First Nations Entrepreneurship: It’s No Business, As Usual – by Sunny Freeman (Huffington Post – December 20, 2013)

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

WEBEQUIE, Ont. — Eric Jacob sprinted to his pickup truck following an abrupt late night call. A seldom-seen shipment of large appliances had been strewn across an icy lake after a truck toppled on the winter road to his isolated reserve in Ontario’s Far North.

Determined to salvage the valuable inventory of the reserve’s only store, grocery manager Eric rounded up some buddies to make the four-hour round trip to fetch the damaged ovens and refrigerators and deliver them to the 840-person community.

“We did that all night,” he says. Fortunate to have any job on the poverty-stricken Webequie reserve, Eric is in an enviable position, one with security and benefits. And he takes it seriously.

Starting as a stock boy nearly 20 years ago, the 38-year-old climbed the ladder to become grocery manager at the Northern, the lone retailer on the reserve, which sells everything from milk to dining tables, at about three times what they would cost in Thunder Bay, a two-hour plane ride south.

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Q&A: Susilo Siswoutomo, Deputy of Indonesia’s Mining Ministry – by Ben Otto (Wall Street Journal – December 20, 2013)

http://online.wsj.com/home-page

JAKARTA, Indonesia–Indonesia, a major exporter of minerals like nickel, bauxite and copper, is weeks away from banning the export of ores that earn the country billions of dollars a year. The government says the move—based on a 2009 law—is necessary to force miners to build smelters and refine minerals domestically, adding value to an industry that is Indonesia’s greatest source of foreign direct investment. Many miners say smelters are too expensive to build, and that they need more time and certainty to comply.

Susilo Siswoutomo, deputy minister of Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, says the government is working on a last-second compromise that will allow some miners to continue exporting ores.

In an interview, Mr. Siswoutomo told the Wall Street Journal’s Ben Otto that building smelters makes economic sense, that some miners may be excused from the ban, and that the government has been slow in addressing investor concerns.

Edited excerpts follow.

WSJ: Many companies say building smelters isn’t feasible.

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World top ten mining billionaires in 2013 – by Steel Guru (December 20, 2013)

http://www.steelguru.com/

Forbes has compiled a list of the world’s top 1000 billionaires, and Ferret is cutting that down to show you those in mining that made the cut for 2013.

1. (No.32 globally) Alberto Bailleres Gonzalez and family [Mexico] – USD 18.2 billion
Gonzalez owns a holding company called GroupoBAL, which amongst other things runs Penoles, which is the world’s largest producer of refined silver and bismuth, as well as Latin America’s largest producer of lead and zinc.

2. (No. 35 globally) Iris Fontbona and family [Chile] – USD 17.4 billion
Iris Fontbona is the widow of Antonio Luksic, who is the founder of the Luksic Group.

Similar to GroupoBAL, Luksic holds a number of interests in different areas, but predominantly in mining. The group has major holdings in Antofagasta, the UK listed copper miner.

3. (No. 36 globally) Georgina ‘Gina’ Rinehart [Australia] – USD 17 billion
Australia’s own Gina Rinehart graces the list early on.

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Turkey imposes restriction on its biggest ferrochrome producer – by Charlotte Mathews (Business Day – December 20, 2013)

http://www.bdlive.co.za/

TURKEY has imposed power restrictions on the country’s biggest ferrochrome producer, Eti Krom, which some analysts hope will help to support prices for one of South Africa’s biggest industries. In 2012, South Africa was the world’s second-largest ferrochrome producer, having lost first place to China largely because of rising Eskom electricity tariffs and power shortages.

South Africa’s biggest ferrochrome producers are Glencore Xstrata in a joint venture with Merafe Resources; International Ferro Metals, which is listed in London; Samancor Chrome; Hernic Ferrochrome; ASA Metals; and Mogale Alloys, owned by Afarak Group (formerly Ruukki Group).

Turkey ranks among the world’s top 10 producers. Ferrochrome is mostly used in stainless steel, whose production is forecast to rise about 5.5% a year for the next few years, as it is closely correlated with global gross domestic product growth. However, ferrochrome prices have been weak recently because of a slowdown in the Chinese economy coupled with growing Chinese production.

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Chinese mining company faces another legal challenge in B.C. to foreign workers – by James Keller (Vancouver Sun – December 19, 2013)

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

Canadain Press – A Chinese-owned mining firm behind a proposed underground coal project in northern British Columbia is facing yet another union legal challenge over its use of temporary foreign workers.

HD Mining has been fending off controversy since it was revealed last year that it planned to use up to 201 temporary foreign workers from China at its Murray River project, near Tumbler Ridge.

The plan prompted federal politicians to suggest the permits shouldn’t have been granted and led to a legal challenge from two unions, which ultimately ended in the company’s favour.

Now, the United Steelworkers union is asking the B.C. Supreme Court to revoke the company’s mining exploration permit, arguing the province’s chief inspector of mines was wrong to grant the permit without adequately addressing concerns the workers would not be fluent in English.

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Editorial: A year to endure – the top stories of 2013 – by John Cumming (Northern Miner – December 18, 2013)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry. Editor John Cumming MSc (Geol) is one of the country’s most well respected mining journalists.  jcumming@northernminer.com

For miners, the only dispute about 2013 was whether it was the worst year since 2008, 2000 or even going back decades. If the mood was glum, there was at least no shortage of news to spice up the year. Here are our picks for the biggest stories of the year for North American-listed miners.

Gold price plummet — After trending sideways from September 2011 to December 2012, the spot price of gold tumbled mightily in 2013, dropping from its year-end close of US$1,664.00 per oz. to its nadir of US$1,192 per oz. as a PM fix on London on June 28, 2013. Things perked up for a while after that, with gold rising above US$1,400 per oz. in late August. It’s been mostly a long slide down after that, however, with gold now treading water at US$1,235 per oz. at presstime in mid-December.

Freeze in financings, M&A — As 2013 winds down, it looks like only about $2 billion will be raised by the mining sector in Canada this year, according to a tally by CIBC that only looks at financings larger than $10 million. That $2 billion figure is down nearly 80% from the five-year average. Mergers and acquisitions felt a similar chill, with most of the biggest deals coming in at several hundred millions of dollars. The last mega-deal of the cycle was First Quantum Minerals’ $5.1-billion acquisition of Inmet Mining, way back in early 2013.

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Private equity’s evolving role in mining – by Alisha Hiyate (Mining Markets – December 19, 2013)

http://www.miningmarkets.ca/

In his fifteen years with Resource Capital Funds, a firm that pioneered the role of private equity investment in mining, partner Ross Bhappu has seen some big changes. One of them is in the willingness of the institutional and other sophisticated investors that provide the capital for private equity funds to invest in the mining sector.

“We had a very hard time raising our first couple of funds just because you do have to educate investors about the mining sector and they have to buy in to the whole idea that there’s tremendous value to be created here,” Bhappu said in an interview.

Resource Capital Funds (RCF) managed to raise US$41 million for its first fund in 1998. In contrast, earlier this year, it raised an impressive US$2 billion for its latest fund (Fund VI).

“Once you start building a track record over, in our case, fifteen years of being successful in investing in the space, all of a sudden they do take notice,” Bhappu said. “A lot of investors are waiting to see your track record and to be able to test a hypothesis over a number of years.”

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Will private equity save the mining sector? – by Alisha Hiyate (Mining Markets – December 16, 2013)

http://www.miningmarkets.ca/

With the mining sector in its third year of a painful downturn, a collective realization is starting to set in that business as usual isn’t going to cut it anymore.

The public markets remain extremely difficult for miners, metals prices continue to languish, and investors have long since fled to greener pastures.

“I think what’s happening here in the last twelve or eighteen months, it’s taken people from la-la land down to reality, and (so far) they’ve been able to hang on in the reality,” says Isser Elishis, managing partner and chief investment officer of gold-focused private equity firm Waterton Global Resource Management.

“What’s going to happen in the next few years is people are going to get swallowed up by the earth.” Elishis believes commodities prices, which have already been hit by slowing growth in China, are headed lower in the short-term and that the mining downturn has several years left to run before the positive long-term fundamentals reassert themselves.

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Silvercorp short-seller hit with fraud allegations – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – December 20, 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.

Canadian regulators alleged on Thursday that a Silvercorp Metals Inc. short-seller committed fraud when he wrote negative reports about the mining company in order to profit from a drop in the miner’s stock.

The accusation from the British Columbia Securities Commission is a sharp reversal of fortunes for short seller Jon Carnes, who operates New York-based EOS Holdings LLC and runs a financial blog, called Alfredlittle.com, where he issued his first damning report against Silvercorp in September, 2011.

Mr. Carnes’s report alleged that the company inflated its profits and misled investors about production levels at its main silver mine in China. Since then, a Canadian named Huang Kun, who helped gather data on Silvercorp for Mr. Carnes, has been thrown into a Chinese jail, and Mr. Carnes has spent more than $2-million defending himself against Silvercorp’s defamation suit.

Now the B.C. regulator is alleging that Mr. Carnes lied about his investing experience and created a fake research group, fake names and fake research in order to help him profit from his negative reports, including his report on Silvercorp.

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Uralkali gains share amid volatile potash market – by Peter Koven (National Post – December 20, 2013)

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

Last summer, Russian potash giant OAO Uralkali predicted that its plan to collapse a cartel-like entity would allow it to seize market share from rivals, including those in Canada. It appears the company was right.

On Thursday, the company said its potash sales volumes in the third quarter were 2.6 million tonnes, essentially in line with last year’s figure, while export volumes rose 11%. That is a solid result, because it comes amid a period of extreme volatility and uncertain demand in the potash market. Both Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. and Agrium Inc. reported year-over-year sales volume declines of more than 20% in Q3, despite falling prices.

Uralkali said its new strategy is progressing “very satisfactorily.” “They did gain share in Q3,” said Joel Jackson, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.

Historically, potash companies made money by withholding production to keep the market in balance and maintain their pricing power. But Uralkali, the world’s biggest producer, threw that plan out the window when it shut down its cartel-like marketing partnership with Belaruskali last July and vowed to boost production.

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African Barrick to compensate assault victims – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – December 20, 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.

JOHANNESBURG — A Canadian-owned gold company says it is giving cash payments and other compensation to 14 women who were sexually assaulted by police and security guards at its controversial North Mara gold mine in Tanzania.

African Barrick Gold, a subsidiary of Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corp., says it spent two years questioning more than 200 people in an independent investigation of the sexual-assault allegations, which were first disclosed by Barrick in 2011. “Fourteen women are presently receiving remediation packages,” the company said in a statement to The Globe and Mail on Thursday.

“Although the exact components of each package depends on the individual claimant, they have included cash compensation, sponsored employment to provide job training, financial and entrepreneurial training, education expenses for claimants’ children, relocation expenses, home improvements, health insurance for claimants and their families, and counselling services.”

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Super-strong material renews faith in technological advancement – by Scott Barlow (Globe and Mail – December 20, 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.

In the past 25 years, three market bubbles, a once-in-a-generation financial crisis and the rise of China have convinced many that the long-feared decline of Western civilization is fully under way.

But miraculous innovations like graphene – a new material with the potential to transform the world similar to the advances in plastics during the years following the Second World War – make me inclined towards a more optimistic view.

Graphene is a one-atom-thick layer of graphite that can be grown like crystals. Its properties and potential applications are scarcely believable. Graphene was declared the strongest substance ever tested by Columbia University engineers, or about 350 times stronger than the Kevlar used to make bulletproof vests. It must be heavy, though, right? Not at all, they say. “It is often said that a single sheet of graphene [being only one atom thick], sufficient in size enough to cover a whole football field, would weigh under one single gram.”

The most immediate applications of graphene are in powerful semiconductors – it’s literally a million times better than copper at conducting electricity.

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Gold Set for First Annual Loss in 13 Years – by Matt Day (Wall Street Journal – December 19, 2013)

http://online.wsj.com/home-page

Precious Metal on Track to End a 12-Year Bull Run

Gold prices slid to three-year lows Thursday, effectively closing the book on a historic rally that lured investors on both Wall Street and Main Street.

Barring a rebound of unprecedented scale, the price of gold is set to notch its first annual decline in 13 years and its biggest drop since 1981. Gold is down 29% year-to-date.

On its way up, gold attracted legions of investors large and small, including big-name hedge-fund managers such as Paulson & Co.’s John Paulson, Greenlight Capital Inc.’s David Einhorn and Third Point LLC’s Dan Loeb. They bet that the Federal Reserve’s extraordinary stimulus launched after the financial crisis would weaken the dollar and stoke inflation, raising gold’s value as a form of protection.

Many investors got burned this year when Fed officials began to hint at scaling back the central bank’s bond-buying program designed to boost growth.

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Northern Gateway beats back ENGOs – by Peter Foster (National Post – December 20, 2013)

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

As expected, the Joint Review Panel of the National Energy Board and the Minister of the Environment gave provisional approval to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline on Thursday.

In political terms, that’s a necessary step, even if the government has the power to overrule the JRP. However JRP — or even Cabinet — approval is far from a guarantee that the line will be built.

Wednesday, Financial Post’s Claudia Cattaneo quoted a young man named Ben West, who declared “The Enbridge line will never be completed.” Who is Mr. West? And why should we care what he says? He is the Tar Sands Campaign Director of ForestEthics Advocacy, which is a subsidiary of San Francisco-based environmental NGO ForestEthics. According to his Web profile, he is “passionate” about “environmental justice, and ecological literacy,” and in his spare time is a “juggler, Twitter addict … and wannabe comedian.”

Mr. West is important because — despite his juggling and comedic aspirations — he is representative of a powerful radical minority that is intent on holding up development of the oil sands.

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Northern Gateway: A long way yet to cross the Pacific – by Globe and Mail Editorial (December 20, 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.

Let’s start at the beginning. Canada is producing more oil and gas than ever before, far more than can be used here at home. The long-running development of the Western Canadian oil patch is predicated on much of that resource being exported.

In the case of oil, growing quantities of it are moving by railway, but those virtual pipelines of tanker cars are generally not as safe or as efficient as actual pipelines. That’s why a series of pipe proposals are on the table, heading south, east and west. For Canada’s oil to get to markets at home and overseas, many of these pipelines must be built. The question is not “if.” It is where and how and under what environmental rules.

Which brings us to Enbridge Inc.’s Northern Gateway pipeline proposal. On Thursday afternoon, the federal joint review panel recommended that it be given the green light, subject to 209 conditions. The 1,178-kilometre project aims to move 525,000 barrels of crude from Alberta, across northern British Columbia to the port of Kitimat. It will then be put on tankers – about 220 a year – which will travel down the Douglas Channel and across the Pacific to Asia.

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