January 9, 2014 – Republic of Mining

Mining skills shortage in B.C. in 2014 and beyond – by John Roozendaal (Vancouver Sun – January 9, 2014)

January 9, 2014

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

John Roozendaal is president of VMS Ventures.

British Columbia is known as a world-class centre of mining excellence, and Canada’s largest producer of copper, exporter of coal and the only producer of molybdenum. Mining has a production value of approximately $8.6 billion each year and currently employs over 30,000 people across the province.

The B.C. government recognizes the importance of mining. The BC Jobs Plan has set a target of opening eight new mines, and expanding nine existing mines by 2015. This will be supported by the 850 mining and exploration companies based in Vancouver — including ourselves — which account for more than half of the mining companies across Canada as a whole.

However, there is one major sticking point that could prevent these goals from being achieved: We are facing a skills shortage in the industry, and this will only escalate over the coming years as more mines are built and the need for skilled labour intensifies.

A shortage of 60,000 to 90,000 skilled workers is expected by 2017 according to The Mining Association of Canada, with B.C.’s mining industry requiring over 17,000 new employees within the next ten years.

COLUMN-Uncertainty the only certainty with Indonesia mineral export ban – by Clyde Russell (Reuters India – January 9, 2014)

January 9, 2014

http://in.reuters.com/

Jan 9 (Reuters) – The key point with any laws or regulations is not that they are on the statute book, it’s whether they are applied and enforced, and this will be the case with Indonesia’s ban on metal ore exports.

As is often the case with Indonesia and government policy, the only certainty is uncertainty and whether the prohibition on exporting unrefined ores goes ahead, and in what form, is far from clear.

In the case that the ban goes ahead as planned from Jan. 12, it seems likely that nickel ore and bauxite, with a value of up to an annual $2 billion will be the hardest hit. Indonesia is the world’s biggest exporter of nickel ore and supplies about two-thirds of top buyer China’s imported bauxite.

But Indonesia’s mining ministry is seeking to pass regulations to ease the ban and phase in the requirements for domestic processing over a longer period of time. The proposal recommends that raw mineral ores can be exported until 2017, after which all would have to undergo domestic processing.

Gold’s weakening outlook threatens miners’ credit ratings – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – January 9, 2014)

January 9, 2014

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.

Moody’s Investors Service cut its gold price forecast for the year, putting the credit ratings of Canada’s largest precious metal producers at risk of a downgrade as they battle an industry slump.

Reflecting the sharp drop in gold prices, Moody’s on Wednesday said it will use an average bullion price of $1,100 (U.S.) an ounce instead of $1,200 to determine a company’s credit rating.

“The increasing risk of lower prices suggests that key credit metrics of certain producers are stretched for current ratings in the absence of mitigation through cost reductions or other actions,” Moody’s said in a report announcing the lower gold price outlook.

Last year, gold fell nearly 30 per cent to $1,200 an ounce and has traded close to that level for the past few months. The weaker price forced producers to write down assets, cut jobs, and suspend dividends and projects.

Zimbabwe: Honeymoon Over for Miners – by Martin Kadzere (All Africa.com – January 8, 2014)

January 9, 2014

http://allafrica.com/

GOVERNMENT has invited mining firms to submit, by Saturday next week, proposals for the establishment of beneficiation facilities as the deadline to ban exports of raw platinum concentrates approaches. The Government gave existing platinum miners two years at the beginning of last year to set up a refinery, but there has been no meaningful progress.

The two years end in December this year, and thereafter, exportation of raw platinum concentrate will be banned. Producers of base metals, mainly nickel and chrome, are also expected to make their proposals.

The settler regime banned exports of base metal ores and concentrates and insisted that all chrome, nickel and copper was refined to at least high intermediate levels in the country.

Chrome was normally refined into bars of ferrochrome, while copper was refined to very high levels of purity during that time. The refineries later closed. In the meantime, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa proposed that companies be levied 15 percent on exports of raw platinum with effect from January 1 this year.

Oil ‘manifesto’ urges Parti Québécois to develop province’s resources – by Nicolas Van Praet (National Post – January 9, 2014)

January 9, 2014

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

MONTREAL — A group of prominent Quebecers is urging the Parti Québécois government to move ahead with oil development as concern builds over the province’s financial predicament.

Former PQ premier Bernard Landry and former Liberal finance minister Monique Jérome-Forget are among 11 noteworthy people who on Wednesday released a so-called “Manifesto to benefit collectively from our oil.” Several businesspeople are also among the signatories.

The effort was organized by the largest network of business people and companies in Quebec, the Fédération des Chambres de Commerce. It underscores a debate on energy in Quebec that has only just begun – one pitting people who believe the province should seek to produce its own oil against those who argue the risks are too high and that the world is moving toward cleaner energy.

It comes at a critical time as economists at the Royal Bank of Canada warn that Quebec’s economy may be entering a “new normal” period of slow growth, challenged by deteriorating working-age population numbers and the highest debt-to-GDP ratio of all the provinces.

New Brunswick train derailment fire renews questions of oil-by-rail’s dangers – by Kim MacKrael and Jane Taber (Globe and Mail – January 9, 2014)

January 9, 2014

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 AND HALIFAX — A fiery derailment in New Brunswick Tuesday night was the third time a crude-laden train has caught fire in recent weeks.

Three of the tank cars that derailed in New Brunswick on Tuesday night were loaded at a terminal in southwestern Manitoba, Canadian National Railway Co. said. The location raises the question of whether some of the oil originated in the Bakken region.

On Thursday, CN spokesperson Jim Feeny said a sudden wheel or axle failure likely caused the train to derail. “The focus of the investigation will be what caused the sudden failure of the wheel or wheel and axle combination and when did it occur,” he said.

The safety of moving oil by rail has been under scrutiny since last July, when a train carrying Bakken crude derailed and exploded in Lac-Mégantic, Que., killing 47 people. U.S. officials have since warned that oil from the Bakken formation, which straddles North Dakota and parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, may be more volatile than traditional oil.

A Rusty Outlook for Iron-Ore Prices – by Rhiannon Hoyle (Wall Street Journal – January 8, 2014)

January 9, 2014

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

Slowing Growth in China and the Opening of New Mines in Australia Threaten to Drag Down Prices

SYDNEY—Iron ore may have outperformed other commodities last year, but the price of the metal used to make steel looks set to decline this year as China’s growth slows.

China’s continued heavy spending on subways, bridges and other infrastructure kept demand for iron ore high last year. Exports to China from Port Hedland, Australia’s main shipment point for the metal, increased by 34% to 256 million metric tons. Overall shipments of iron ore—including to Japan and South Korea—rose 26% to 318 million tons. Exports of the commodity reached record levels in December.

Many analysts and traders have been surprised by the way iron-ore prices, buoyed by record Chinese demand, held up throughout 2013. Prices of other industrial commodities, such as nickel and coal, have tumbled, but iron ore has largely remained above US$130 a ton.

Although prices are still about a third lower than their all-time peak three years ago, they remain well above the sub-US$90-a-ton level they sank to in 2012 as China’s economy stuttered.

Vale uncertainty set to end in 2014 – Thompson Citizen Editorial (January 8, 2014)

January 9, 2014

The Thompson Citizen, which was established in June 1960, covers the City of Thompson and Nickel Belt Region of Northern Manitoba. The city has a population of about 13,500 residents while the regional population is more than 40,000.

More than three years of uncertainty about the near-term future of Vale’s Manitoba Operations are about to end and that in and of itself is very good news for Thompson residents.

Whether it will be good news or bad news in an objective economic sense remains to be seen, but it will be substantive news, and given the uncertainty that followed the announcement on Nov. 17, 2010 that the smelter and refinery would close in 2015 – followed by even more uncertainty, as the Sword of Damocles hung over Birchtree Mine for 6½ months from Oct. 18, 2012 until last May 6, while the company considered returning it to care and maintenance – and you can perhaps better appreciate why any real and conclusive news out of Vale in relation to Thompson would be welcome at this point.

If you wonder what the effects of more than three years of uncertainty surrounding Thompson’s largest and most important employer have been, try putting your house up for sale right now or look around and see how many new investors have arrived in town since 2010. While houses have sold and investors have come, Thompson has been in something of a state of suspended animation – a city on hold – since that fateful November Wednesday more than three years ago now.

B.C. Liberals stain their ‘mining-friendly’ reputation – by Vaughn Palmer (Vancouver Sun – January 7, 2014)

January 9, 2014

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

VICTORIA — The B.C. Liberals have decided not to challenge a court judgment that found two cabinet ministers and a senior official guilty of procedural unfairness in rejecting a proposed $2.5-billion mining project at Morrison Lake northeast of Smithers.

“We’re not going to appeal,” Mines Minister Bill Bennett said in an interview Tuesday, pretty much conceding that the court’s criticism of the government conduct was correct.

The decision means that Pacific Booker Minerals, would-be developer of the open-pit copper, gold and molybdenum mine, will finally have a chance to defend its proposal against last-minute objections that led to it being denied an environmental approval certificate back in September 2012.

Those included impact on sockeye salmon in Morrison Lake, part of the Skeena River headwaters, and opposition from local First Nations. The public company, whose shares trade on the TSX Venture exchange, will also be making its pitch to a different ministerial lineup than the one that turned it down 18 months ago.

Legal and Regulatory Environment Risk Atlas 2014 – by Maplecroft Global Risk Analytics (January 8, 2014)

January 9, 2014

http://maplecroft.com/

Myanmar has been identified as the country making the greatest improvements to its business environment for 2014. Strides have been made through reforms to address issues such as corruption; rule of law; the regulatory framework; respect for property rights; and corporate governance, reveals Maplecroft’s annual Legal and Regulatory Environment Risk Atlas (LRERA). Senegal, Guatemala, Mozambique and Rwanda, meanwhile, are among the countries with best performance over the last five years.

The fifth annual Legal and Regulatory Environment Risk Atlas includes 21 risk indices developed to enable companies and investors to monitor the ease of undertaking business in 173 countries. Since 2009 some of the biggest increases in legal and regulatory risk have been experienced by foreign investors in Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh and Egypt. Maplecroft states that the business environment in these countries is being curtailed by factors such as a lack of respect for the rule of law and property rights; weak investor protection; increasing regulatory burdens; and poor governance resulting from instability.

Legal mechanisms and regulatory structures are typically well entrenched features of a country that are not subject to fast change without significant political will and reform. However, over the last five years the LRERA reveals that a number of countries have made steady improvements. Senegal has risen 23 places from 28th to 51st (1st place is considered the highest risk in the LRERA), Guatemala went from 32nd to 61st, Mozambique 40th to 71st, and Rwanda 66th to 101st.

1913 tragedy still resonates – by by Bill Lueders (Wisconsin Watch.org – December 17, 2013)

January 9, 2014

http://www.wisconsinwatch.org/

On Dec. 24, 1913, striking mine workers gathered with their families for a Christmas party at Italian Hall in Calumet, Mich. A man wearing a pin for a citizens group aligned with the mining companies entered the crowded second-floor room and shouted “Fire!”

Frightened partygoers rushed to the exit and tumbled down the stairs, on top of fallen others. Seventy-three people, including about 60 children, were killed. The community scrambled to find enough tiny caskets.
No one was ever charged for causing these deaths. A full century later, the event still haunts the Copper Country of the Upper Peninsula.

“I’ve gotten death threats,” relates Steve Lehto, a Michigan attorney who has written extensively on the tragedy. “I’ve been assaulted — literally — at book signings. I’ve had people come up to me and start screaming.”

Lehto understands and even sympathizes with such reactions, which he believes played into the decision to raze Italian Hall in 1984. The community just wants to forget; his duty as a historian is to not let that happen. “This is too important a story,” he says.

Striking Miners, and Children Who Paid the Price – by Neil Genzlinger (New York Times – December 16, 2013)

January 9, 2014

Red Metal: The Copper Country Strike of 1913 from Jonathan B. Silvers on Vimeo.

For more info about this event, click here: http://1913strike.wordpress.com/

http://www.nytimes.com/

‘Red Metal,’ on PBS, Revisits a 1913 Mining Strike

This has been a year of notable 50th anniversaries, but time didn’t begin in 1963. A sorrowful PBS documentary on Tuesday night notes the 100th anniversary of an event forgotten by much of the country but not by the people of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula: a miners’ strike that led to a catastrophic stampede in which 73 people died, most of them children.

The program, “Red Metal: The Copper Country Strike of 1913,” is fairly generic as documentaries go, but in an age of battles over the minimum wage and concern about the distribution of wealth, it resonates. An organizing effort by the Western Federation of Miners led miners in and around Calumet to strike in July, and the companies (the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company was the biggest) were unyielding.

Global Gold Rush: The Price of Mining Pursuits On The Water Supply – by Codi Yeager-Kozacek (Circle of Blue – June 15, 2012)

January 9, 2014

http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/

Editor’s Note: While this posting is somewhat dated, it is definitely worth a read!

Circle of Blue, founded in 2002 and based in Traverse City, Michigan, is a non-profit affiliate of the Pacific Institute, and the premier news organization in the world covering freshwater issues

Water supplies remain key to the global boom in gold mining, driven by high demand and near-record prices.

Driven by historically high gold prices and increased interest from foreign investors, mining boomtowns are springing up all over the world and wreaking a rising toll on water resources and the environment. Many places where new mines are being opened and old ones expanded, local authorities and residents are reporting mounting evidence of severe water pollution from gold mining, which has intensified due to a nearly 50 percent per year increase in mining exploration budgets over the past two years.

In Romania, billions of Euros and thousands of jobs — a boon for an economically depressed region — are being weighed against the environmental impact of what would be Europe’s largest open-cast gold mine. In South Africa, the world’s fifth-largest gold producer, the government is struggling to deal with pollution from acid mine drainage and hundreds of tailings dams.