June 25, 2013 – Republic of Mining

Mine Closure: Who Pays Giant Costs? – by Jack Caldwell (I Think Mining.com – June 25, 2013)

June 25, 2013

At this link is my EduMine course on Mine Closure: The Basics of Success. One issue I do not address in the course is a looming tendency, namely should we tax existing mines to pay for closure of old mines?

This evening in a Vancouver pub, I drank the evening away with friends of forty and more years vintage. We have all been involved in mining for that many years and have seen our share of closed mines and mines that will never be closed. We drifted inexorably to the Giant Mine in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada.

Here is what I read today about the closure of that mine:

“A northern review board has given its conditional stamp of approval to a federal cleanup plan for an abandoned gold mine near Yellowknife.

The main environmental hazard at Giant Mine is the 237,000 tonnes of highly toxic arsenic trioxide dust stored in 15 underground chambers — there’s enough to kill every person in the world. The arsenic trioxide is a byproduct from decades of gold mining.

Cossacks Ramp Up Pressure on [nickel] Mining Firm After Riot – (RIA Novosti – June 25, 2013)

June 25, 2013

http://en.ria.ru/

MOSCOW, June 25 (RIA Novosti) – A representative of a Cossack organization said that a mining company whose allegedly environmentally disastrous operations incited hundreds of locals to riot in central Russia has a month to stop the project or face the consequences, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported Tuesday.

“We reserve the right to campaign against nickel exploration by any legal means,” Valery Davydov was cited as saying.
“And let them keep in mind that if they so much as insert a shovel into the ground, the entire region will explode,” he said, adding that the decision was endorsed by eight Cossack organizations.

The Cossacks, an ethno-social group in Eastern Europe known for their social conservatism and pre-revolutionary military exploits, were repressed under the Soviets for their loyalty to the tsar. Today the group is showing a revival, regaining prominence in Russian public life and sometimes performing vigilante police duties.

The 13-month-long standoff over a prospective nickel mine in the Voronezh Region exploded last weekend, when a crowd of several hundred stormed the premises of a geological exploration party and torched cars, construction trailers and drilling rigs.

NEWS RELEASE: DRILLING COMMENCES ON NORTH AMERICAN NICKEL’S MANIITSOQ NI-CU-CO & PGE SULPHIDE PROJECT, SOUTHWEST GREENLAND

June 25, 2013

06/24/2013

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA–(Marketwired – June 24, 2013) – North American Nickel Inc. (TSX VENTURE:NAN)(OTCBB:WSCRF) (CUSIP: 65704T 108) (the “Company”) is pleased to announce that diamond drilling has begun on its 100% owned Maniitsoq project. A minimum of 3,000 meters is planned and it will focus on testing high priority VTEM electromagnetic (EM) anomalies defined within the 70 km-long Greenland Norite Belt and on following up the multiple high-grade nickel sulphide intersections drilled by NAN last year at Imiak Hill and the Spotty Hill discovery.

NAN CEO Rick Mark states: “The full team is now in Greenland and helicopter supported fieldwork, including channel sampling and ground truthing of anomalies is underway. The drill team has also begun its work and is supported by a second helicopter. The plan is flexible allowing us to stay in areas that produce core of interest to the geologists on site. COO Neil Richardson is leading the crew. We are planning to ship core samples weekly out of Maniitsoq. It will be an exciting summer for all of us.”

The drilling will be done with a helicopter-portable drill contracted from Westcore Drilling Ltd. A borehole pulse EM (BHEM) system, supplied and operated by Crone Geophysics & Exploration Ltd., is on site. It is anticipated that most holes will be surveyed with the BHEM system, which greatly increases the search radius of the holes, allowing geologists to target follow-up holes more precisely. The system can also be used for surface surveying in the event that an EM anomaly requires more detailing prior to drilling.

Miner calls for end to Australian class war – by John McCarthy (Brisbaine Courier-Mail – June 25, 2013)

June 25, 2013

http://www.couriermail.com.au/business

ANGLOAMERICAN has called for the end of class warfare and for more vision from governments to revive Australia’s global business and repair its reputation

New chief executive Mark Cutifani said Australia’s reputation had been badly damaged by the debate over mining tax and the Government’s initiation of class warfare. That debate was sparked by attacks on the mining industry by people such as Gina Rinehart and his comments will add fire to the internal power struggle in the Labor Government.

Mr Cutifani said people in Europe and Asia were concerned about Australians brawling with each other, rather than debating the issues. “That is something they say they haven’t seen for 20 or 30 years,” Mr Cutifani said.

He would tell a Minerals Council of Australia forum in Canberra tomorrow that governments had not spent the revenue from the mining industry wisely. “There is a lack of vision, but it’s even worse than that,” he said. “It worries me that we have been fighting each other, rather than working together.

“The class warfare thing has done incredible damage,” Mr Cutifani said. “I am amazed by how many people who are observing us remark on how we are fighting each other, rather than just our normal robust debate.”

Barrick plans board changes after ‘huge wake-up call’ from investors – by Jacquie McNish (Globe and Mail – June 25, 2013)

June 25, 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.

Barrick Gold Corp. plans to overhaul its board of directors in the wake of a backlash from powerful shareholders. Two of Barrick’s independent directors, Donald Carty and Robert Franklin, recently met or telephoned officials from eight major Canadian pension funds that spearheaded a revolt by shareholders complaining about lavish compensation practices.

More than 85 per cent of Barrick’s shareholders signalled in a non-binding vote in April that they opposed a $17-million (U.S.) paycheque for the company’s new vice-chairman John Thornton and multimillion-dollar payments to company founder Peter Munk and director Brian Mulroney.

According to people familiar with the meetings, Mr. Carty, a Dallas-based director with Virgin America and Porter Airlines Inc. described the vote as “a huge wake-up call” about the need for better governance at Barrick.

The directors told the pension funds the board has launched a search for independent directors with an emphasis on executives with mining operating experience. It is expected that some of Barrick’s current directors will be replaced but the number of departures is unclear.

Mining in Brazil: Time to dig deep (The Economist – June 22, 2013)

June 25, 2013

http://www.economist.com/

FOUR years after Brazil’s government said it was planning a radical rewrite of mining laws, on June 18th the industry, which accounts for 4% of GDP and almost a quarter of exports, finally learned its fate. Maximum royalties on mineral wealth are to rise from 2% to 4%, with iron ore and gold probably attracting the top rate, and will be levied on turnover rather than profit. Future licences will come with minimum-investment conditions and licensing will be simplified.

The announcement was met with resignation by mining firms, which had been braced for worse. The government had been keen to squeeze the sector until it squealed, but falling commodity prices and a deteriorating trade balance seem to have made it moderate its plans. A feared new federal levy did not materialise.

The only surprise was that the proposals came in the form of a draft bill to be approved by Congress, rather than presidential decree. Approval will probably take the rest of the year. But there was relief that an end to the wait, which has played havoc with business plans, is in sight.

The new rules will raise total royalties from 1.7 billion reais ($0.8 billion) to 4.2 billion, estimates Murilo Ferreira of Vale, Brazil’s largest mining company and the world’s biggest iron-ore producer.

Scientific curiosity fuels growth – by Carol Goar (Toronto Star – June 20, 2013)

June 25, 2013

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.

Peter Howitt, a transplanted Canadian at an Ivy League American university, proposes a sensible science policy for Ottawa.

Heartsick scientists have lobbied, pleaded and rallied Canadians, but the prime minister’s resolve is unshakable. The National Research Council (NRC), with its proud history of scientific breakthroughs — from canola to the electric wheelchair — must become a business-directed agency focusing on commercial innovation.

But basic science can still thrive Canada, says Peter Howitt, an expert on technological change, economic growth and national productivity. In fact, the professor emeritus at Brown University — a transplanted Canadian — regards Stephen Harper’s move as a step forward, one that could lead to a badly needed reorganization of the way Ottawa fosters and disseminates leading-edge research.

Howitt has just written a paper for the C.D. Howe Institute, From Curiosity to Wealth Creation, showing how Canada can use Harper’s decision as a jumping-off point to modernize its underperforming, resource-dominated, economy.

His plan may be too bold for the Harper government and Canada’s tight-fisted corporate leaders. But it is economically sensible and scientifically sound. It proposes a four-step transformation.

Barrick Gold slashes 100 corporate jobs, mostly in Toronto – by Dana Flavelle (Toronto Star – June 25, 2013)

June 25, 2013

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.

Company cuts 30 per cent of head office jobs as gold prices sinks.

As the price of gold continues to lose its lustre, some of the biggest miners in the world are feeling the strain. Barrick Gold Inc. is cutting about 100 jobs, mostly at its Toronto headquarters, the company confirmed Monday.

Meanwhile, Newcrest Mining Ltd., in Australia, wrote down the value of its mines by as much as $5.5 billion (U.S.), the biggest one-time charge in gold mining history. Global miners spent $195 billion buying new assets in the past decade as gold prices soared. But the precious metal has been sinking on talk of the end of low interest rates.

Goldman Sachs Inc. has cut its year-end price forecast for gold to $1,300 (U.S.) an ounce from $1,435. The spot price of gold slipped $12 to trade at $1,287 in New York Monday.

Gold is down 33 per cent from its peak of $1,921 in September 2011, with much of the losses coming since January. That’s been bad new for gold miners.

The state of mining in South America – an overview – by Keith Campbell (MiningWeekly.com – June 21, 2013)

June 25, 2013

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

South America: home of the greatest, most alluring, most deadly of mining legends – the myth of El Dorado, the golden one. Over the past 500 years, the con-tinent’s mineral riches, real and imagined, have stimulated amazing feats of courage, daring and endurance, conquest, looting, terrible atrocities and appalling oppression.

From the Victorian era on, mining also resulted in what are still breath-taking engineering feats, such as railways through the mighty Andes mountains, complete with chasm-spanning bridges and impressive tunnels. Mining has helped promote at least some economic and infrastructural development in a number of countries, although this has tended to be uneven.

The continent of South America is the fourth largest continent but is composed of just 12 countries (plus the French territory of Guiana on the mainland and the UK self- governing dependency of the Falklands Islands in the South Atlantic). These countries are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.

As a result, the continent possesses some of the geographically largest countries in the world, including the fifth biggest (Brazil), the eighth (Argentina), the 20th (Peru) and the 26th (Colombia) – South Africa ranks 25th. Bolivia, which looks quite small on a map of South America, is actually the 28th-largest country in the world.

Newfoundland: Out of gas – by Tom Adams (National Post – June 25, 2013)

June 25, 2013

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

Tom Adams is a Toronto-based energy blogger and consultant.

To understand the scale of the province’s lost gas opportunity, look to Angola at the forefront of LNG market

As North America’s newly abundant natural gas-driven energy renaissance builds, one of the last regions out of gas is Newfoundland & Labrador. Although the province is blessed with abundant proven off-shore gas resources on the Grand Banks and good potential for on-shore gas from ongoing oil exploration, none of that gas will get delivered to Islanders any time soon.

The earliest the province is likely to see any off-shore gas reaching some market is at best 12 years from now according to a preliminary proposal floated by Husky Oil, an off-shore operator. Husky says it is thinking of starting studies on gas development in 2016 at the earliest. One way to understand the scale of the province’s lost opportunity is to compare Newfoundland & Labrador with another jurisdiction economically dependent on its off-shore petroleum resources — the impoverished but now rapidly advancing sub-saharan nation of Angola.

Last week, Angola, working with Chevron Corp. and others, shipped its first load of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to market. LNG development has provided the impetus to build a large infrastructure to pipe its raw gas ashore.

South Africans worried Nelson Mandela’s health more dire than officials saying – by Matthew Fisher (National Post – June 25, 2013)

June 25, 2013

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

PRETORIA — With virtually no fresh information about the precarious state of Nelson Mandela’s health for four days, South Africans Tuesday feared his condition could be even worse than officially acknowledged.

“There are just so many rumours and nobody will tell us anything,” said Kgopotso Nkoe, a law student at Pretoria University. “We know nothing and it is frustrating. We want to know because we love him as a man who chose peace over revenge and because he did so much for our people.”

Ms. Nkoe and her friend, Faith Sithole, had come to the Mediclinic Heart Hospital to learn more than what the country had been told in three terse bulletins since Saturday, when Mr. Mandela was rushed to hospital in the wee hours.

As of late Tuesday, all that had been officially announced was South Africa’s revered first black president, the man who vanquished apartheid, was in intensive care in “serious, but stable condition.”

Despite the dearth of official news or perhaps because of it, the frail 94-year-old statesman’s anxious countrymen had been speculating — often wildly — about his health since he was hospitalized for the fourth time in seven months for urgent treatment for a recurring lung infection.

Questions linger as Northern Gateway hearings come to close – Claudia Cattaneo (National Post – June 25, 2013)

June 25, 2013

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

TERRACE, B.C. – There were many times in the past when the people on the banks of the Skeena River wanted to be a part of something bigger.

They were swept up in gold rushes, logging rushes and settlement rushes. The town of Terrace was formed in the early 1900s, the result of a campaign for a station along the Grand Trunk railway by settlers eager to be connected to the rest of country. During World War I, the area’s Sitka spruce was used to build airplanes. During the Second World War, Terrace housed a major army base to guard the Northern Pacific Coast against a Japanese invasion.

Opportunity is knocking again today. It’s coming from Alberta, which is seeking permission to build the Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline from Edmonton to nearby Kitimat to boost Canada’s oil trade with Asia. But opposition has been mounting since it was first proposed a decade ago.

Much effort and money has been spent to change views. Epic public hearings by the National Energy Board (NEB) and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) that weighed all aspects and all views wound down here on Monday, bringing to an end an 18-month trek on the proposed right of way.

Kathleen Wynne backing away from McGuinty’s Ontario Green Energy Act – (National Post – June 24, 2013)

June 25, 2013

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

It’s always instructive to see how a government frames an announcement that is backtracking on one of its own initiatives. Conveniently for the Ontario Liberals, they are amassing considerable experience in this regard.

So, when the government on Thursday dropped the news that it was restructuring its 2010 wind-power deal with Samsung, it presented it in terms of extended job commitments and savings to electricity ratepayers. Samsung was guaranteeing jobs until 2016, instead of 2015, and the government was now only committing to buy $6-billion of Samsung’s renewable power at well above market rates, down from $9.7-billion in the original contract. Hooray for savings!

Those extended job commitments, though, are a result of Samsung’s having missed targets in the original contract; it now has more time to meet them. And that reduction in spending? It comes as Samsung, which won the original contract absent a competition, agrees to drop its own investment in the province from $7-billion to $5-billion, with projects expected to generate 1,369 megawatts of energy, down steeply from 2,500 megawatts in the first deal.

Ontario will be paying less, and receiving less. This is probably not the result of a particularly hard-fought negotiation. What’s more notable are the things that the announcement from Energy Minister Bob Chiarelli did not mention, for example the 16,000 jobs that the original contract was said to create when it was announced in 2010.

Hemlo dodges Barrick cuts – by Carl Clutchey (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – June 25, 2013)

June 25, 2013

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

Barrick Gold’s flagship Hemlo mining operation won’t be negatively affected by major job cuts that the company announced on Monday. But locals are worried that the operation will be hurt if the price of gold continues to lose its shine.

“The job reductions announced (Monday) do not impact the Hemlo mine,” Barrick spokesman Andy Lloyd said in an email.
Barrick is laying off about 100 corporate staff, mostly from its Toronto headquarters, as it struggles with falling gold prices and various internal challenges.

Barrick employs about 700 full-time workers and contract employees at its Williams and David Bell gold mines about 40 kilometres east of Marathon. The jobs that are being cut represent about 30 per cent of the total corporate office positions for the Toronto-based mining company, which is the world’s largest gold producer.

Most of jobs are at Barrick’s head office in Toronto, but some are at its regional offices. An email to The Canadian Press from Barrick says staff at a Barrick office in Salt Lake City, Utah, may also be affected.

The company advised staff last week that the layoffs were coming. The cuts affect a small portion of the 25,000 employees that Barrick has worldwide, but represent its ongoing efforts to streamline during a period of falling gold prices and internal challenges, including mounting costs at its Pascua-Lama project in South America and losses at its copper business in Africa.