June 4, 2012 – Republic of Mining

Maclean’s Interview: Dambisa Moyo on resource scarcity, and China’s race for deals – by Brian Bethune (Maclean’s Magazine – June 4, 2012)

June 4, 2012June 4, 2012

The above video is a Commodities Boom discussion panel put on by the Milken Institute 2012 Global Conference. (April 30, 2012)

Maclean’s is the largest circulation weekly news magazine in Canada, reporting on Canadian issues such as politics, pop culture, and current events. The interview below, with economist Dambisa Moyo, comes from the June 4, 2012 issue of the magazine.

Zambian-born, Oxford- and Harvard-trained economist Dambisa Moyo, 43, first rose to prominence with her bestselling 2009 polemic Dead Aid. In it she argued that development aid from rich countries to poor African nations has left the continent mired in dependency, corruption, market distortion and deeper poverty. In her new book, Winner Take All: China’s Race for Resources and What It Means for the World, Moyo rings a new alarm. Only China, she believes, has realized the pressure that rising world prosperity is placing on increasingly scarce commodities, and has begun to act accordingly.

Q: You are a free-market economist, but here you are expressing a limits-to-growth view.

A: Three billion new people will join the middle class by 2030. This is a positive trend toward a wealthier and more inclusive global order, and it will not be possible without healthy levels of economic growth. My concern is the limits to the kind of economic growth now under way. There is increasing demand for land, water, energy and minerals that far exceeds the diminishing supply.

Q: The situation you describe seems Malthusian: peak oil—and peak land, peak water, peak minerals—writ large. Wouldn’t free-market determinists respond that either the market or technological change will see us through?

NEWS RELEASE: Canadian Arrow commences mining at Kelex nickel project

June 4, 2012

SUDBURY, ON, June 4, 2012 /CNW/ – Canadian Arrow Mines Limited (CRO: TSX-V) (the “Company”) is pleased to announce it has commenced the mining phase on its Kelex nickel mine. Overburden removal is in progress and is planned to take one month in advance of production. The initial high grade/low tonnage open pit production from the Kelex open pit is scheduled for delivery to Xstrata Nickel’s Strathcona mill in mid-2012. Plans are underway on a second phase 216,000 tonne open pit and 260,000 tonne underground expansion.

Mr. Kim Tyler, President of the Company stated, “We are extremely pleased to announce the re-start of mining at Kelex. The Alexo/Kelex Complex will also be the catalyst for driving forward development of our much larger flagship Kenbridge nickel/copper project. Despite the recent dip in metal price we are encouraged by strong market fundamentals and projections going forward. Two thirds of world nickel produced is consumed in stainless steel production. Despite turmoil in the world’s economies, 2010 and 2011 were consecutive record years of world stainless and heat resisting crude steel production exceeding 32Mt and 35Mt respectively. Production statistics in 2012 follow a similar trend to date. ”

The Company’s recent sale of a non-core asset for a $2.45M have sufficiently capitalized it to proceed, most notably without diluting its share structure, in a difficult equity market disconnected from metal markets.

OMA’s Wesdome’s new Mishi pit pumps-up prospects in Algoma

June 4, 2012

This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association (OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.

New mines in Ontario can come in all shapes, sizes and commodities — Earlier this week, OMA member and gold producer Wesdome officially opened the Mishi Pit, which is being integrated into the company’s precious metal operations in the Wawa area — A group, including company directors, Wesdome investors, financial analysts and employees participated in the ceremony, which included a controlled blast. . . .

Though this addition to Wesdome assets, which is expected to account for 9,000 ounces of gold in 2012, may be modest by some standards, its positive contribution to the local employment scene is quite significant. The Mishi Pit is located about two kilometres from the company’s Eagle River Mill and 16 kilometres from its larger Eagle River underground gold mine.

The opening of the Mishi Pit itself has directly created 40 new jobs itself adding to the 240 employees at the Eagle River Mine. Incorporating Mishi ore into the Eagle River mill has created a second shift at the processing plant and led to the hiring of additional employees.

Illogical leaps of logic on the oil sands and economic growth – by Gwyn Morgan (Globe and Mail – June 4, 2012)

June 4, 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.

Federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair is clearly a man who chooses to enrage rather than engage. In advance of his visit to Alberta’s oil sands last week, he declared that “their model for development is Nigeria.” That he had never been to either Nigeria or to the oils ands was clearly no impediment to that astonishing pronouncement.

Nevertheless, his Alberta hosts did their best to show him the great strides industry has made in reducing the environmental impact of oil-extraction operations, as well as the restored mine sites where wood bison and other wildlife now roam.

Mr. Mulcair would have learned that the entire disturbed area of the oil sands is 100 square kilometres smaller than the footprint of the City of Toronto and comprises just one-10th of 1 per cent of the Alberta northern boreal forest. He would also have learned that the oil sands produce only 5 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.

There is no sign that such information altered his characterization of the oil sands as a threat to local and global eco-systems, but surely his earlier declaration obliges him to next visit the Niger Delta.

Mulcair, Trudeau, another NEP: the threat to Canadian unity – by Tom Flanagan (Globe and Mail – June 4, 2012)

June 4, 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 1980, a newly elected prime minister from Quebec, Pierre Trudeau, decided to mobilize the resource wealth of Western Canada in order to subsidize Eastern Canada. The result was the national energy program (NEP 1), which fixed domestic prices for oil and gas below world levels, levied an export tax to boost federal revenues and confiscated producing assets to give to Petro-Canada.

In 2012, a would-be prime minister from Quebec, Thomas Mulcair, has resurrected the idea of diverting Western Canadian income, but with an environmental gloss. According to statements by Mr. Mulcair and other leading members of the New Democratic Party, there should be a carbon tax to raise federal revenue, environmental controls to limit or even terminate oil sands production, and requirements to refine hydrocarbons in Canada rather than in other countries, even if it’s uneconomic. Call it NEP 2.

NEP 1 was an economic disaster that had to be repealed within a few years, but the political consequences lasted longer. It jump-started the development of Western separatism, previously a fringe phenomenon. A separatist candidate was elected in an Alberta by-election in 1982, and his party got over 10 per cent of the vote in the general election that followed within a few months.