BHP reveals corruption probes by U.S., Australian authorities – by Dorothy Kosich (Mineweb.com – August 19, 2013)

http://www.mineweb.com/

A slow-moving investigation of BHP Billiton’s business practices, which began in 2009, is heating up.

RENO (MINEWEB) – U.S. and Australian authorities are cooperating on an investigation into “possible corruption” within Australian über miner BHP Billiton, stepping up a probe that began four years ago concerning BHP’s Olympic sponsorship, hospitality and gifts given to top Chinese officials, and now reportedly involves the company’s attempts to secure a bauxite project in Cambodia.

The allegations are being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Australian Federal Police as well as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a statement released on Friday by BHP Billiton, the company disclosed it had commenced an internal investigation when it received a request for information in August 2009 from the SEC. “As a result, the Group commence an internal investigation and disclosed to relevant authorities including the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) evidence that it uncovered regarding possible violations of applicable anti-corruption laws involving interactions with foreign government officials,” the company said.

“As has been publicly reported, the Australian Federal Police has indicated that it has commenced an investigation,” the company confirmed.

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Gold Bears Retreat as Prices Reach Two-Month High: Commodities – by Tony C. Dreibus (Bloomberg News – August 19, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/ 

Speculators cut bullish and bearish bets on gold simultaneously for the first time in two months as prices advanced to the highest since mid-June on signs of strengthening physical demand.

The net-bullish position rose 18 percent to 56,604 futures and options by Aug. 13, as the 17 percent contraction in short bets exceeded the 3 percent drop in long wagers, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. Net-long holdings across 18 U.S.-traded commodities expanded 23 percent as the position in silver more than doubled and investors turned positive on copper for the first time since February.

Gold tumbled a record 23 percent last quarter as some investors lost faith in the metal as a store of value. The rout spurred losses for billionaire John Paulson, who joined George Soros in selling bullion holdings in three months ended June 30, government filings showed last week. Lower prices spurred demand in India and China, the top buyers, driving global coin and bar purchases to record in the second quarter and jewelry purchases to the highest since 2008, the World Gold Council said Aug. 15.

“People became more interested in holding gold as the price dropped,’ said Tom Stringfellow, the president of San Antonio-based Frost Investment Advisors LLC, which manages about $9 billion.

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Harper heads north to promote resource development – by Steven Chase (Globe and Mail – August 19, 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.

OTTAWA — Stephen Harper has kicked off his annual tour of Northern Canada with a focus on resource development and the jobs it brings for locals. But the Prime Minister arrives in Yukon just as controversy erupts over efforts to recruit foreign workers to the territory.

Yukon’s government recently launched a temporary foreign worker program to fill positions in tourism and mining, only weeks after 100 Yukon mine staff lost their jobs.

The territorial measure is billed as a response to chronic labour shortages but it contrasts starkly with Ottawa’s efforts in recent months to discourage the use of overseas workers wherever possible after public anger over a B.C. mining company’s plans to bring in up to 200 Chinese workers.

Mr. Harper didn’t mention the Yukon program by name as he kicked off his northern tour with a brief speech in Whitehorse. However, the Prime Minister made a point of noting his government wants economic projects in northern regions to benefit locals.  “As Conservatives, we have pledged that northern development will mean northern prosperity,” he said. 

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COLUMN-Mongolia, Rio Tinto playing high stakes on copper mine – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – August 19, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/ 

Aug 19 (Reuters) – Is Rio Tinto’s dispute with the Mongolian government over the expansion of the Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine the signal that the nation’s commodity boom is over, or is it just a hiccup?

Certainly, Mongolia’s reputation as a desirable investment destination and one of the few remaining countries ripe for developing natural resources has taken a battering recently.

Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest mining company, said on Aug. 14 that it will cut 1,700 jobs at Oyu Tolgoi after a $5 billion expansion of the project was put on hold last month.

The dispute is over how the expansion gets financed, and the Mongolian parliament has been recalled from its summer recess for an emergency session to try and deal with the matter.

But the real issue is how long it will take for Mongolia to get significant amounts of money from the mine, which is slated to boost the economy by 35 percent by 2020. 

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Ontario’s power policies an example of what not to do – Gwyn Morgan (Globe and Mail – August 19, 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.

The political firestorm raging in Ontario about the cost of cancelling two natural-gas-fired power plants reminds me of a conversation I had with then-premier Dalton McGuinty in 2005. At the time, I was head of Encana Corp. and we were co-chairing a Public Policy Forum event.

As we chatted privately before the dinner, he said: “As a gas producer, you must be happy we’re going to close our coal-fired power plants.” I replied: “Well, it’s not a big deal in the context of our North American gas markets, but you’d better make sure those gas power plants are built before you shut the coal plants.”

Eight years later, Ontario power consumers are stuck paying $585-million for two gas-fired plants that were never built. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Mr. McGuinty’s decision to shutter the coal-fired plants was followed in 2010 by his government’s Green Energy and Economy Act, aimed at replacing some of the coal-fired power with highly subsidized wind and solar energy while, supposedly, turning Ontario into the green power capital of North America.

Ontario offered so-called feed-in rates almost four times the existing system rates for wind, and more than 10 times for solar power. Like bees to honey, wind and solar companies rushed to sign 20-year, rate-guaranteed contracts. 

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Temporary Yukon foreign worker program launched after mine layoffs – by Genesee Keevil (Globe and Mail – August 17, 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.

WHITEHORSE – The Yukon government has launched a temporary foreign worker program to meet demand in mining and tourism, just weeks after more than 100 Yukon mine employees lost their jobs.

Prompted by chronic Yukon labour shortages, the new one-year pilot is designed to help local businesses facing seasonal upswings fill short-term positions when Canadian workers are unavailable. And while some small business owners, including members of Yukon’s burgeoning Filipino population, are welcoming the new program, others are questioning it in the face of widespread layoffs.

The federal government took several steps in April aimed at making it harder and less economically attractive to import temporary labour, after revelations that Royal Bank of Canada was outsourcing IT jobs and a B.C. mining company planned to import as many as 200 Chinese workers. But although Ottawa called the measures the biggest changes to the program in a decade, labour groups said they didn’t go far enough.

In Yukon, the government is moving in the opposite direction.

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Ring of Fire a ‘legacy project’: Minister – by Laura Stricker (Sudbury Star – August 17, 2013)

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

Ottawa remains committed to helping develop the so-called Ring of Fire, but it will do so carefully, the government’s Northern Ontario cabinet minister said in Sudbury on Friday.

Greg Rick-ford, Canada’s new science and technology minister, made the promise during his first visit to Sud-bury since taking on the title.

Rickford, who is also responsible for FedNor and the Ring of Fire, spent two days in Greater Sudbury, making a funding announcement at NORC AT and a speech to the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce.  The visit is part of a Northern Ontario tour that included visits to Thunder Bay and North Bay.

During both local stops, he affirmed the federal government’s commitment to pushing forward on the Ring of Fire — but carefully.  “I fully expect that we will begin a process of thorough consultation,” Rickford, the MP for Kenora, said Friday morning, shor tly before announcing funding for jobs for recent graduates. 

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B.C. mining companies digging up rage abroad – by Paul Luke (The Province – August 17, 2013)

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

Vancouver’s Eldorado Gold stayed calm in the face of rage triggered by the mine it’s building in Greece.  The company didn’t expect everyone in Aristotle’s birthplace in northeastern Greece would ­shower it with love. It knew that protests against everything from austerity to a U.S. pizza chain’s hiring policies are common in a region with a 35-per-cent jobless rate.

Eldorado’s gold project has the support of 12 of 16 villages in the area. It has a crucial environmental permit from the central government to start production at Skouries.  Opponents say the Skouries mine will trash the environment. ­Eldorado has offered detailed ­reassurances that it won’t.

Protesters say the mine will ruin the region’s tourism industry. “It’s not a big tourism area at all,” Eldorado spokeswoman Nancy Woo says.  But in the wee hours of Feb. 17, mine opponents went too far. About 50 people stormed the mine site, assaulted two Greek security guards and torched construction offices, trucks and heavy equipment.

“We fully condemn any activities that put the safety of our ­employees, contractors and assets at risk,” Eldorado CEO Paul Wright said in deploring the violence. 

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The decline and fall of Canada’s global corporate superstars – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – August 17, 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.

ROME — Here’s a depressing exercise: Scan the upper reaches of the Top 1000 companies in the July-August issue of Report on Business magazine and try to spot Canada’s global winners. You could call them Canada’s corporate ambassadors, if they existed.

The short list is exceedingly short: Barrick Gold, Bombardier, Magna International, Thomson Reuters, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, Suncor and BlackBerry (formerly Research In Motion). Sadly, strong arguments can be made to strike most of them.

Barrick, the gold industry’s top producer, has deftly employed a series of costly, self-inflicted wounds to more than halve its share price.

Bombardier is truly a global player and has fine brand recognition within the aerospace and train industries. However, the thrice-delayed C Series jet, its most ambitious aircraft, could yet prove to be a dud. Potash Corp., the top fertilizer company, has global sales but is largely a Canadian producer. Ditto Suncor. That leaves Magna, Thomson Reuters and BlackBerry.

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Potash: growth market in a changing economy – by Emma Rowley (The Telegraph – August 17, 2013)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ 

Investors are betting big on fertiliser amid soaring global demand for crops.

Nearly half a kilometre under a nondescript industrial site in the Russian region of Perm, machines are gobbling up rock. Boring through the Earth’s crust, their teeth leave great whorls scraped on the freshly-dug walls, striated pink and white.

Throughout the vast web of tunnels that expands day by day, conveyor belts carry tonnes of ore to a cathedral-sized underground warehouse before the rock is taken to the surface.

These underground stores represent the fruits of an industry many believe could be of huge importance to the world economy in years to come. The piled pyramids are rich in potassium salts and, through simple processing, will be used as the fertiliser potash, the name given to these salts.

The company behind the mine, Uralkali, is far from a household name. Yet, last year it was the world’s biggest potash producer, with 9.1m tonnes. 

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Mining projects on Range can be safe, profitable – by Rolf Westgard (St. Cloud Times – August 17, 2013)

http://www.sctimes.com/ 

This is the opinion of Rolf Westgard, a professional member of the Geological Society of America. He teaches classes on energy subjects for the University of Minnesota Lifelong Learning program.

In 2011, we humans extracted and burned some 15 billion tons of coal, oil and natural gas, or 4,000 pounds for everyone on Earth. That put more than 30 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Nature passed over Minnesota on its way to states such as North Dakota and Texas where it placed the sedimentary basins in which fossil fuels such as oil formed. Minnesota was not totally forgotten, and we got minerals such as iron ore and the non-ferrous group of copper, nickel, cobalt, palladium, platinum, etc. We’ve dug up most of the iron. But nestled in a wide band, meandering along the Archean granite of the Iron Range, is a world-class deposit of non-ferrous metals worth billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.

Total world annual production of those metals is just 30 pounds or so per person, and their demand and price is rising. Manufacturing wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, catalytic converters and smart grid power lines requires copper, nickel, cobalt, palladium and platinum. 

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Don’t allow sulfide mining without answers to concerns – by Paul Austin, Paul Dancic and Scott Strand (Duluth News Tribune – August 18, 2013)

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/ 

Paul Austin of Minneapolis is executive director of Conservation Minnesota, Paul Danicic of Minneapolis is executive director of Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness and Scott Strand of St. Paul is executive director of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy. They wrote this for the News Tribune on behalf of the grass-roots group Mining Truth (miningtruth.org), which is promoting the four questions discussed in the commentary.

Water is written into our state’s identity: We are the Land of 10,000 Lakes. What we do to protect Minnesota’s lakes and rivers today will determine what future we leave for our children and grandchildren.

Later this summer, Gov. Mark Dayton and the Department of Natural Resources will be faced with an important decision about the future of Minnesota’s lakes and rivers. The new draft environmental impact statement for the PolyMet mining project near Hoyt Lakes is expected to be released, and the Dayton administration will have to decide how or whether the project should proceed.

The PolyMet project is the first proposed sulfide mine in Minnesota, located near waters that flow into Lake Superior. Another proposed mine by Twin Metals would operate next to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Sulfide mining is different from our traditional iron mining and holds the potential for long-lasting toxic pollution. 

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Rigorous standards will ensure clean mines – by Frank Ongaro (Duluth News Tribune – August 18, 2013)

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

Frank Ongaro is executive director of Duluth-based MiningMinnesota (miningminnesota.com), which supports the development of metals mining in the state.

From President Obama to Gov. Mark Dayton, elected officials have made jobs a top priority. In Minnesota, one thing is certain: There is no better opportunity for creating thousands of great-paying jobs, providing millions of dollars in tax revenue for local governments and generating more than $2 billion in royalties for our schools than the proposed copper/nickel strategic metals mineral development projects.

Mining already represents 30 percent of our region’s Gross Domestic Product (tourism is 11 percent). And, with the development of these strategic metals projects, we easily can double the size and benefit of the overall mining industry in Minnesota.

Fortunately, we can have these jobs and the spin-off economic benefits they bring — and an environment with clean air and water. There is no debate. We all want the same thing: clean air and clean water. 

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B.C. First Nation renews battle to prevent open pit mining – by Kim Nursall (The Canadian Press/Globe and Mail – August 16, 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.

VANCOUVER — ozens of First Nations protesters are blockading a proposed open-pit coal mine in a remote area of northwest B.C.

The Tahltan Central Council said approximately 30 band members are demonstrating at the campsite of Fortune Minerals’ Arctos Anthracite Project, located 330 kilometres northeast Prince Rupert.  The council said members are concerned the mine will impact more than 4,000 hectares of pristine wilderness.

“It’s in the Sacred Headwaters, (which) is a place of cultural significance to us,” said council president Annita McPhee. “It’s a place that has a lot of archaeological finds of our people, and our people utilize that place right to this day.”

The area, McPhee added, supports three major salmon-bearing rivers — the Skeena, Nass and Stikine.

“The central council is not involved in organizing the protest, but we can recognize how deeply frustrated our people are because they see this company pushing ahead with plans to desecrate a sacred area in our territory,” she said, adding she will be travelling to the area and meeting with Fortune representatives. 

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1919 was a watershed year for Timmins – by Karen Bachmann (Timmins Daily Press – August 16, 2013)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – Can you believe that summer is almost over – and if you are wondering “what summer?” I concur completely. In just a scant few weeks, everyone will be returning to school, be it for the first time or for the last, or for somewhere in between.

The rest of us will just “get on with it,” and enjoy the fall and the return to busy days. However, today is still mid-August, we have a few weeks of lollygagging left to us, so I will not spoil things just yet.

In keeping with the last lazy days of the season, I give you a totally irreverent article focusing on small town happenings back in 1919.

As always, a little context – the Great War to End All Wars came to an end on Nov. 11, 1918, so slowly but surely the armies were standing down and the young men and women who survived the conflict were finally on their way home.

Your heart has to go out to Pte. Manley Cole, a resident of Timmins. He served in all four years of the war, was wounded in battle not once but twice, each time recuperating quickly. 

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