The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Xstrata Copper has added another three more years of mine life to its Kidd Operation. The mine was targeted to close by 2017. However, Carole Belanger, communications and community relations co-ordinator for the Kidd Operations, said they are now looking at continuing until 2020.
 
The mine has been able to achieve this by making better use of the “sub-economic” mineralized rock, which it has a vast amount of.
 
Belanger said the good news was shared with staff very recently. In the meantime, there has been a hike in activity at the Xstrata metallurgical site despite the fact the smelter there has been shut down since May 2010. Belanger said the company has invested $40 million in a two-phase reclamation project, which is currently underway at the site.
 
The first phase, which began February 2011 and has since been completed, saw the demolition and removal of 36 buildings or structures that were connected with the smelter operation. Read the rest of this entry »

 Northern Ontario’s First Nations Voice: http://wawataynews.ca/

The coordinator of Ontario’s Ring of Fire Secretariat insists the province is committed to working with First Nations on establishing how the north will develop alongside the massive mining projects proposed for the Ring of Fire.
 
In an interview with Wawatay News, Christine Kaszycki emphasized that the provincial government is thinking of long-term infrastructure needs as it analyzes how best to develop the Ring of Fire. Kaszycki said discussions between the province and First Nations on regional infrastructure planning will begin sometime in the next few months.
 
“There are a number of initiatives Ontario has put on the table, including regional infrastructure planning and regional environmental monitoring, where the discussions need to include groups of communities,” Kaszycki said.
 
She said that in her view infrastructure needs includes roads as well as transmission lines to connect communities to southern electricity grids. Kasycki’s pledge to involve First Nations in determining infrastructure needs for the region comes as conflict over the process of developing the Ring of Fire continues to grow. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.project-syndicate.org/

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, has pioneered pathbreaking theories in the fields of economic information, taxation, development, trade, and technical change.

KAMPALA – New discoveries of natural resources in several African countries – including Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique – raise an important question: Will these windfalls be a blessing that brings prosperity and hope, or a political and economic curse, as has been the case in so many countries?

On average, resource-rich countries have done even more poorly than countries without resources. They have grown more slowly, and with greater inequality – just the opposite of what one would expect. After all, taxing natural resources at high rates will not cause them to disappear, which means that countries whose major source of revenue is natural resources can use them to finance education, health care, development, and redistribution.

A large literature in economics and political science has developed to explain this “resource curse,”and civil-society groups (such as Revenue Watch and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative) have been established to try to counter it. Three of the curse’s economic ingredients are well known: Read the rest of this entry »

www.mineweb.com

While the stock prices of the world’s top mining co.s are well below their 52 week highs it does still leave them in a strong position with respect to M&A opportunities.

LONDON (Mineweb) -  While few mining company stocks have ever got back to their peaks prior to the mega-crash of Q3 2008, there had been a decent recovery, but as the global recession has bitten and commodity prices have, for the most part, been hit hard, the biggest global mining companies have seen their stock prices, and market capitalisations fall. 

While most are now off their recent low points, they have still suffered badly being on average around 30% below their 52 week highs.  Even so, the overall market situation, coupled with their strong balance sheets and cash generation abilities, does give them some great opportunities to build at the expense of those further down in the pecking order.
 
Compared with a year ago the order among the top companies has changed only a little – notably top potash miner PotashCorp moving above top gold miner, Barrick Gold, and copper and gold miner Freeport McMoRan when ranked by market capitalisation and a bit of a shakeout at the bottom.  However the differentials between some of the bigger ones have narrowed – in particular between Rio Tinto and Vale.  Rio got marked down heavily when it made its ill-timed (market wise) takeover of Alcan now nearly 5 years ago.  It has made a recovery from this  and could be poised to move back into the global No. 2 position in the years ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

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

TORONTO – Kinross Gold Corp. is looking at a plan to downsize initial production from its troubled Tasiast mine in Mauritania, as it tries to mitigate the impact of major cost pressures on the operation.
 
New chief executive Paul Rollinson also said the company is implementing a new company-wide cost-reduction initiative as its capital and operating costs continue to escalate. The announcements came in the company’s lower-than-expected second quarter earnings report, released Wednesday, a week after former chief executive Tye Burt was fired.
 
Toronto-based Kinross said it will study an option to build a mill at Tasiast that would process 30,000 tonnes of material, compared to a prior plan of 60,000. The result would be much lower gold production in the early years of mining (before the mill is expanded), but it could also mean lower costs.

The case for a smaller mill “is based on the impact of industry-wide pressures on capital costs, and a better understanding of the Tasiast orebody and associated mine plan,” Kinross said in a statement. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.dominionpaper.ca/

Assembly of First Nations backs evictions from northern Ontario

TORONTO—In late July, hundreds of First Nations chiefs from across the country backed a moratorium on mining and development in an area of Northern Ontario known as the “Ring of Fire.” They also called for the eviction of companies operating in the mineral rich area, which has been described as “Ontario’s oil sands”.

The province has called the Ring of Fire “one of the most promising mineral development opportunities in Ontario in almost a century.” The area contains the largest chromite deposits in North America, as well as gold, nickel, copper, platinum and palladium. Opening the area to development has become a major focus for the Dalton McGuinty government.
 
The moratorium demand and eviction notices were voted on by the hundreds of First Nations chiefs gathered in Toronto for the Assembly of First Nations’ (AFN) Annual General Assembly. The AFN is the largest First Nations advocacy organization in the Canada.

“It is solidarity,” said Sonny Gagnon the Chief of Aroland First Nation, whose community would be impacted by the development. “We need the support. If and when we need to go on the land to enforce the evictions notice…we will have 633 First Nations that will be behind us.” Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Cecil Chabot is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa and a member of the International Centre for Northern Governance and Development at the University of Saskatchewan.

Northern Ontario First Nations are preparing 30-day eviction notices for mining companies operating in a mineral-rich zone known the Ring of Fire. Will their action win support among the 64 per cent of Canadians who think “aboriginal peoples receive too much support from Canadian taxpayers”?

According to Ipsos Reid president Darrell Bricker, that negative sentiment is a sign of Canadians’ frustration with the “ongoing inability to get started in modern society that exists within the aboriginal communities.”

When Kashechewan and Attawapiskat make the news, other Canadians get a glimpse of the young and expanding aboriginal populations who live on the front line of that frustration. But few of us have sustained contact with these communities. As a result, “Canadians seem as oblivious to the plight of aboriginal people as they are to their own vulnerability should aboriginal anger boil over into insurrection,” says defence expert Douglas Bland. His 2010 novel Uprising is about just such an insurrection. Read the rest of this entry »