Rob McEwen on the outlook for 2014 (Northern Miner – December 23, 2013)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry. 

Rob McEwen, chairman and chief owner of McEwen Mining (TSX: MUX; NYSE: MUX), shared his thoughts recently with The Northern Miner about the outlook for the mining industry in 2014. McEwen Mining’s principal assets consist of the San José mine in Santa Cruz, Argentina (49% interest), the El Gallo 1 mine and El Gallo 2 project in Sinaloa, Mexico, the Gold Bar project in Nevada, U.S.A., and the Los Azules copper project in San Juan, Argentina. McEwen owns 25% of the company’s shares.

The Northern Miner: Some would say you are an eternal optimist. Are you optimistic about 2014?

McEwen: Anything can be better than 2013. On a relative value basis, gold is looking very attractive, compared to the broad market. So I think there might be some rotation into gold and gold shares … The producers are going through a lot of rationalization and cost cutting and they’ll be putting out some better numbers in the next few quarters.

And there are a few exploration companies that have put out fantastic drill results lately that have started to move their share prices up, like Reservoir Minerals and Balmoral Resources, and I think you’ll see a little bit more of that with the juniors.

Read more

Potash dims economic glow in Saskatchewan, but premier says it’s still good – by Jennifer Graham (Canadian Press/Brandon Sun – December 23, 2013)

 http://www.brandonsun.com/

REGINA – Slumping demand for the pink mineral potash dimmed Saskatchewan’s economic glow at the end of this year.
But Premier Brad Wall says the outlook is positive for the year ahead, despite pressures in the potash industry and a report that Saskatchewan’s boom could be cooling.

“We have to take a look at the whole economy,” Wall said in a year-end interview with The Canadian Press.

“Our economy is diversified. We’re more than just one sector. We have a lot of … cylinders that are firing in this economic engine … so when the natural resource sector is down, we’re still creating net thousands of jobs year over year.” Saskatchewan’s economy took off in 2007, based largely on revenue from natural resources, such as oil and gas and potash, which is used in fertilizer.

But potash and the companies that produce it were hit hard this year when Russian-based Uralkali, one of the world’s largest potash producers, quit an export partnership. China and India, key markets for fertilizer, then delayed purchases in expectation of lower prices. That sent shipments plunging.

Read more

The Canada-Peru relationship: More than mining – by Tiffany Grabski (Peru This Week – December 23, 2013)

http://www.peruthisweek.com/

Canada and Peru have a long history of commercial ties thanks to the two countries’ endowments of natural resources which led to a close development of their mining sectors, but these two countries are now looking to diversify their relationship as well as their economies.

The timing is right – as mineral prices fall, concerns are being raised over the stability of Peru’s mineral-dependent economic growth.

For the last quarter of a century, the mining sector has been the motor of Peru’s growth – with a particularly strong influence in the last decades’ GDP, averaging over 7% growth from 2003-2013. But unlike many resource-dependent countries that have faced certain downward spirals once commodity prices fall or resources production drops, the outlook for Peru’s growth is looking up for years to come.
Local bank BCP even expects Peru’s economy to hit double-digit growth once a series of mega-projects in the mining sector hit production post-2015, the banks economic studies manager Carlos Odar said at a recent press conference.

Read more

Lawsuit filed in Washington state claims B.C. [Teck] smelter’s toxins caused disease – by Dene Moore (Canadian Press/Vancouver Sun – December 21, 2013)

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

A Washington state woman has filed a class-action lawsuit against Teck Resources (TSX:TCK.B), claiming toxic pollutants from the company’s smelter in southeastern British Columbia are to blame for her breast cancer diagnosis and other health ailments.

Barbara Anderson is a longtime resident of Northport, Wash., a small community about 30 kilometres south of Teck’s lead and zinc smelter in Trail.

The lawsuit filed in the Eastern District Court says Anderson was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012 and inflammatory bowel disease in 2010.

“Teck negligently, carelessly and recklessly generated, handled, stored, treated, disposed of and failed to control and contain the metals and other toxic substances at the Trail smelter, resulting in the release of toxic substances and exposure of plaintiff and the proposed class,” says the claim, filed Thursday.

Read more

US mining giant faces fight with Indonesia – by Olivia Rondonuwu (The West Australian – December 23, 2013)

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/

High in the snow-capped mountains, the sight of tribesmen roaming in loincloths contrasts sharply with that of miners using hi-tech machinery to extract gold and copper ore at a huge US-owned facility in remote Indonesia.

The heavily-guarded complex is the resource-rich Indonesia’s biggest mine and has been a controversial presence for more than five decades — accused of environmental devastation and extracting huge wealth while giving too little back to a poverty-wracked area.

On a rare visit by the foreign media to Freeport McMoRan’s Grasberg complex in Papua province, AFP saw first-hand the challenge of mining at one of the world’s biggest gold and copper mines, where thin oxygen makes it difficult for workers to breathe.

Now, the company faces a fight with the state as it looks to extend its contract at a time when emboldened politicians are taking aim at foreign miners with measures forcing them to leave more of their profits in the country.

Indonesia is transforming into a freewheeling democracy and booming economy, with mining firms among foreign companies under scrutiny in what critics say is a climate of rising economic nationalism.

Read more

Digging into the Copper Coast’s past – by Paddy Woodworth (Irish Times – December 21, 2013)

http://www.irishtimes.com/

http://www.coppercoastgeopark.com/

Waterford’s geopark reveals what lies beneath our landscape, the long history of how it got there and how its minerals moulded our history

Everything we do, everywhere we stand and, ultimately, everything we eat is based on rocks, but most of us know very little about them. Very few of us could tell a visitor much about what lies beneath our local landscape, much less the long history of how it got there or how its minerals moulded our history and determined our vegetation.

The Global Geoparks Network aims to change all that. Geology, with its mind-boggling timescales and unfamiliar language, can seem a rather daunting subject, but the network wants to steer it into our cultural mainstream.

“Is a geopark just about geology?” Patrick J McKeever, vice-co-ordinator of this Unesco initiative, asked during his presentation at the opening of Waterford’s Copper Coast Geopark visitors’ centre by the Taoiseach last month.

Read more

REPEAT-FEATURE-Dominican gold rush hits a bureaucratic slowdown – by Ezra Fieser (Reuters India – December 23, 2013)

http://in.reuters.com/

Dec 23 (Reuters) – Little more than a decade ago, one of the world’s largest known gold deposits sat abandoned in the foothills of the Dominican Republic’s Central Cordillera mountain range. Car-sized boulders leached heavy metals into what locals called the “blood river,” its waters ran so red from contaminants.

Today the mine, which reopened as Pueblo Viejo this year, hums with activity. Trucks with tires twice the size of an SUV roll through its massive open pits on roads that cut through the 11-square-kilometer site (4.24 square miles), transporting tons of rock to a processing facility.

Some 2,000 people already work here, churning out shimmering gold bars that are exported to Canada and the United States, but the mine has the potential to create 12,700 more direct and indirect jobs and contribute $1.3 billion a year in exports. This dynamic, foreign-operated enterprise is part of the country’s effort to develop an industry that could help boost and diversify its tourism-dependent economy.

Yet despite robust commercial production by two of the world’s largest gold mining companies, Canada’s Barrick Gold Corp and Goldcorp Inc, development of the mining sector is vexed by bureaucratic delays and agitation by activists still concerned about pollution and government deals with foreign companies to exploit the nation’s riches.

Read more

PRECIOUS-Gold falls, set for biggest yearly loss since 1981 – by Clara Denina (Reuters U.S. – December 23, 2013)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Gold fell on Monday, on course for its largest annual loss in 32 years, as thin pre-holiday trade and signs of an improving U.S. economy growth kept investors fretting over the impact of the Federal Reserve’s stimulus tapering.

The metal posted its biggest weekly loss in a month after the Fed’s decision to start scaling back its bond-buying stimulus, which was followed by upbeat GDP data.

“Gold is in a bit of a limbo now because we know that the Fed starting to reduce their bond buying is a reality and the dollar should hold relatively strong from here,” VTB Capital analyst Andrey Kryuchenkov said.

“I would argue that there is support at $1,190 … but there may be more downside as it doesn’t take much to move the market in thin holiday trading.”

Spot gold fell 0.6 percent to $1,195.00 an ounce by 1051 GMT. It had briefly rebounded above $1,200 an ounce in earlier trade as investors found value in the metal after prices lost 4 percent in the previous three sessions.

Read more

Tale of Two Polish Mines Shows Biggest EU Producer’s Woes – by Maciej Martewicz and Marek Strzeleck (Bloomberg News – December 23, 2013)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Stock markets aren’t usually a subject of discussion when you’re a kilometer underground, yet Dariusz Batyra isn’t a typical Polish miner.

“I check the share price each day,” said Batyra, 39, a senior foreman at the mine run by Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka SA, one of three coal companies in Poland not controlled by the government. “Everybody does in here.”

The performance of his employer compared with competitor Kompania Weglowa SA, the biggest producer in the European Union, explains why. Since debuting on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in 2009, Bogdanka has more than doubled in value as profits rose every year but one. It has done so even as the price of coal more than halved since 2008, when the global financial crisis took hold, pushing Kompania Weglowa to the brink of collapse.

Another year of diverging fortunes for the two miners underscores the contrast in an industry that’s struggled to adapt to the reality of the free market almost a quarter of a century after communism ended in Poland.

Bogdanka employs about 5,000 and analysts expect net income of 313.5 million zloty ($103 million) for 2013, making it the most profitable of seven Polish coal producers.

Read more

Alberta Premier says pipeline prospects improving – by Kelly Cryderman (Globe and Mail – December 23, 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.

CALGARY — Alberta Premier Alison Redford says that heading into 2014, she sees encouraging political signs in relation to approval of the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States, and North Americans are realizing that pipelines are a better means of shipping crude than rail.

In a year-end interview at her Calgary office, the Premier cited a broader recognition of the safety and environmental risks of rail, which has become the key transport alternative as Alberta oil sands and U.S. light oil production ramps up and pipelines are delayed.

Perhaps more than any other issues, pipeline approvals and market access have become her raison d’être as Premier. Since shortly after she took office in late 2011, Ms. Redford has made five trips to Washington to lobby for energy projects, including the controversial Keystone XL project that would take more landlocked Alberta bitumen to U.S. Gulf Coast markets and refineries – where producers believe it will command higher prices.

Read more

B.C. fights for bigger slice of Northern Gateway pie – by Justine Hunter (Globe and Mail – December 23, 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.

VICTORIA — Last week, the Northern Gateway project was given a tentative green light from a federal review panel with a whopping 209 conditions. The federal cabinet has six months to decide whether it will accept the recommendations, but it has another hurdle to consider, this one constructed by Premier Christy Clark. Somebody, somewhere, is supposed to cough up British Columbia’s “fair share” of the benefits.

There is a very large pie that Ottawa, Alberta and B.C. can expect to share if the pipeline is built. When Ms. Clark laid out her “five conditions” for supporting heavy-oil projects across British Columbia, she said the province’s share under the current tax system isn’t big enough. For 18 months now, this demand has sat without anyone stepping up and offering a solution.

According to B.C., the Northern Gateway project is expected to generate a windfall of $81-billion in provincial and federal government taxation over a 30-year period. Of that total, $36-billion goes to Ottawa and $32-billion to Alberta. B.C. would land $6.7-billion – only slightly ahead of Saskatchewan’s $4-billion.

Read more

NORCAT lands ‘exciting’ new tenant – by Laura Stricker (Sudbury Star – December 23, 2013)

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

A British Columbia-based company is moving one of its projects to Sudbury. Sky Vertical Technologies Inc., a subsidiary of Sky Harvest Energy Corp., is setting up its vertical wind axis turbine testing and manufacturing facilities to space owned by the Northern Centre for Advanced Technologies (NORCAT), it announced in a release earlier this month.

“Our CEO (of Sky Vertical) Kyle Loney lives in Sudbury. He is very integrated in the mining business himself and he knew of NORCAT and approached them. That’s how we came to learn of them,” William Iny, Sky Harvest’s president, told The Star this week.

What partially distinguished NORCAT, Iny said, was its 70,000-square-foot development facility.

“They’re not just involved in the mining sector, which we’re very interested in, because our vertical turbines have application for the mining ventilation shaft. Their high-tech facilities for … research and development and for manufacturing, their intellectual contacts within the technology field, were really impressive.

Read more

Can Ontario unlock the mineral riches of the ‘Ring of Fire’ – by Richard Vitari (Mining.com – December 22, 2013)

http://www.mining.com/

The mineral-rich area in remote Northwestern Ontario known as the ‘Ring of Fire’ has recently received a great deal of attention from the Ontario Provincial and Canadian Federal governments. The project is valued to bring $60-$120 billion in economic benefits to Ontario, and particularly some of the poorest areas of the Province. Rich in chromite, nickel and gold, the Ring of Fire is considered to be a mining jackpot for the province; however, significant infrastructure developments are needed in order for resources to be extracted.

Political squabbling between the federal and provincial governments has obstructed mining development in the region for years. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne recently called upon the federal government to help pay for the infrastructure, which, according to Wynne, will cost approximately $1 billion for industrial infrastructure and $1.25 billion for all-season roads needed to connect all Ring of Fire communities.

Wynne says Ontario would contribute a fair share of the cost of the infrastructure, but the need is large, it would need federal matching funds. The Liberal premier has repeatedly expressed frustration with what she termed a lack of engagement by a federal Conservative government that has strongly supported resource developments elsewhere in Canada—particularly Alberta’s oil sands.

Read more

The battle between Cree First Nations and Strateco Resources heats up – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – December 21, 2013)

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

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The grand council of the Crees of Eeyou Istchee, the Cree regional authority and the Cree nation of Mistissini on Friday said they had filed a declaration of intervention in the legal proceedings recently started by uranium explorer Strateco Resources against the Quebec Environment Minister Yves-François Blanchet.

Strateco, who seeks permission to undertake underground exploratory drilling in search of uranium at its Matoush advanced exploration project, early this month asked the Superior Court of Quebec to nullify the minister’s decision to refuse to grant a certificate of authorisation for the exploration.

Strateco had also asked the court to force the minister to issue a certificate of authorisation for the project. In his decision of November 7, Blanchet said that he refused to authorise the Matoush project owing to the absence of social acceptability for the project, particularly among the Crees.

Through the intervention filed today, the Crees sought full rights of participation in the proceedings, and urged the court to dismiss Strateco’s request.

Read more

Friedland raises industry ire over wages claim – by David McKay (MiningMx.com – December 20, 2013)

http://www.miningmx.com/

[miningmx.com] – IVANHOE Mines president and flamboyant mining promoter, Robert Friedland, has raised the ire of his platinum industry counterparts in South Africa following comments to reporters that his company would outstrip wages paid to miners on his company’s Flatreef platinum project in South Africa by an “order of magnitude”.

“In a platinum mine in South Africa today, you have to crawl on your hands and knees on that broken rock for several hundred metres to get to the working phase,” Friedland said at a conference in a report by Reuters.

“It’s pretty claustrophobic, the men are working with muscle power, they are getting silicosis, they are breathing what they are drilling and they are tired of doing it for $12 (R120) a day. I don’t think they are going to do it for much longer, and I don’t think they should.”

“You have heard of blood diamonds for example, or Apple getting criticised for what people get paid, or you see Gap stores get worried for what people get paid in Bangladesh for sewing your clothing. Similarly it is just not viable to pay these workers $12 a day,” he said.

Read more