July 11, 2012 – Republic of Mining

Sceptics await 11 million ounce Barkerville Gold approved NI43-101 resource statement – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – July 11, 2012)

July 11, 2012

www.mineweb.com

Barkerville Gold surprised the markets with the announcement of very large preliminary indicated gold resource assessments last week, but sceptics are awaiting official confirmation before climbing in.

LONDON (Mineweb) – One of the surprise stories last week was the announcement by Canada’s Barkerville Gold of an enormous indicated mineral resource assessment on its principal properties in central British Columbia’s Cariboo Mining District which the company said it had to release early once the latest geological assessment was made known to the Board under Canadian stock market regulations.

Normally a company would wait for the full NI43-101 report to be approved by the relevant authorities and published, but the preliminary information received from the independent consultants assessing the resource represented such a huge ‘material change in conditions’ that the directors were obliged to report to shareholders as soon as they were made aware.

Indeed, the figures presented to the Board by the independent consultants, Geoex, assessed by well-known Canadian geologist Peter George, went a lot further than this estimated 10.63 million ounce indicated resource on the company’s Cow Mountain (also known as Gold Quartz) section. They suggested a geological potential for a massive 65-90 million ounces of gold on the 6.4 km long Island-Cow-Barkerville trend covering three adjacent mountains, all with a prior underground gold mining history. Barkerville has been assessing mining these with large scale open pits.

Enbridge’s sloppy Michigan spill response shows oil sands’ ugly side – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – July 10, 2012)

July 11, 2012

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

CALGARY — How does Enbridge Inc. maintain trust in its oil pipelines — existing and proposed — in the face of its embarrassing handling of a major oil spill in Michigan two years ago?

While the pipeline giant patted itself on the back for its response, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) came to a much different conclusion on Tuesday.

Its extensive investigation into the spill from Line 6B — the largest and costliest in the U.S. onshore — put the blame squarely on the Canadian company for the disaster, citing a failure to fix known and growing cracks in the 50-year-old pipeline due to corrosion, inadequate training of personnel, deficient integrity-management procedures, and an oil spill response plan that wasn’t good enough for a major incident.

Investigators, who provided a rare picture of the organization’s behavior, found lack of communication between different parts of the company, employees who were reluctant to report errors out of fear of getting fired, first respondents who failed to respond, and a lack of learning from previous incidents.

Enbridge handled oil spill like ‘Keystone Cops’: safety board – by Vanessa Lu and Mitch Potter (Toronto Star – July 11, 2012)

July 11, 2012

The Toronto Star, has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

WASHINGTON — A “tragic and needless” 2010 pipeline rupture in Michigan became exponentially worse after an astonishing 17-hour delay to stop the flow of oil, raising concerns about proposed pipelines from Keystone XL to the Northern Gateway.

Canada’s Enbridge Inc. was in the hot seat Tuesday as regulators in Washington delivered a withering broadside, warning that disasters like the oil spill in the Kalamazoo River will continue until the pipeline industry pursues safety “with the same vigour as they pursue profits.”

Environmental groups on both sides of the border seized upon the findings, calling the report a watershed moment in their efforts to limit wholesale expansion of Alberta oilsands. Likening the Calgary company’s management of the disaster to the “Keystone Cops,” National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Debbie Hersman said Enbridge failed to adequately address well-known corrosion problems as far back as 2005.