Vale cut not ‘fatal’ to city’s economy – by Harold Carmichael (Sudbury Star – January 12, 2013)

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

Vale’s decision to cut in half the proposed $2 billion it would spend on a massive pollution-reduction project at the Copper Cliff Smelter site will affect local mining supply and service companies, but it’s not a fatal blow, says Dick DeStefano.

DeStefano, executive director of the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association, said local companies had about a 25% of Vale’s Clean Atmospheric Emissions Reduction project, which will now cost $1-billion. The members reaction, he said, is the work will be made up somewhere else.

“I haven’t heard one complaint because they made a business decision,” said DeStefano. “No one has called me up saying ‘I am losing a pile of money.’ Our guys are saying ‘let’s move on. There are other markets in other places. If we don’t see it here, there are others. We have to live with it.’”

DeStefano said the good news Thursday is the increased push to develop the Victor-Capre Mine and the Copper Cliff Mine brownfield site, which he said, could lead to $500 million-plus of investment at each site, more than making up for the lost $1 billion from Clean AER.

While he accepts that the Clean AER announcement was a business decision, DeStefano said the Copper Cliff Smelter could run into problems down the road when it operates with just one furnace.

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First Quantum accuses Inmet of trying to sabotage takeover – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – January 12, 2013)

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.

Leading shareholders of Inmet Mining Corp., say the company is shopping a significant but minority stake in Cobre Panama, the $6.2-billion (U.S.) copper project it is developing in Central America, as it works to fend off a hostile takeover from Canadian rival First Quantum Minerals Ltd.

“First Quantum has been approached, directly and indirectly through its financial advisers, by a number of shareholders of Inmet who have expressed concern that Inmet is proposing to complete a sale of a further minority interest in the Cobre Panama project,” First Quantum said in a statement on Saturday, decrying the tactic as potentially diminishing the economic value of the acquisition of Inmet.

“These concerns are apparently based upon discussions with a senior executive officer of Inmet.” Sources say the stake could be as large as 20 per cent and as small as 15 per cent and would be sold as a tactic to defend against a $5.1-billion hostile bid for all of Inmet from First Quantum, a Vancouver-based firm with key assets in Africa.

Inmet could not be reached for immediate comment on Saturday, but company chairman David Beatty signalled earlier this week that the board was considering its options in the face of the hostile bid, including some that predate the offer.

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‘We are businessmen’: First Nations entrepreneurs far from idle – by Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – January 12, 2013)

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

The Idle No More movement presents one face of Canada’s First Nations: combative, frustrated with government, impoverished, opposed to resource projects while claiming entitlement to revenue sharing.

Aboriginal entrepreneurs such as Wilf Lalonde present the other face. He’s a Cree from northern Alberta who sees big opportunities to work in and profit from oil and gas and other resource projects, and strives to make First Nations self-sufficient.

It’s a side of First Nations that gets little notice next to the constant stream of grievances and the anti-development tough talk. But it’s alive and pushing to make room for itself, fighting tensions between First Nations about how to deal with the extraction of resources on traditional lands and over who gets to benefit, and struggling to find funding and to convince the corporate community that aboriginals have the capacity and the resolve to deliver.

Mr. Lalonde wouldn’t comment on Idle No More, saying it’s political and he is no politician. He’s taking a different path to prosperity.

“We are businessmen,” Mr. Lalonde, a member of the Driftpile First Nation near Slave Lake, said in an interview in Calgary this week, where the group of aboriginal companies he leads, as yet unnamed, has set up an office to be close to energy company headquarters, bid for contracts and act as the go-to-guys for skilled and unskilled aboriginal labour.

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Baffinland Iron Mines sharply scales back Mary River project – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – January 12, 2013)

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.

Plans to build Baffin Island’s massive Mary River iron ore project, a key driver of Canada’s northern development, have been scaled back to a much smaller proposal as its owners fall victim to global financial tumult.

In a letter to Nunavut authorities, operator Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. said it is replacing a mine plan to produce 18 million tonnes a year of iron ore with one that will produce just 3.5 million tonnes. A planned railway for the project will be deferred, and the iron ore will instead be trucked to an existing small port instead of a building a new one.

The original project had a development cost of about $4-billion, but the scaled-down plan would keep spending to an estimated $740-million.

“In the current global financial environment, the large development cost for the Mary River Project is difficult to finance,” said Baffinland, a joint venture between global steel giant ArcelorMittal and Iron Ore Holdings LP, its private equity-backed partner, in a letter to the Nunavut Impact Review Board. “The same effect is being felt by many major projects around the world.”

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With pipelines under attack, railways lead race to move oil – by Nathan Vanderklippe (Globe and Mail – January 12, 2013)

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.

CALGARY — Russ Girling is prepared to accept that he is, for now, losing.

Pipelines built by companies such as Mr. Girling’s TransCanada Corp. carry the vast majority of the crude oil shipped around North America. This year, however, nearly 10 per cent of the volume of oil pulled from the ground in the U.S. will not flow through that massive network of buried steel. It will instead be loaded on to trains and race across the continent in a blur of tanker cars that is transforming the way North America’s energy moves.

It is a giddy procession of profit, as trains connect western oil wells to coastal and global markets willing to pay far more for crude than the inland buyers attached to the continent’s pipeline system.

It’s also a procession of risk. Though accidents remain infrequent, trains leak hazardous materials more frequently than pipelines, have a higher accidental death rate and produce greater emissions. But they are succeeding where pipelines are stumbling.

Across North America, planned pipelines are running into an outpouring of public discontent largely around environmental concerns, allowing locomotives to increasingly step in as an alternative. In 2008, fewer than 20,000 barrels a day of crude oil moved on trains in the U.S. By the end of 2012, that number had jumped above 500,000 – a more than 25-fold increase in five years.

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Applications flood in to Vale for long-term jobs – by Ashley Fitzpatrick (St. John’s Telegram – January 9, 2013)

http://www.thetelegram.com/

Vale is looking to fill long-term jobs for the operation of its new nickel-processing plant in Long Harbour. Coming out of construction over the next nine months, the mining company expects to have first nickel from the plant in the fourth quarter of this year.

There are an estimated 500 long-term jobs for the operation of the plant and about 350 people are expected to be hired by the end of the year.

The jobs include about 300 “technician” positions, advertised throughout the fall of 2012. “We’ve had quite a significant response,” said Bob Carter, a spokesman for Vale in Newfoundland and Labrador, in a recent interview with The Telegram.

Carter said the call for applications for the jobs has led to upwards of a couple thousand submissions, the vast majority being people from this province. The applications are being assessed and a first round of offers, though not the last, will be going out before the end of the month.

Carter said some of the applications submitted mistook the positions as construction jobs, rather than maintenance and the oversight of plant processes.

However, even after sorting out inappropriate submissions, he said, there is real competition for the plant jobs. Interviews and testing are meant to give recruiters a better sense of who is best suited to the positions.

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Wynne vows to give voice to Northerners – by Kyle Gennings (Timmins Daily Press – January 12, 2013)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Provincial Liberal leadership frontrunner Kathleen Wynne says Northerners are not alone in thinking Queen’s Park is disconnected from the needs of their region.

Wynne paid a visit to Timmins on Friday. During a breakfast meeting with party supporters at Cedar Meadows Resort, she shared her views. Wynne spoke at length with party members about changes in how Queen’s Park deals with the North, apologizing for the past and promising a brighter future.

“No matter where the premier comes from, they have to understand the people of the regions that make up this province,” said Wynne. “So I made that my business as a minister and I will continue to make that my commitment as premier.

“I had made a commitment as a leadership candidate that I would attempt to get to every region of the province and the Northeast is extremely important to the health of the province.” Although Wynne understands the feelings of isolation in the North, she said the same sentiments are felt by every inch of the province.

“If I go to rural Ontario, there are people who feel that rural Ontario in the south has had a rough ride. If I go to downtown Toronto, I can hear people say that they feel that there have been decisions made that they feel have impacted them negatively,” said Wynne.

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Vale cuts don’t concern SAMSSA director – by Heidi Ulrichsen (Sudbury Northern Life – January 11, 2013)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

‘Other places besides Vale’ to do business

Local mining supply and service companies won’t be majorly impacted by Vale’s decision to downscale its Clean AER project and move to one furnace at its Copper Cliff Smelter, said Dick DeStefano.

The executive director of the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA) said his members were only winning about 25 per cent of the Clean AER contracts anyway. A website dedicated to Clean AER contracts hadn’t posted any new jobs up for grabs for the last three months, DeStefano said.

But with Clean AER’s scope being cut from $2 billion to $1 billion, he said he’ll never know how many contracts his members could have won. “There will be no tenders put out, and you won’t know,” he said. So far, DeStefano hasn’t received any phone calls from members who are losing contracts because of the cuts.

Companies that specialize in servicing the smelter may be hurt by the company’s decision to shut down one of its furnaces, but again, he said he doesn’t see a large overall impact on his membership.

DeStefano estimates other Vale projects, such as the Victor Capre Mine and the Copper Cliff Deep project, will be worth about $2 billion anyway, and will provide many contract opportunities for local companies.

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A new Canada is at hand [Aboriginal issues] – Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal Editorial (January 10, 2013)

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

WITH so much riding on Friday’s meeting between the leaders of two of Canada’s “nations,” there is a danger that the drama of Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence could detract from it. Spence is so the wrong person to be seen to be speaking for First Nations in general and the Idle No More movement in particular. Her hunger strike in a teepee — interspersed with a visit to a nearby hotel and some slumber time in a car — has been marked by shifting demands and her disingenuous response to the leaked audit of her impoverished band’s finances.

A chief who drives an Escalade while most about her scramble for basic shelter; who calls the absence of basic accounting for $100 million in public funds, largely intended for housing, a ruse to discredit her; and who questions the skills of a major financial institution for revealing the breathtaking irregularities of her own band management, does not deserve to be given credence at this crucial juncture in the life of Canada.

Who, then, does speak for First Nations in Friday’s meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and several of his ministers? Some First Nations leaders say that Shawn Atleo’s Assembly of First Nations, which convened this important meeting, does not speak for them. There are 617 First Nations in Canada, most of which are part of regional organizations like Nishnawbe Aski Nation here in the Northwest. First Nations and their umbrella groups all have chiefs. Hopefully, the select few chiefs present Friday are representative of most if not all of the more than 700,000 First Nations people.

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