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Day: December 4, 2013

Stephen Harper to meet Kathleen Wynne to talk Ring of Fire – by Susana Mas (CBC News – December 4, 2013)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has agreed to meet Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne on Parliament Hill Thursday afternoon to discuss Ontario’s Ring of Fire, a mining development project worth an estimated $60 billion.

Wynne is hoping to break the current impasse and convince the prime minister to match the costs of developing the mineral rich region, 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, in northern Ontario.

The Ontario government told CBC News last week it was surprised to hear the prime minister dismiss the development in the Ring of Fire as a provincial issue, given that repeated calls for the federal government to play a role in the project had gone unanswered in recent weeks. Harper recently said “this is a project that is primarily under provincial jurisdiction because ultimately resources belong to the provinces and resource development is a provincial responsibility.”

Rich in chromite, nickel and gold, the Ring of Fire is considered to be mining jackpot for the province, but Wynne is making the case that the federal government has a responsibility in the development and funding of the infrastructure required.

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Potash Corp. cuts shock Saskatchewan community as hundreds lose jobs – by Jennifer Graham (The Canadian Press – December 4, 2013)

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/

REGINA – There was shock Tuesday in a small town east of Saskatoon after Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan (TSX:POT) cut hundreds of jobs at a mill.

The Saskatoon-based company is slashing its workforce by about 18 per cent, affecting 1,045 people.

The biggest job cuts will be in Saskatchewan, where 440 people will lose their jobs, and most of those will be at the company’s Lanigan division, where one of two mills will suspend production by the end of the year.

“These layoffs were effective immediately. People were sent home this morning,” said Rick Suchy, an electrician at the Lanigan mine and president of Unifor local 922.

“This was the end of their shift. Some guys were supposed to come back tonight. They won’t be coming back tonight. Some guys were phoned at home. They weren’t there. And many people were coming in for the day shift and they were sent home. “It was a really shocking experience.”

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Mining firms to spend $297M in ’13 (Regina Leader-Post – December 4, 2013)

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

Mining exploration and development companies are expected to spend about $297 million in Saskatchewan in 2013, down from $324 million in 2012, according to preliminary estimates released by the Saskatchewan Geological Survey.

This year’s expenditure estimate “reflects the difficulty many junior companies continue to have in raising exploration capital,” said the report, which was released at the Saskatchewan Geological Survey’s open house in Saskatoon Tuesday.

Expenditures for mineral exploration and evaluation projects in Saskatchewan in 2013 are also expected to be lower than the $293 million spent in 2011 and the $321 million in 2010.

“Despite the decrease, exploration spending in Saskatchewan continues to be well above historic levels,” the report said. “In the past decade over $2.7 billion has been spent on exploration and evaluation programs, a dramatic increase when compared to the total $674.5 million spent in the 20 years previous.”

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Timmins, Saskatchewan colleges sign agreement – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – December 3, 2013)

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.

Northern College in Timmins and Northlands College in Saskatchewan have signed an agreement to train students through the mining engineering technician program at the Haileybury School of Mines.

The new agreement is built upon an established relationship between the two colleges. Northlands has delivered the program in the past, offering enrolment once every two years. The new agreement, which will be valid for seven years, will see six consecutive intakes of first-year students.

Earlier this year, an agreement was established with Confederation College to allow graduates of Confederation’s mining techniques program to take the second year of the mining engineering technician program at Confederation.

“The fact that Haileybury School of Mines programming is being delivered by multiple colleges in both Ontario and Saskatchewan is a testament to the quality of our mining programs,” said Fred Gibbons, president of Northern College, in a news release.

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Potash Corp. Rivals Seen Following With Cuts – by Christopher Donville (Bloomberg News – December 4, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc.’s decision to cut 18 percent of its workforce and reduce capacity probably foreshadows similar actions by North American rivals amid a price war in the $20 billion global potash market.

Potash Corp., the world’s largest fertilizer company by market value, said yesterday it will close a Canadian potash mine, lower output at another and halt a processing mill. Calgary-based Agrium Inc. (AGU) and Mosaic Co. of Plymouth, Minnesota, are likely to follow with job and capacity cuts, said Peter Prattas, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald LP, and Mark Gulley, an analyst at BGC Partners LP.

“Something has to give,” Gulley said yesterday in a telephone interview from New York. “They have to be looking at the same issues in terms of price and profit-margin pressure.”

The potash industry has been in turmoil since the end of July when Russia’s OAO Uralkali, which produced more of the crop nutrient last year than any other company, quit a sales accord with its Belarusian competitor. Uralkali’s strategy now is to raise output to gain a bigger market share. That’s spurred some customers to defer purchases in anticipation of lower prices.

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Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan layoffs don’t match rhetoric – by Murray Mandryk (Regina-Leader Post – December 4, 2013)

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

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Leader-Post.

Dispatching a “rapid response team” to deal with 440 Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan layoffs while telling us not to panic created a bit of a mixed-messaging mess for Premier Brad Wall on Tuesday.

However, it isn’t the first time that Wall and his Saskatchewan Party government – perhaps facing their biggest economic challenge since BHP Billiton’s attempted takeover of PotashCorp in 2010, or perhaps the potash revenue collapse of 2009 – have been confounded by the contradictions coming out of this particular company.

Nor will it likely be the last time.

This latest saga of potash politics – once again courtesy of Potash Corp – should serve as a reminder to the Sask. Party government that it needs to divorce itself from the specific interests of this company … or for that matter, all the companies that make up the industry.

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Global radicals and the frightening power of ENGOs – by Peter Foster (National Post – December 4, 2013)

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

A key tactic is to proliferate groups that masquerade as the multiple voices of ‘civil society’ when in fact they stand for a limited radical point of view

Independent researcher Vivian Krause has dug up a lengthy list of recent grants by the U.S.-based Tides Foundation to hold up oil sands development (See “New U.S. funding for the war on Canadian oil”). She makes the excellent point that many of these “charitable” donations go to environmental NGOs whose standards of objectivity in no way comply with tax exempt status.

My colleague Terence Corcoran also rightly notes how the grants represent “manufactured dissent.” However, some might argue that the amounts involved are relatively trivial – mere tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars –when set against the expenditures of government and industry. When Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver fingered “foreign-funded radicals” a couple of years ago, he was roundly pilloried. Canadians who regarded themselves as environmentally concerned felt they were being unfairly labelled.

Environmental groups were quick to point to all the foreign-funding that went into resource development (as if creating jobs was as culpable as preventing them).

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Rio Tinto to cut capital spending on aluminum, coal – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – December 4, 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.

Rio Tinto, the mining giant that owns Montreal’s Alcan, provided more evidence that the era of massive spending on huge projects and acquisitions is over by pledging to shave billions of dollars off its capital spending budget.

The new era will see the Anglo-Australian miner focus on shareholder returns in an attempt to repair some of the damage triggered by years of overspending during the boom years, in the mistaken belief that strong global growth would propel commodity prices ever higher.

Rio CEO Sam Walsh on Tuesday said the company, the world’s second largest miner, after BHP Billiton, would cut capital spending by at least 20 per cent in each of the next two years. That means spending would fall to $11-billion (U.S.) in 2014 from $14-billion this year, and to $8-billion in 2015.

Speaking at investor conference in Sydney, Mr. Walsh said “We lost our way…We are taking decisive action. Don’t get me wrong, we have more to do.”

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Are Potash cuts a coded message to Russians? – by Sean Silcoff (Globe and Mail – December 4, 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 — There are two ways to read Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan’s announcement on Tuesday that it is cutting 1,050 jobs and tooling down some production. The first is that demand from developing markets has been soft and that the cuts are necessary to reduce costs. Falling corn prices in the U.S. have also hit potash pricing, which typically moves in tandem with the grain.

The second way to read Tuesday’s news is more interesting. The folks from Saskatchewan may be sending their Slavic rivals a message: “Pay attention to what we’ve done today. We want to end this little war we’ve been having, and so should you. Then we can return to normal, and get back to minting fat profits.”

Remember that potash is predominantly mined in two areas of the world with massive subterranean deposits – Saskatchewan and a region spread out over the former Soviet Union. The three miners in Saskatchewan – Potash Corp., Mosaic and Agrium – have sold overseas for years through their jointly owned marketing organization Canpotex while Russian producer OAO Uralkali and Belaruskali, owned by the state of Belarus, had a similar joint venture called Belarusian Potash Co. or BPC.

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UN’s war on coal threatens environmental progress in world’s desperate regions – by Donna Laframboise (National Post – December 4, 2013)

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

Activists want new coal plants banned outright

In Warsaw last month, Christiana Figueres, an unelected United Nations bureaucrat, demanded that the World Coal Association embrace three dubious and implausible ideas. This industry must, she said, shut down a particular class of coal plant, install as-yet-unavailable carbon-capture technology on any newly constructed facilities, and “leave most existing reserves in the ground.”

In the first instance, the implications of her words weren’t immediately apparent. But a 2012 International Energy Agency report reveals that when she speaks blithely of closing “all existing subcritical plants,” she’s advocating the mothballing of 100% of South Africa’s coal fleet, 99% of India’s, 97% of Poland’s, and 90% of Australia’s.

It turns out Figueres’ standards are so pie-in-the-sky that 79% of Germany’s coal facilities, 75% of China’s, 73% of America’s, and 71% of Russia’s don’t make the cut, either. All told, this UN official believes three-quarters of the world’s existing coal fleet — fully one third of the global electricity supply — should be taken offline.

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Manufacturing dissent against Canada’s energy economy – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – December 3, 2013)

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

U.S. foundations continue to fund activists in Canada, giving impression of broad support that may not exist

If you start an activist organization and nobody provides financial backing, would the protest movement exist? Maybe, but likely not. Without funding there is no way to build support, pay activists, hire consultants and disseminate information. And so when high-profile anti-Keystone and anti-oil sands campaigners need cash, they go where the money is–the big U.S. charitable foundations that have become ATMs for scores of groups and organizations that now earn a living fighting Canada’s oil industry.

Take, for example, the fresh cash flowing north through the U.S. Tides Foundation to Calgary’s Pembina Institute. Documents obtained by Vancouver researcher Vivian Krause, and detailed this weekend on the FP Comment Web site, show that on August 9 Pembina received $225,000 through Tides. The purpose was “to advance policy improvements, the narrative that oil sands expansion is problematic, land use decisions that slow expansion, and improved climate policy.”

Earlier in the year, Pembina was also paid $55,000 “for further raising awareness of the negative impacts of the tar sands on the economy, for participating in conversation with Province of Alberta about water, land and air regulatory reform, technical support to tar sands campaign partner, and for participation in the Shell JRPs and preparation for the Tech Frontier JRP.”

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New U.S. funding for the war on Canadian oil – by Vivian Krause (National Post – December 3, 2013)

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

Tides USA letters reveal $3.2-million in payments over last few months to activists groups and environmental organizations in Canada, U.S. and Europe. The objective: Create opposition to Canadian oil developments.

For more than a decade, there has been a complex international effort to stymie the oil industry in Canada. It’s called the Tar Sands Campaign and the main sources of funding for this campaign are the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Oak Foundation, the Sea Change Foundation, the Tides Foundation and other charitable foundations, most of which are based in California.

By my calculations, these foundations have provided at least $75-million for campaigns and land use planning initiatives that thwart the development and export of Canadian oil. Until now, little information has been available about the specific activities that have been funded. Not anymore.

Earlier this month, an unprecedented amount of detail came to light in a series of covering letters for 70 payments sent by the San Francisco-based Tides Foundation (“Tides USA”) to 45 organizations in the U.S., Canada and Europe. These payments total $3.2-million. I came across these covering letters using Google.

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No inquiry into mining safety: Ministry – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – December 4, 2013)

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

The Ministry of Labour has rejected a call from mining advocates in Sudbury and the North to hold a public inquiry into mining safety, opting instead for a comprehensive review of mining safety in Ontario.

United Steelworkers Local 6500 and a lobby group called MINES (Mining Inquiry Needs Everyone’s Support) will hold a news conference Wednesday to respond to the province’s plan for the review.

USW Local 6500, and later MINES, began calling for a full-blown inquiry in February 2012 after the union’s eight-month investigation in the June 8, 2011, deaths of two men at Vale’s Stobie Mine.

The 200-page report into how Jason Chenier, 35, and Jordan Fram, 26, died contained 165 recommendations, including that an inquiry be held to update mining safety practices. That recommendation prompted the formation of MINES, led by Fram’s mother Wendy Fram, which championed the drive for the inquiry.

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Digging into the Ring of Fire – by Anna Baggio (Huffington Post – December 3, 2013)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

Anna Baggio is the Director Conservation Planning, CPAWS Wildlands League.

Oh the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair that has occurred in various media outlets and around the province since news broke that Cliffs will suspend indefinitely its Chromite Project in northern Ontario. It wasn’t a surprise to those of us who follow global market prices, corporate boardrooms and here at home the environmental assessment processes. The project had been sputtering for quite some time.

With news of the indefinite suspension by Cliffs, there has been a lot of finger pointing and apportioning of blame. But I think this is a distraction from bigger, more important issues such as how should Ontario develop its non-renewable resources in the Ring of Fire? “The Ring” is more than Cliffs after all. How should we address neighbouring First Nations decades long infrastructure needs? How do we make sure the Ekwan, Attawapiskat and Albany Rivers will be clean and healthy forever? How do we all make best use of limited public resources? How do we ensure there is transparency and integrity around decision-making and that First Nations are respected?

There are some who think the solution lies in “speeding up the process” for new mines to go ahead in the Ring of Fire. We’ve been there, done that, and bought the T-shirt, thank you very much. Efforts to speed things up over the past four years have resulted in lawsuits, conflicts, wasted resources, bitter feelings and delays.

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NEWS RELEASE: Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board Approves Gahcho Kué Pioneer Land Use Permit

TORONTO, NEW YORK AND YELLOWKNIFE, NT, Dec. 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – De Beers Canada Inc. and Mountain Province Diamonds (TSX: MPV, NYSE MKT: MDM) are pleased to announce that the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board has approved a pioneer Land Use Permit for the Gahcho Kué diamond mine. The pioneer Land Use Permit allows land-based site works to commence in preparation for deliveries planned for the 2014 winter road season.

Tony Guthrie, CEO of De Beers Canada, commented: “De Beers, as the Operator of the Gahcho Kué Project, extends its appreciation to the Mackenzie Land and Water Board for the efficient processing of the pioneer Land Use Permit application. Approval of the permit allows Gahcho Kué to position itself for the start of full construction pending the receipt of the full Land Use Permit and Water License expected in 2014.

The construction and operational phases of Gahcho Kué will benefit the Canadian economy and local communities, creating new business and employment opportunities for residents of the Northwest Territories and continuing to build Canada’s position as a premier diamond producer.”

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