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Day: March 11, 2013

Indian government denies iron-ore scarcity – by Ajoy K Das (MiningWeekly.com – March 11, 2013)

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

KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – The Indian government has denied any scarcity in domestic availability of iron-ore and refuted reports that the country would be a net importer by 2020.

“There will be no shortage of iron-ore, even in 2020, when Indian steel production is projected to rise to 100-million tons a year,” Mines Minister Dinsha Patel said.

“Indian steel production is about 67-million to 70-million tons a year. It requires 1.6-million tons of ore for producing one-million tons of steel. Indian iron-ore production was 210-million tons in 2010 and came down to 167-million tons following a ban on mining in Karnataka. Even then there is no dearth of iron-ore,” he said.

Iron-ore production in the country has been steadily falling in the wake of a ban imposed in the southern Indian province of Karnataka a year-and-a-half ago, and a similar ban across the western Indian coastal province of Goa in October 2012. Mining was currently permitted in the eastern province of Orissa but with severe restrictions on transportation.

Indian iron-ore exports during the ten-month period between April 2012 and January 2013 were down 68% to 16.35-million tons, compared to the corresponding previous period.

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The Honourable Tony Clement Minister for FedNor – ONTARIO CHAMBER OF COMMERCE [RING OF FIRE] SPEECH (March 11, 2013)

This speech was given at the TMX Broadcast Centre, Gallery Room, The Exchange Tower, Toronto, Ontario.

CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Thank you for that kind introduction. I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the Ontario Chamber of Commerce today.

The important role your organization plays as an advocate for small business and entrepreneurship in this province is second to none.

It is clear that you understand the value of the small business sector to the economic success of our nation. Let me assure you that the Harper Government shares your vision and determination that Ontario be a leading destination in the world to do business.

We appreciate your engagement with the upcoming budget and your targeted recommendations for spurring job creation, growth and investment in the province. We also appreciate your recognition of the significance of the Ring of Fire to Ontario’s long-term prosperity.

Your call that there be a federal lead on this incredibly important development was timely and prescient. You recognized that there needed to be not only federal leadership, but a coordinated, whole of government approach to what is a promising yet very complex opportunity.

And our government agrees. The Prime Minister understood the need to bring renewed impetus to this development. The promise and possibility of the Ring of Fire has been talked about for several years now. But the flames of excitement, quite honestly, had started to dampen and the Prime Minister realized it was time to add a little oxygen to the embers.

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First Quantum makes last-minute plea for Inmet investors to accept $5.1-billion deal – by Pav Jordan (Globe and Mail – March 11, 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.

First Quantum Minerals Ltd. made a last-ditch plea to shareholders of Inmet Mining Corp. on Monday to tender their shares to a $5.1-billion takeover offer, promising to unleash greater value in the giant Cobre Panama copper project in Central America.

Vancouver-based First Quantum’s cash-and-stock offer for Inmet expires at one minute before midnight on Monday, unless extended.

“By tendering today, as First Quantum shareholders you will have immediate exposure to the Company’s strengths and renowned project capabilities on Cobre Panama, a project at a critical juncture of its development in a challenging environment,” the company said in a statement.

“Our vision of the two companies combined is that a major geographically diversified copper company will be created,” it said. “We have already outlined the superior growth prospects of the combined entity. To achieve this vision, the combination needs to be established soon in order to exploit First Quantum’s strengths and capabilities on the Cobre Panama Project.”

Cobre Panama is one of the world’s few large copper projects in development. It would be one of the most ambitious projects ever in its native Panama, home to the namesake canal that joins the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The mine would be the largest ever in Central America.

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$1,000 daily price swings and $3500 gold – Sinclair’s dire predictions – by Lawrence Williams (Mineweb.com – March 11, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

‘Mr Gold’, Jim Sinclair, who has a huge following amongst the pro-gold sector, propounds some interesting views on where the global economy and the gold price are heading

You can’t accuse Jim Sinclair of mincing his words – nor of not being prepared to go on record with predictions with respect to his analyses of where the gold price is going that other analysts and commentators fear to mouth – whatever they may actually believe.

Sinclair doesn’t care if people think his analyses are seen as far-fetched, or totally over the top. He firmly believes in his personal assessment of what will happen in gold – and you just can’t write off his opinions as deluded ramblings. His experience in the gold market and track record on price predictions makes ignoring what he says unwise.

Even so in a recent interview on King World News in the U.S. in which he predicts that the gold price might move as much as $1,000 up or down in a single day his analysis may seem a little extreme.

In his view it’s a bit like a biblical battle between good and evil – but here it’s down to East vs West in what he sees as a coming gold/currency war as the inevitable forces fighting to bring some kind of order to the global debt situation come up against those desperate to protect the US dollar from sinking into oblivion in a sea of ever escalating debt.

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Bob Rae confirms interest in Ring of Fire negotiations once Liberal leadership term is over – by Michael Purvis (Sault Star – March 10, 2013)

 http://www.saultstar.com/

Bob Rae says he is thinking about taking part in Ring of Fire negotiations between First Nations and the province of Ontario after he steps down as Liberal leader, but he said it is too early to speculate about what role he might play.

“I think it’s premature to start commenting on either what I’m going to do or what form the negotiation is going to take,” Rae told reporters during a fundraising stop in Sault Ste. Marie on Sunday. “It’s going to take a few weeks, perhaps even a little longer, for the province and the tribal council itself to agree on what that process will be. I won’t be involved in those discussions at all and I think once the process is established, then I think it might be a little easier to see whether there’s a role that I could play.”

News reports last week said Northern Ontario chiefs presented Rae as their lead negotiator to Premier Kathleen Wynne.

Rae confirmed Sunday he has talked to the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commission “on a hypothetical basis” about taking part in negotiations over the massive mining deposit in the James Bay lowlands, as reports last week said, but he declined to offer his ethical take on getting involved. He said he doesn’t think the First Nations are a ‘special interest.’

Rae said he hopes to continue on as MP for Toronto Centre once the party elects a new leader on April 14.

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Getting connected [Ring of Fire] – by Jeff Labine (tbnewswatch.com – March 8, 2013)

http://www.tbnewswatch.com/

The debate to develop an all-weather road or a railway into the Ring of Fire doesn’t have the chief of Marten Falls First Nation worried.

Chief Eli Moonias and many other Matawa First Nation chiefs met with premier Kathleen Wynne in Toronto to discuss the Ring of Fire project. Minister of Northern Development and Mines Michael Gravelle and Minister of Aboriginal Affairs David Zimmer also attended the meeting.

A recently released study favoured a railroad into the massive chromite deposit in the lower James Bay area instead of an all-weather access road. While rail would be a more significant initial investment, the study concluded it would be the cheaper long-term solution for shipping materials.

Moonias said it didn’t matter which one is built as long as there were access roads for the First Nation communities to use. “If they put in a railway I think we will be approaching it in the manner that we would be involved with it,” he said.

“If they are putting in the railway, we want to be assured that access roads will be built so we can get out of this isolation.”

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Politics could affect mining-industry summit – by Peter Hadekel (Montreal Gazette – March 5, 2013)

http://www.montrealgazette.com/index.html

MONTREAL — The big summit meeting on universities and colleges held last month in Quebec seemed to leave no one satisfied by the time it was over. It was more of an occasion for posturing and politicking than for an honest look at the future of higher education.

Well, you can forgive companies and investors for feeling a bit nervous about the mining-industry summit planned by the Parti Québecois government for March 15. Politics could again cloud the outcome of a meeting that is crucial to the future of the province.

Mining is one of the few promising avenues of industrial development in Quebec right now. But investment is currently on hold amid uncertainty about the future royalty regime and regulatory environment that will apply in Quebec.

Investors and mining companies are so concerned that they are planning their own meeting on March 13 to make sure their voices are heard. “Our clients are worried,” says Michel Rathier, a consultant at KPMG-Sécor. He is attending the annual meeting of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada in Toronto this week, where there’s growing concern about a slowdown across the industry.

“Everybody is worried about the investment climate — both big players and smaller ones. The capital is there, but it’s just not being invested right now.”

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Editorial: Quebec walks the line on mining royalties – Montreal Gazette Editorial (March 8, 2013)

http://www.montrealgazette.com/index.html

Next Friday, the Parti Québécois government will hold a forum to discuss increasing the royalties that mining companies pay the province on the minerals they extract here. Collecting more money from mineral resources could offset the provincial debt and help pay for the generous social programs that Quebecers enjoy.

Currently, mining companies in Quebec pay 16 per cent of their profits in royalties, a rate set by the previous Liberal government.

But one of the planks in the PQ’s platform in the last provincial election was to raise royalty rates. It called for royalties to be 5 per cent of the gross value of the minerals extracted (whether a mine was profitable or not), plus a 30-per-cent tax on “unusually high profits” whenever they appear. (What constitutes “unusually high profits” has not been spelled out.)

Taken together, these charges would result in much higher payments to the government by the mining companies, and the companies have not hesitated to express their displeasure at the proposal.

In a consultation document that Natural Resources Minister Martine Ouellet released Thursday in advance of next week’s summit, she again cites the PQ’s 5/30 royalty proposal, while adding that “the government is seeking a long-term good relationship with the mining industry to ensure its stability and equity.” The minister wants “a constructive dialogue with the mining companies,” the document adds.

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Stompin’ Tom Connors, Canada’s troubadour, sang of everyday lives – by Sandra Martin (Globe and Mail – March 8, 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.

Back in the days when posses of cowboys galloped across the duotone television screen, you could always tell the good guys because they wore white hats. That’s only one of the anomalies about Canadian troubadour Stompin’ Tom Connors. He wore a black Stetson, not to side with the bad guys, but because he liked the colour. Besides, he didn’t want to give the impression, which a white hat might have conveyed, that he was sissified or pumped up about himself.

Still, there was plenty of dark in the cantankerous outsider who rambled the country, carrying his 3/4-inch plywood stomping plank, the way other musicians might pack a keyboard into their luggage. And when he performed, usually in a black shirt and jeans stretching up from his pointed black cowboy boots, with the hat planted firmly on his head and a guitar slung over his shoulder, he stomped his left foot to keep the beat and stared straight ahead as though hoping a ride would materialize from over the next hill on the highway.

Most entertainers long for international fame and try to write songs that are universal, but Mr. Connors celebrated the particular and shunned the monolithic American musical bandwagon. He’d been told that he was never going to get anywhere singing songs about backwater places, and he agreed that might be true. But as his bandmate Tim Hus, the cowboy singer, once heard him tell an audience, “When you put them all together, we call it Canada.” His manager Brian Edwards said, “he could relate to anybody whether you were a doctor, a lawyer, or a homeless person with two cents in your pocket.”

Tall and lanky with an aquiline nose and a square jaw, Mr. Connors loved the nooks and hamlets of this country, and the ordinary girls who “are out to bingo” while the boys “are gettin’ stinko” on a Sudbury Saturday Night.

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Documentary: Gold Mining: “South Dakota Saga” 1941 Homestake Mining Company


 

“Gold mining and the life of gold miners in South Dakota, as seen by the mining company.”

Public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archive, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and equalization.

Gold mining is the removal of gold from the ground. There are several techniques and processes by which gold may be extracted from the earth.

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Province to help clean up arsenic in Long Lake – by Laura Stricker (Sudbury Star – February 27, 2013)

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

Two years after tests by the Long Lake Stewardship Committee showed high levels of arsenic were entering the lake, the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines announced it is starting a three-year cleanup project.

“The stewardship began a program more than two years ago to have the arsenic problem addressed when Stewardship testing showed high arsenic levels was entering the lake from Luke Creek at the most westerly end of the lake,” the committee said in a release.

“Luke Creek leads directly from the old tailings of the Long Lake Gold Mine. The Ministry of Environment, at the request of the Stewardship, conducted independent tests in the fall of 2012 and confirmed that the arsenic levels in the last bay of the lake were a danger to humans.”

Last July, The Star first reported on the issue of arsenic showing up in the lake. At the time, Kate Jordan, a spokesperson with the Ministry of the Environment, stressed that the ministry had no concerns about the safety of Long Lake’s water.

According the release, a study conducted sometime this year by a contractor will determine the extent of the problem, and a plan of action to clean up the arsenic will be developed. The ministry will present the options to the committee and area residents to determine which plan best suits address the concerns.

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Detour Gold Shuns M&A to Avoid Barrick’s Plight – by Liezel Hill (Bloomberg.com – March 8, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Detour Gold Corp. (DGC), a miner backed by billionaire hedge-fund manager John Paulson, is avoiding acquisitions that have hurt competitors to focus on its C$1.5 billion ($1.46 billion) project in northern Ontario.

The company has set “deliverable” targets at Detour Lake, potentially the biggest gold mine in Canada, Chief Executive Officer Gerald Panneton said. The value of some miners is “dilapidated” because they issued shares to fund acquisitions that diverted management’s attention, he said.

“A mine is a headache, pure and simple, so if you have 10 mines, how many headaches do you have?” Panneton said in a March 5 interview at Bloomberg’s Toronto office. “If you have one mine and you are focusing, you have a better chance of success.”

Shares of gold-mining companies have underperformed the metal for each of the last six years amid surging production costs, project budget blowouts and startup delays. Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX), the world’s largest producer, where Panneton worked for 12 years, said Feb. 14 it took a $3 billion writedown on a Zambian mine it bought in 2011. Another Toronto-based competitor, Kinross Gold Corp. (K), said a day earlier it took a $3.09 billion writedown at the Tasiast gold project, an African mine acquired in 2010.

Index Beater

“There is a great deal of gold at Tasiast — we view it as a cornerstone asset and an important part of our future,” Steve Mitchell, a Kinross spokesman, said yesterday by e-mail.

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Award is icing on the cake for Aboriginal mine service company Windigo Catering

This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association (OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.

Windigo Catering, an Aboriginal business serving Ontario Mining Association member Goldcorp’s Musselwhite Mine, has found its own recipe for business success. This has been recognized through becoming the sixth recipient of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) Skookum Jim Award. This honour is presented to recognize excellence in service and contributions to the mining industry by Aboriginal enterprises.

The company is owned by five members of the Windigo First Nations Council in northwestern Ontario. Profits are shared among the five Windigo member First Nations – Bearskin Lake, Cat Lake, North Caribou Lake, Sachigo Lake and New Slate Falls. As well as catering, the company provides camp management, commissary, housekeeping, laundry and janitorial services.

Windigo First Nations is a partner in the business-to-business agreement with Goldcorp that has helped nurture a range of employment, skills training, economic development opportunities and environmental protection initiatives. Windigo Catering, which is located in Sioux Lookout, employs 66 people of which 83% are Aboriginal.

Training along with competitive salaries and benefits are provided by the company to employees. The catering company grosses more than $6 million annually and the Windigo First Nation Council also receives monthly revenue sharing cheques from the mine.

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The Hemlo Gold Story – CBC Documentary

 

Just off the trans-Canada highway, half way between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste. Marie, near the highway to Marathon, Don Mckinnon, John Larche and David Bell discovered Ontario’s fourth largest mining camp, Hemlo, in 1981.

A fierce legal battle errupted over the ownership of one of three mines – the Williams – between Teck-backed junior miner Corona and Lac Minerals. In August 1989, the Supreme Court of Ontario awarded the property to Teck and Corona. Over the past 25 years the Hemlo camp has produced 21 million ounces of gold.

For a good historical overview of Ontario gold mining by Sudbury Star mining columnist Stan Sudol, please click here: Northern Ontario: A Golden Klondike – 192 million ounces of gold and counting

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