November 3, 2012 – Republic of Mining

Warnings of more job losses in strike-hit SA mining industry – by Natasha Odendaal (MiningWeekly.com – November 2, 2012)

November 3, 2012

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

JOHANNESBURG – South Africa’s largest platinum mining companies this week warned of potential job losses, while 400 workers were sacked at a chrome mine and at least one mining contractor confirmed that it would retrench 860 workers.

The warning of potential job losses in a country with a 25.5% unemployment rate comes as the latest Statistics South Africa Quarterly Labour Force Survey revealed a loss of 8 000 jobs in the mining industry during the three months ended September.

Considering that many of the mining companies hit by industrial action only started dismissals in the past month, it was likely that the full impact of the dismissals related to the wildcat strikes would only be seen in the fourth-quarter report.

There was also potential for more job losses arising from possible downsizing at several platinum operations.

Gold and platinum mining companies in recent weeks threatened mass dismissals, offered moderate wage increases and promised once-off bonuses, many in the range of R2 000, to coax workers back to work.

Wawa is our own version of New Jersey – by Christina Blizzard (Sudbury Star – November 3, 2012)

November 3, 2012

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

It’s always heartwarming to see good neighbours coming together to help one another. Hydro companies across the province are sending crews to aid our storm-ravaged neighbours to the south in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, where tropical storm Sandy ripped down power lines. But what about Wawa?

The small northern Ontario community was recently devastated by a different storm. Roads were washed out, houses split apart — and one motel was swept into Lake Superior.

Algoma-Manitoulin MPP Michael Mantha is pleading for the government to declare Wawa a disaster area, so they can access provincial funds through the Ontario Disaster Relief and Assistance Plan (ODRAP) to help fix the roads and bridges that were destroyed.

“We need the province to step up and really help them promptly to start moving the funds so they can start doing the repairs that they need,” Mantha told reporters Thursday. Even before the storm hit, Wawa was struggling for its economic survival. The community is reeling even further with so much of its infrastructure washed away.

Israel wants details on Potash Corp. bid for Israel Chemicals Ltd. – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – November 3, 2012)

November 4, 2012November 3, 2012

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.

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. has been asked by Israeli authorities to clarify its intention to acquire parts or all of Israel Chemicals Ltd., one of the country’s largest companies and a key supplier of potash to Europe.

Israel’s Finance Ministry told the Canadian fertilizer giant that it would only make a recommendation on a potential merger once a detailed application is submitted, according to a report by Bloomberg News.

The ministry could not be reached for comment about the report, which came a day after statements from Tel Aviv that there was no deal under consideration.

Saskatoon-based Potash Corp. already holds a 14-per-cent stake in ICL, a $16.4-billion company and one of the few major producers of the crop nutrient that is not part of the world’s two marketing groups. The other major supplier to Europe is K+S, which is also independent.

Most of the world’s potash supply is in the hands of Canpotex, the international marketing arm of producers that include Potash Corp., Mosaic Co. and Agrium Inc., or Canpotex’s Russian counterpart Belarus Potash Co., the trading joint venture of Uralkali and Belaruskali.

More than ever, Dalton McGuinty needs to recall Ontario’s legislature [power plant issues] – Globe and Mail Editorial (November 3, 2012)

November 3, 2012

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.

The continued slow drip of damning information being gleaned from the thousands of pages of correspondence and legal documents related to the Ontario government’s cancellation of a power plant in Mississauga is starting to add up.

The latest, revealed in The Globe and Mail, shows just how eager Premier Dalton McGuinty was to kill the partially constructed plant, and how willing he was to spend taxpayers’ money to do it – even as his province faced serious deficits and he would soon be calling on public-sector workers to accept wage freezes. More than ever, Mr. McGuinty should recall the Ontario Legislature and allow it to properly examine the government’s actions.

The documents reveal to what great extent the Mississauga plant consumed Mr. McGuinty and some of his ministers and deputy ministers. According to internal correspondence, the Premier began talking to his staff the day after he was elected about finding ways to keep his ill-advised promise to close the plant, asking them to “be creative.”

The documents also show the government overpaid to settle an unrelated lawsuit with the developers in order get them to agree to stop construction: A judge had recommended $5-million but the government paid $10-million.

Meet the brothers behind Ontario’s controversial gas plant – by Paul Waldie and Karen Howlett (Globe and Mail – November 3, 2012)

November 3, 2012

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.

When the Ontario government awarded a little-known company a contract to build two gas-fired power plants near Toronto in 2005, the move was hailed as a win for the environment, hydro consumers and the province’s electricity system.

The company, Eastern Power Ltd., had never done anything that size before. But the government insisted the bid had been thoroughly vetted and Eastern would have to meet strict performance terms. Today, the project is in tatters, an embarrassing and costly bruise on Dalton McGuinty’s nine-year tenure as Premier of Ontario.

It has been scrapped without producing a single kilowatt of electricity. The project fell victim to the governing Liberals’ promise in the dying days of last year’s provincial election campaign to cancel it if re-elected because of mounting local opposition. The pledge helped save four Liberal seats in the area and secure Mr. McGuinty’s minority government.

But at what cost? A review of thousands of internal government documents by The Globe and Mail reveal the troubled history of the plant, dubbed Greenfield South, and the lengths the government had to go to cancel the project. Officials in the energy sector also question whether Greg and Hubert Vogt, Eastern’s owners, had the experience to take on such a large project.

Despite near-suicidal wailing over China trade pact, it’s no big deal – by Andrew Coyne (National Post – November 3, 2012)

November 3, 2012

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

Notwithstanding our placid reputation, Canadians sure can be a morbidly obsessed bunch. Not a year or two passes without the death of Canada being pronounced on some account or other. Free trade, needless to say, was the death of us, as was the GST. To eliminate the deficit, a campaigning Jean Chrétien once warned, would surely lead to civil war or revolution, as indeed his government was to prove. Separatists in Quebec have killed us several times over.

So I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised at the near-suicidal wailing that has lately erupted over, of all things, a bilateral investment treaty — a treaty that has ample precedent in international law; that enjoins us to do no more than we are doing already; and all with respect to a relatively minor investor in this country.

I speak, of course, of the recently signed Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement with China. Or, as it has been described, the “secretive, potentially treacherous deal” that “could cripple Canada,” rife with “grave and sweeping implications for Canada’s sovereignty, security and democracy.” That deal, the day of whose ratification would be the day “we lose Canada to China.”

To be fair, those are all from a single source, the Green Party of Canada and its leader, Elizabeth May. Indeed, for all the excitement the deal has occasioned among anti-globalization activists and online petitioners, it has encountered noticeably little opposition among the, you know, opposition.

Canada-China trade deal is too one-sided – by Diane Francis (National Post – November 3, 2012)

November 3, 2012

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

This week, a casualty of China’s unfair treatment of foreign investors spoke privately about the new trade deal signed between Ottawa and Beijing. His mining company was there, spent millions and was forced to sell, a de facto expropriation, to a Chinese “company.”

Governments and proxies on behalf of politicians control many Chinese companies. “There is nothing in this deal with China [the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement] that will protect Canadians there because they have not agreed to apply our laws there,” he said. “It’s quite unbelievable.”

In fact, the Tories, backed by a naïve Canadian Chamber of Commerce and a handful of big, conflicted business interests, have demonstrated the worst negotiating skills since Neville Chamberlain.

Ottawa capitulated to China on everything. The deal, using a hockey metaphor, allows only a select few to play on Team Canada on a small patch of ice in China and to be fouled, without remedies or referees. By contrast, Team China can play anywhere on Canadian ice, can appeal referee calls it dislikes and negotiate compensation for damages while in the penalty box behind closed doors.

Canada’s opportunity to tap into giant India economy has never been better – by Matthew Fisher (National Post – November 2, 2012)

November 3, 2012

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

As happened about a decade ago with China, Canada has been slow to realize the benefits of capturing a share of India’s $2-trillion-a-year economy. With a tantalizing number like that, the Conservative government has been right to make increasing Canada’s foreign trade, especially in Asia, a top priority.

But this policy has only become evident in the past 15 months through high-profile trade missions such as the one Prime Minister Stephen Harper embarks on next week to the sub-continent.

This dramatic shift should have and might have happened a few years earlier. But the Conservatives were hamstrung in a minority government where the desire of some Liberals and many New Democrats was for Canada to continue singing Kumbaya and telling the world how to behave.

Canada’s giddy prospects for greater trade with Asia were brought home a few days ago when, unbidden, one of India’s mostly highly regarded strategic thinkers told me that aside from Germany and some legacy connections to Britain, his country seldom thought much about Europe anymore except in a few fields such as aviation.

Major facilitation still needed to create business case for mineral beneficiation [ferrochrome facilities] – by Nomvelo Buthelezi (MiningWeekly.com – October 26, 2012)

November 3, 2012

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – According to research by American banking group Citigroup, South Africa is the world’s richest country in terms of its mineral reserves, which are worth about $2.5-billion. This leaves the country with significant potential to capitalise on the mineral reserves through mining and beneficiation – or does it?

Although it may seem that beneficiation is the clear route to take to further enhance the potential that South Africa holds with its extensive mineral wealth, there are major demands that must still be met before entrepreneurs will so much as utter the word ‘beneficiation’.

Firstly, there must be a business case for beneficiation; trying to force-feed it is utter folly. Where there are sound business cases, there is then the need for entrepreneurs to step up to the plate, which they will only do if South Africa’s political environment improves.

From government’s side, there has to be adequate electricity capacity and that elec- tricity has to be affordable. The next need is for the availability of the required skills, regrettably within a South African education and training environment that is currently poor. Also required are high-level marketing capability and logistics capacity.

Nickel supply continues to spring surprises – by Andy Home (Reuters – November 2, 2012)

November 3, 2012

http://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Nickel has been the underperformer of the industrial metals traded on the London Metal Exchange (LME) for much of this year. The stainless steel input fell harder during the summer sell-off and rallied less than the others on the QE3-fuelled bounce in September.

Since then the broader price pull-back has seen three-month nickel crash back to below $16,500 per tonne, a level where it is challenging the top end of the production cost curve.

The reason for this consistent underperformance is not just concern about the state of the stainless steel sector. After all, global growth fears have affected just about every industrial commodity from aluminum to iron ore to zinc.

What has marked nickel out since the start of the year and what continues to weigh so heavily on prices is the market’s supply side. Supply is expected to exceed demand by 50,000 tonnes this year, according to the International Nickel Study Group.

It will do so again next year but the scale of surplus will depend on the success of a wave of new projects currently entering production, a classic commodity example of bad timing.

[Thunder Bay power plant] Gas conversion on hold – by Kris Ketonen (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – November 3, 2012)

November 3, 2012

The Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

The fate of the city’s OPG power plant will be clearer in a few months, the province’s minister of energy assured Friday.
Regional representatives were caught off-guard Thursday when the provincial government announced a hold on its plan to convert the plant so that it runs on natural gas instead of coal.

The Ontario Power Authority (OPA) — which is in charge of Ontario’s long-term power system planning — believes the loss in power generation could be made up elsewhere, and mothballing the local plant would save taxpayers up to $400 million (that number was highly disputed on Friday, however).

“If the plans will provide those power needs and save money, then we’ll take a look at them,” Ontario Energy Minister Chris Bentley said in an interview Friday. “If they won’t, then the conversion is back on.

“Look, anytime anybody tells me they can do something and save up to $400 million, they’ve got my attention. But right now, I’m at the ‘show me’ stage, and that’s why we’re waiting for the more-detailed approach and plan.”

Mines at risk in Thunder Bay power plant closure, officials say – by John Spears (Toronto Star – November 3, 2012)

November 3, 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.

Suspending a project to convert Thunder Bay’s coal-burning power plant to natural gas threatens the well-being of northwest Ontario’s booming mining sector, according to local politicians. And the Ontario Mining Association is also taking a close look at the impact decision, a spokesman said.

They were reacting to the Ontario government’s decision to halt work on converting the Thunder Bay plant to gas. It now burns coal, but the province has pledged to shut down all coal plants by the end of 2014. The Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association put out a sharply worded release on the news.

“These actions put at risk billions of dollars of investment in the mining sector by raising concerns that the required power may not be there when it is needed,” said Ron Nelson, president of the association.

The province says that converting the 300-megawatt Thunder Bay plant isn’t needed, because the area’s needs can be served by a new transmission line scheduled to go into service in 2017.

NEWS RELEASE: OPA Decision Puts Mining Growth at Risk [Northwestern Ontario]

November 3, 2012

Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA)

For immediate release: Friday, Novemver 2, 2012

THUNDER BAY – The Ontario Power Generation (OPG) announcement that they are suspending further work on the Thunder Bay Generating Station gas conversion is being met with anger and frustration by the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association (NOMA). The announcement is a result of the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) informing OPG that it “needs to explore other options for energy supply in the northwest” despite personal assurances by the Minister as recently as August that the conversion would proceed.

For many years, NOMA and its partners have made energy a top priority in our meetings with Government. We have been calling on the OPA to undertake proper energy planning in the Northwest including repeated requests to meet with Northwestern Ontario leaders and experts to discuss the comprehensive energy needs of the region. These requests have fallen on deaf ears and this decision is an unfortunate example of the consequence.

“How dare the OPA ignore specific government direction by causing further delays to the Thunder Bay Generating Station conversion!” said NOMA President Ron Nelson. “These actions jeopardize the conversion and also put at risk billions of dollars of investment in the mining sector by raising concerns that the required power may not be there when it is needed.”

“Why is OPA determined to turn off the lights in our region?” questioned Nelson. “Why is the Ontario Government letting this happen?”