitable,” Kilgour, who declined to name the original location, said. “And they asked Paul Reid, since they were here already, whether or not there were any other areas they could take a look at, and he suggested an old mine site north of Capreol.