Beyond the Ring [Northwestern Ontario mining] – by Jamie Smith (tbnewswatch.com – May 26, 2012)

http://www.tbnewswatch.com/

There are 25 million ounces of gold under the region’s feet ready to be taken out in the next five years.

Even without major discoveries in the Ring of Fire, the region will have a mining boom industry experts say. There are 11 mining projects outside of the highly publicized Ring of Fire that are expected to be operational by 2017 with an expected total life of more than 100 years.

Rubicon Minerals, which is mining for gold under Red Lake, is expected to start late next year and hit 2.8 million ounces of gold in its high-grade deposit over a dozen years. A lower grade deposit, which in industry terms is about a gram of gold for every tonne of rock mined, like Rainy River Resources’ 5.72 million ounces will run for 13 years.

Those two projects alone represent almost a billion dollars in capital costs with more than 700 construction jobs and nearly 900 operations jobs.

As of May 15, the Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission estimates the mining projects ready to go will create at least 4,000 new jobs.

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NORDIK INSTITUTE NEWS RELEASE: Concerned citizens in the Sault join North Eastern Municipalities ONTC divesture fight

Screening of acclaimed film ‘Derailed – The National Dream’

May 25, 2012

COCHRANE – Northern municipalities affected by the Province’s divesture of the ONTC are continuing to escalate the issue.

They do not accept the Province’s unilateral and autocratic approach to the ONTC which represents an integral part of the region’s economy and opportunity to grow into the next age of multi-modal transportation.

The approach is arrogant and places far too much risk on the region as it has no clear plan or desired outcome. At the same time, the issue is rapidly expanding its reach to now include concerned residents as far as Sault Ste. Marie.

On May 30 2012, northern municipalities along with Cochrane mayor and council, and Sault Ste Marie are the Coalition for Algoma Passenger Trains (CAPT) will host the screening of Derailed: The National Dream, produced by documentary film maker Dan Nystedt.

The film first screened on Sunday, March 4,2012 at the Grand Theatre, in Sault Ste. Marie as part of the Shadows of the Mind Film Festival.

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McGuinty calls on Ottawa to help him open up the North – by Karen Howlett and Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – May 26, 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.

TORONTO AND OTTAWA— Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is pledging to work closely with the federal government on its controversial overhaul of environmental assessments as he calls on Ottawa to play an active role in exploiting the untapped potential of the Ring of Fire.

Mr. McGuinty is counting on mining exploration in the northern wilderness to lead to a new generation of prosperity for Ontario. Emerging economies in India and China have an “insatiable hunger” for the province’s resource riches, he said on Friday in urging Prime Minister Stephen Harper to help him open up the North.

“Failure is not an option,” Mr. McGuinty told reporters. “Success is mandatory.”

The mining exploration area in the James Bay Lowlands of Northern Ontario is one of the most significant mineral regions in the province, and includes the largest deposit of chromite ever discovered in North America.

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Future of TransCanada’s Mainline could spur Canada’s next great energy debate – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post- May 25, 2012)

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

As if the great debates over proposed pipelines to export oil to the United States and Asia weren’t convulsing Canada enough, a new one is about to divide the country. It involves the future of TransCanada Corp.’s historic Mainline.
 
For more than half a century, the Mainline has been a reliable workhorse that over winter peaks moved as much as seven billion cubic feet a day (bcf/d) of natural gas from Western Canada — roughly half of its total production today — to warm up homes and energize factories in Eastern Canada.
 
But its use has fallen off sharply during the rest of the year because of the emergence of alternative supplies nearby, pushing pipeline tolls and tempers at both ends of the system through the roof. Indeed, tolls are so high they exceed the price of the natural gas it transports.
 
While recent oil sands pipeline debates have pitted the oil producing community against the environmental movement, the restructuring of the Mainline is rubbing many old wounds between the energy-producing West and the consuming East.

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Dearth of mining deals rattles Bay Street – by Tim Kiladze and Jacqueline Nelson (Globe and Mail – May 26, 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.

 Behind closed doors, it is a scenario that bankers on Bay Street have feared for months, even years.

With the euro zone on the rocks and the U.S. economy struggling to regain top speed, the world’s two largest economic blocs are sputtering. What if China stumbled, too? Canada’s resource sector, with its reliance on rising world demand for oil, coal and metals, would look awfully precarious. That, in turn, would cause major fallout in the Canadian financial industry, which has itself become ever-more dependent on the activity that mining and energy firms generate.

This scene is now unfolding like a slow-motion train wreck. Mining, a business that has fed the Street with deal after deal for nearly a decade, suddenly accounts for barely a blip of total deal volumes. Few investors will go near junior oil and gas companies. The TSX Venture Exchange, the home of hundreds of burgeoning small-capitalization resource names, is down almost 50 per cent since peaking near the height of the commodity supercycle last March. Even big, global companies such as Teck Resources Inc. have been battered.

The downturn has been devastating for Canada’s resource-focused independent investment banks, a group of dealers that includes GMP Capital and Canaccord Financial Inc.

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The Chinese resource supercycle slows down – by Carolynne Wheeler and Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – May 26, 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.

In the far corner of the Haidian district near Beijing’s North Fifth Ring Road highway, a young steel salesman, Sun Minglong, sits in the near-deserted storefront office for the Beijing Jicheng Heng Da Gang Tie Ji Tuan steel company.

The company’s warehouse, once brimming with steel building components, is now only one-third full, Mr. Sun laments. Beijing’s construction boom, in full force up until just a few months ago, has geared down sharply. Mr. Sun says sales are so slow these days, he no longer orders new stock unless a buyer requests it.

“The profits in steel are getting really bad now, because Beijing’s housing market is slowing down. Nobody is building any houses because they don’t make money anymore,” Mr. Sun said. “Compared to last year there has been a real decline. Personally, I think it’s going to get worse and worse.”

The ripple effects from China’s slowing economic growth are being felt from Beijing to British Columbia.

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