December 4, 2012 – Republic of Mining

Solid Gold looks for new CEO – by Northern Ontario Business staff (December 4, 2012)

December 4, 2012

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.

Controversial junior mining boss Darryl Stretch has been replaced as CEO of Solid Gold Resources by its board of directors.

In a Dec. 3 press release, the company said Alan Myers, a director and chief financial officer, will serve as as interim CEO of Solid Gold “while the board works towards finding a permanent solution.”

The company has been embroiled in a legal fight led by Stretch to resume exploration drilling on a Lake Abitibi gold property in northeastern Ontario.

Earlier this year, an Ontario Superior Court upheld an injunction by the nearby Wahgoshig First Nation to cease exploration, ruling that the company did not make an effort to consult with the community despite government requests to do so. Stretch was appealing the court decision and the Divisional Court of Ontario was to hear the appeal in January.

Solid Gold and the Ontario Prospectors Association took considerable heat from First Nation groups after a contentious presentation by Stretch in Sudbury last month in which he classified First Nations as “hostile third-party governments.” He attacked the Ontario government for failing in its duty to consult with First Nations instead of passing the responsibility over to industry.

NEWS RELEASE: Baffinland Mary River Project Clears Key Hurdle

December 4, 2012

http://www.baffinland.com/

OTTAWA, ONTARIO (December 3rd, 2012) – The Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, MP for Nunavut, Minister of Health, Minister of the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency and Minister for the Arctic Council, today commented on the federal approval of the Baffinland Mary River Project, based on the recommendation of the Nunavut Impact Review Board.

“Canada’s North is home to world-class natural resources representing a tremendous economic opportunity,” said Minister Aglukkaq. “The Mary River iron ore project has undergone a thorough review to ensure that it will be developed in a sustainable manner, allowing generations of Canadians to benefit from the jobs and economic growth it will generate.”

“Our Government recognizes the significant economic opportunities that mining development brings to Nunavut,” she added. “CanNor’s Northern Projects Management Office has played a fundamental role in bringing timeliness and effectiveness to the regulatory process for the Mary River iron ore project, which has huge potential to create thousands of jobs and bring long-term growth to Nunavut.”

The Mary River project is owned and operated by Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation which is jointly owned by ArcelorMittal and Iron Ore Holdings L.P. The project is situated on north Baffin Island, 160 kilometres south of Pond Inlet, Nunavut.

Incoming Newmont CEO is an honest-to-goodness miner – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – December 4, 2012)

December 4, 2012

http://www.mineweb.com/

A major North American mining company announced Monday it will actually appoint a mining engineer as CEO, shattering years of CFO, lawyers, and investment banker promotions to the top spot.

RENO (MINEWEB) – With the announced promotion of Newmont President COO Gary Goldberg to President and CEO, Newmont returns to a mine operator in the top job for the first time since South African Gordon Parker was named CEO in 1986.

Could the promotion of Goldberg, who joined Newmont in December last year from Rio Tinto, to the CEO’s post be a sign that Wall Street and mining’s love affair with non-technical mining types, such as CFOs, attorneys and investment bankers as mining company CEOs, be drawing to a close?

This reporter was born in Nevada during the era of one of Newmont’s finest CEOs, metallurgist Plato Malozemoff, who occupied the top spot for an unprecedented three decades. Some of the biggest names in mining would become part of Newmont’s portfolio during his tenure as Newmont expanded around the world.

Malozemoff and Newmont geologists John Livermore and J. Alan Coope would usher in the era of the submicroscopic, disseminated gold with the Carlin Trend discovery that would revolutionize gold mining.

Ottawa approves Nunavut iron ore project – by Shawn McCarthy and Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – December 4, 2012)

December 4, 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.

OTTAWA, TORONTO — The federal government has approved construction of the massive Mary River iron ore project in Nunavut, a move that could jump-start development of the Canadian Arctic.

Once built, Mary River could triple the territory’s annual economic growth rate and provide nearly $5-billion in taxes and royalties to the territory over its 21-year life.

“This is a game-changer for Nunavut and I think it’s very exciting to be a witness and part of the process,” Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, John Duncan, said in an interview Monday.

“We are going to end up with northern infrastructure, including a deep-water port, a road and a railway north of 60, which is pretty exciting,” he said. Construction on the project could begin as early as next July, and the mine could be in production as soon as 2017.

Mary River is owned and operated by Baffinland Iron Mines Corp., a joint venture between ArcelorMittal and Iron Ore Holdings LP that acquired the project together at a time when iron ore prices were at near-record highs.

NEW RELEASE: Solid Gold Announces Management Change

December 4, 2012

Marketwire – Canada TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Dec. 3, 2012) – Solid Gold Resources Corp. (“Solid Gold”) (TSX VENTURE:SLD) announced today that Darryl Stretch, a director of Solid Gold, has been replaced as Chief Executive Officer by the board of directors of Solid Gold. On an interim basis, Alan Myers, a director and the Chief Financial …

Fantino defends CIDA’s corporate shift – by Kim Mackrael (Globe and Mail – December 4, 2012)

December 4, 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.

OTTAWA — Canada’s foreign aid agency should play an active role in promoting the country’s economic interests abroad rather than limiting its scope to poverty reduction alone, International Co-operation Minister Julian Fantino says.

In an interview with The Globe and Mail on Monday, Mr. Fantino defended his plans for the Canadian International Development Agency to increase its engagement with the private sector, part of a deep philosophical shift for an agency that has long preferred to work with multilateral institutions and charities rather than corporations. And he said that CIDA, as one of Canada’s foreign policy instruments, should not shy away from championing Canada’s interests abroad.

“We are a part of Canadian foreign policy,” he said of the development agency. “We have a duty and a responsibility to ensure that Canadian interests are promoted.”

Mr. Fantino, who was Ontario’s police commissioner before beginning a career in politics, said he is puzzled by the backlash his recent comments at the Economic Club of Canada received from some aid groups, who say they worry that adding foreign policy considerations to the mix could detract from CIDA’s core mandate of reducing poverty.

UPDATE 5-Vale to scale back investment as global economy bites – by Jeb Blount (Reuters U.S. – December 3, 2012)

December 4, 2012

http://www.reuters.com/

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dec 3, 2012 (Reuters) – Brazil’s Vale SA , the world’s second-largest mining company, cut estimated 2013 capital spending by 24 percent after a global slowdown and a drop in iron ore prices led the company to rethink expansion.

The retrenchment comes after sluggish growth in the United States, China and Europe diminished demand for metals and weighed on the price of iron ore, Vale’s main product.

Iron ore , a key ingredient in steel, fell to a three-year low in September, and is currently hovering around $115 a tonne. Vale forecasts a $110-$140 a tonne range in the coming year.

Vale will invest $16.3 billion in 2013, down from the $21.4 billion budgeted this year for new projects, research and development and to maintain existing mines and plants, according to a regulatory filing on Monday.

“The outlook for slower expansion of global demand for minerals and metals in the medium term requires rigid discipline in the allocation of capital and greater focus in maximizing efficiency and reducing costs,” the company said in the statement.

The world’s commodity supercycle is far from dead – by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (The Telegraph – December 2, 2012)

December 4, 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Great resource booms usually end abruptly, catching almost everybody by surprise.

The rhythm is as old as mankind. It is poignantly described Nobel laureate Halldór Laxness through the life of an Icelandic sheep farmer a hundred years ago in Independent People, harrowing because his ruin is so utterly human.

Studies by the World Bank covering two centuries of data sketch a pattern of 10-year supercycles, followed by a slide for the next 20 years or so as excess investment leads to a flood of supply. The long bear market can be cruel for those hanging onto to resource stocks, convinced that the rebound must be nigh.

Mark Ryder, Australian investment chief for UBS, says we are reaching just such an inflexion point as China’s manic construction phase gives way to more sedate growth, and Europe, America, and Japan take their fiscal medicine. “The commodity super cycle’s end is at hand. The scene is set for a momentum shift,” he said.

This view is daily dinner talk in Australia, a country that lives off iron ore and coal sales to China – and described contentiously by Dylan Grice from Societe Generale as “a credit bubble built on a commodity market built on an even bigger Chinese credit bubble”.

Carney on commodities: ‘wrong conclusions … could do a lot of damage’ – by James Munson (iPolitics.ca – Septmeber 19, 2012)

December 4, 2012

http://www.ipolitics.ca/

iPolitics’ James Munson interviewed Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney to get his thoughts on Canada’s role in the global commodities supercycle this past Friday. Here in Part 1, he explains his view that the resource boom is “unambiguously good” for Canada. Tomorrow, in Part 2, Carney explains the supercycle as part of a larger global economic restructuring. And on Friday, he’ll describe the policy and investments options Canada has at its disposal to best take advantage of high commodity prices.

Mark Carney doesn’t think Canada has any control over the resource boom.

The 47-year-old governor of the Bank of Canada, sitting beneath the portraits of his predecessors in the bank’s stately Graham Towers boardroom, says that as China and other emerging economies have fuelled a sustained rush for resources, sometimes called a commodities supercycle, they have redrawn the fortunes of developed countries like Canada.

The supercycle has spurred a massive expansion of the country’s biggest commodity export in the Albertan oilsands, triggered the deregulation of federal environmental assessments, made mining projects in the country’s northern regions viable and – at least according to the official opposition – contributed to the decline of the manufacturing sector.

As politicians have wrestled with this historic new force in the Canadian economy, misunderstandings about its root causes have developed and, left unchallenged, these could prompt bad policy choices.

‘Nature of global growth is shifting,’ and not just for commodities: Carney – by James Munson (Part 2 of 3)(iPolitics.ca – Septmeber 20, 2012)

December 4, 2012

http://www.ipolitics.ca/

iPolitics James Munson interviewed Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney to get his thoughts on Canada’s role in the global commodities supercycle this past Friday. In Part 1, he explained his view that the resource boom is “unambiguously good” for Canada. Today, in Part 2, Carney explains the supercycle as part of a larger global economic restructuring. And on Friday, he’ll describe the policy and investments options Canada has at its disposal to best take advantage of high commodity prices.

Mark Carney keeps changing the subject.

The governor of the Bank of Canada has agreed to an interview to discuss the resource boom – and whether it’s good for Canada – but the conversation keeps turning to the global economic situation.

“The nature of growth globally is shifting,” Carney said. “In our opinion, we need a sustained strategy to really build our penetration of emerging markets and that is well beyond commodities – that is not a commodities statement.”

That’s the trouble with the resource boom, or the commodities supercycle as it’s sometimes called. It can’t be switched off and on to benefit other businesses that may be having a hard time adjusting to the resource sector’s newfound success.

‘Now’s the time to build,’ Carney says; Surprise upsides to an expensive dollar – by James Munson (iPolitics.ca – Septmeber 21, 2012)

December 4, 2012

http://www.ipolitics.ca/

iPolitics James Munson interviewed Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney to get his thoughts on Canada’s role in the global commodities supercycle this past Friday. In Part 1, he explained his view that the resource boom is “unambiguously good” for Canada. In Part 2, Carney explained the supercycle as part of a larger global economic restructuring. Today, in Part 3, he describes the policy and investments options Canada has at its disposal to best take advantage of high commodity prices.

High commodity prices may hurt manufacturers, but they could provide ways to revive the sector and even reasons to go green, said Mark Carney.

The resource boom, sometimes called a commodities supercycle, stems from the rise of emerging economies as the main drivers of global growth and is “unambiguously good” for the country, said the governor of the Bank of Canada in an interview with iPolitics last week.

But while the benefits for the country’s miners and petroleum producers are obvious, Carney’s feel-good conclusion takes into account other opportunities for Canada stemming from the economic momentum of places like China.

“Just because it’s good doesn’t mean it could not be a whole lot better,” said Carney in the interview. “And that gets into questions of how do we maximize the returns, how do we deal with this world that has really been transformed?”

Dutch Disease [Commodity Supercycle] Speech – by Mark Carney – Governor of the Bank of Canada (Calgary, Alberta – September 7, 2012)

December 4, 2012December 4, 2012

Presented to: Spruce Meadows Round Table – Calgary, Alberta (September 7, 2012)

Introduction

Some regard Canada’s wealth of natural resources as a blessing. Others see it as a curse.

The latter look at the global commodity boom and make the grim diagnosis for Canada of “Dutch Disease.”1 They dismiss the enormous benefits, including higher incomes and greater economic security, our bountiful natural resources can provide.

Their argument goes as follows: record-high commodity prices have led to an appreciation of Canada’s exchange rate, which, in turn, is crowding out trade-sensitive sectors, particularly manufacturing. The disease is the notion that an ephemeral boom in one sector causes permanent losses in others, in a dynamic that is net harmful for the Canadian economy.

While the tidiness of the argument is appealing and making commodities the scapegoat is tempting, the diagnosis is overly simplistic and, in the end, wrong. Canada’s economy is much more diverse and much better integrated than the Dutch Disease caricature. Numerous factors influence our currency and, most fundamentally, higher commodity prices are unambiguously good for Canada.

NEWS RELEASE: Elevated Commodity Prices “Unambiguously Good” for Canada, Says Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney (September 7, 2012)

December 4, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

7 September 2012
Contact: Jeremy Harrison
613 782-8782

Calgary, Alberta – The global commodities boom drives enormous benefits for Canada, including higher incomes and greater economic security, Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney said today in a speech to the 2012 Spruce Meadows Changing Fortunes: Global Economies Round Table.

“Most fundamentally, higher commodity prices are unambiguously good for Canada,” Governor Carney told delegates. “The strength of Canada’s resource sector is a reflection of success, not a harbinger of failure.”

The Governor addressed the diagnosis of Dutch Disease for the Canadian economy that suggests an ephemeral commodities boom is causing permanent losses in the manufacturing sector. He countered with three arguments.

First, despite the current strains on global growth, commodity prices are expected to remain elevated, primarily driven by a sustained increase in demand, much of it stemming from the rapid urbanisation of emerging markets.