South Africa labor unrest spreads; 36,000 miners strike – by AP (Canadian Business Magazine – September 10, 2012)

Founded in 1928, Canadian Business is the longest-publishing business magazine in Canada.

MARIKANA, South Africa (AP) — Chanting miners wielding machetes, clubs and spears marched from shaft to shaft of South Africa’s beleaguered Lonmin platinum mine Monday, trying to intimidate the few workers who reported for duty in the fourth week of a crippling strike whose impact has already included dozens of miners killed by police.

At one point on their 10-kilometer (six-mile) trek, a striker lashed a whip at a man they accused of reporting for work. He took off across the scrubland with dozens of men waving machetes and clubs in pursuit. The man was saved by police officers who pulled him into their moving vehicle.

Meanwhile, labor unrest spread in the country, with an illegal strike by more than 10,000 workers halting operations at the west section of Gold Fields International’s KDC gold mine. The strikes are rooted in rivalry between the main National Union of Mineworkers and a breakaway union.

At the KDC gold mine, for instance, spokesman Sven Lunsche said the strike started Sunday night and that senior managers met Monday with strikers demanding the removal of NUM shop stewards and a minimum monthly wage of R12,500 ($1,560).

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NEWS RELEASE: Mining industry payments to Canadian governments reached $9 billion in 2011: Report

Amount nears peak period of 2007-2008 backed by higher prices and rise in production
 
OTTAWA, Sept. 10, 2012 /CNW/ – The Mining Association of Canada (MAC) today released its annual report on mining industry payments to Canadian provincial and federal governments. The report, prepared by ENTRANS Policy Research Group, found payments reached an estimated $9 billion last year in aggregate mining taxes and royalties, corporate income taxes and personal income taxes.
 
“The increase in payments made to federal and provincial governments last year is directly related to the mining industry’s economic strength during this period,” said Pierre Gratton, MAC’s President and CEO. “Despite fiscal policy changes, notably the reduction in the federal corporate tax rate in 2011, payment levels were buoyed by generally higher metal prices and increased production.”
 
In fact, according to Natural Resources Canada, the mineral sector experienced a 21% increase in the value of Canadian mineral production in 2011 to a record $50 billion stemming from a combination of higher prices and expanding output.

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Endangered species listing for Sage grouse would be crippling for the country – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – September 10, 2012)

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An endangered species listing for the western sage grouse is “a horrible, mean and nasty law and we don’t want to go there,” says the director of the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resource Trust.

LAKE TAHOE, NEVADA (MINEWEB) –  “The entire country could be crippled immensely” if 11 western states fail in their efforts to avert a federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) listing for the sage grouse,” warned Bob Budd, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resources Trust, an independent state agency aimed at enhancing wildlife habitat and natural resource values throughout Wyoming.
 
In a recent speech to the Nevada Mining Association Convention at Stateline, Lake Tahoe, Budd stressed that although western sage grouse populations have experienced a significant decline in the past 50 years, “The last place we want sage grouse being managed is in the federal courts.”
 
If the bird is listed under the ESA in 2015, individual birds rather than sage grouse populations will be protected by the federal government, Budd observed.

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Shattering the conventional wisdom on asbestos – National Post Editorial (September 10, 2012)

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

If political strategists have any capacity for introspection, they should be asking themselves some serious questions about the Parti Québécois’ late-innings promise to cancel a $58-million government loan to the Jeffrey Mine in the Estrie, and to end all exports of chrysotile asbestos from Quebec.
 
Objectively, this is a no-brainer. The industry is paltry; exports in 2011 amounted to just $41-million, or 0.07% of Quebec’s total. Even in the town of Asbestos, it employs an insignificant fraction of the population.
 
For that meagre payoff, Canada gets a black eye on the world stage by joining Kazakhstan, Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan in opposing even the addition of warning labels to exports: In June, Postmedia news obtained a briefing memo to Environment Minister Peter Kent indicating that the government had in the past “acknowledged all criteria for the addition of chrysotile asbestos to the [Rotterdam] Convention [on hazardous substances] have been met,” but it nevertheless continues to oppose its addition.
 
Some continue to insist that chrysotile can be used safely. But the conclusively and disturbingly documented fact is that in the developing nations that buy the bulk of Quebec’s asbestos — notably India — it is not used safely.

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Potential for a Mining Boom Splits Factions in Afghanistan – by Graham Bowley (New York Times – September 9, 2012)

http://www.nytimes.com/

KALU VALLEY, Afghanistan — If there is a road to a happy ending in Afghanistan, much of the path may run underground: in the trillion-dollar reservoir of natural resources — oil, gold, iron ore, copper, lithium and other minerals — that has brought hopes of a more self-sufficient country, if only the wealth can be wrested from blood-soaked soil.

But the wealth has inspired darker dreams as well. Officials and industry experts say the potential resource boom seems increasingly imperiled by corruption, violence and intrigue, and has put the Afghan government’s vulnerabilities on display.

It all comes at what is already a critically uncertain time here, with the impending departure of NATO troops in 2014 and old regional and ethnic rivalries resurfacing, raising concerns that the mineral wealth could become the fuel for civil conflict.

Powerful regional warlords and militant leaders are jockeying to widen their turf to include areas with mineral wealth, and the Taliban have begun to make murderous incursions into territory where development is planned. In the capital, Kabul, factional maneuvering is in full swing, including disputes over lucrative side contracts awarded to relatives of President Hamid Karzai.

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A sudden chill for miners in Canada – Northern Miner Editorial (September 10 – 16, 2012)

 The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry

The political winds are turning against miners in Canada, with the Sept. 4 victory of the tax-and-spend Parti Québécois in Quebec and the pro-mining Liberal party in B.C. on its last legs, and looking to be replaced by the environmentalist-friendly New Democratic Party.

The snap election in Quebec played out much the way pollsters predicted, with Pauline Marois’ separatist Parti Québécois defeating the incumbent federalist Liberal Party, and Premier Jean Charest losing his seat in Sherbrooke and officially resigning as the provincial Liberal leader.

With 54 seats, the PQ achieved minority power status, finishing ahead of the Liberals with 50 seats, the right-of-centre and untested Coalition Avenir Québec (19 seats) and the left-leaning Québec Solidaire (2).
Once again Quebec voters have treaded a fine line, this time by ousting a tired ruling Liberal party, but giving only tepid support to the PQ, who have proven over the years to be broadly capable managers when in power, looking past all the usual head-butting with the federal government.

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Glencore firms up Xstrata bid – by Clara Ferreira-Marques and Dinesh Nair (Reuters/Sudbury Star – September 10, 2012)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

LONDON — Trader Glencore, hammering out a revised $36-billion bid for miner Xstrata in intense weekend negotiations, is set to detail its new offer to the market as early as Monday, days after proposing 11th-hour changes to save the deal.
 
Sources familiar with the deal said commodities trader Glencore, keen to clarify its own position but also under pressure from Xstrata and U.K. regulators, would publish details of the higher offer early next week.
 
Two sources said the new, firm, offer was expected on Monday. The firm offer will then be studied by Xstrata’s board and non-executive directors — who on Friday questioned Glencore’s new proposal and said they required more details in order to decide on whether or not to recommend it. The Xstrata board will also discuss the proposal with top independent shareholders, one other source familiar with the deal said.
 
The deal has implications for Sudbury. Xstrata owns Xstrata Nickel, whose Sudbury operations consist of the Nickel Rim South Mine, Fraser Mine, a mill and a smelter. Nickel and copper are the primary metals, but cobalt and precious metals such as platinum are also produced. Xstrata employs about 1,000 people in the Sudbury area.

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Detour Gold set to open Canada’s biggest gold mine – Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – September 10, 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.

Detour Gold is closing in on the opening of Canada’s largest gold mine in January, just as rallying gold prices set the stage for fat profits. “We’re in the last stretch,” said founder Gerald Panneton, a geologist and industry veteran who worked at global gold mining giants such as Barrick Gold Corp. before starting his own company in 2006 and taking it public in January, 2007. “We foresee that we will be completely finished building by the end of the year.”

The Detour Lake mine in the Cochrane, Ont., area marks the strongest sign yet of a trend toward massive, open-pit gold mining in Canada on a scale more commonly seen in desert geographies in Nevada or Chile or on the African continent. Other examples include Osisko Mining Corp. and its Malartic project in Quebec and San Gold Corp.’s Rice Lake mine in Manitoba.

“They really spearheaded this movement of going into old camps where you had traditionally high-grade narrow-vein type mines, and looking at the bigger picture and seeing whether or not that can be developed into a very large, open-pit style low-grade deposit,” said Mike White, chief executive officer of IBK Capital, the boutique investment bank that helped broker the consolidation of Detour Gold’s exploration properties for their former owner, Pelangio Mines Inc.

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