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Day: April 22, 2014

Northern Superior Resources Junior miner still not buying Ontario’s argument – by Staff (April 22, 2014)

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.

A Sudbury-based junior gold miner that’s suing the Ontario government for $110 million still maintains the province fell short of its legal duty to consult with a First Nation that “evicted” the company from a remote area of northwestern Ontario following a series of disputes in 2011.

Northern Superior Resources responded to a recently amended State of Defence from the province by contending that the government’s version of consultation consisted of a “standard form letter” sent to them that identified Sachigo Lake as one of the First Nation communities that they should contact to advise them of their exploration work.

The company maintains that the province didn’t undertake any formal consultation with Sachigo, nor were they of any assistance or even got involved, until after the company was “evicted” by Sachigo and other area First Nation communities.

Last fall, Northern Superior Resources sued the government for failing to consult with the Sachigo after multiple disagreements with the band caused the company to abandon exploration on its mining claims near Thorne Lake in late 2011. The company said the band made unreasonable demands – including monetary – that forced them to stop work and withdraw.

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NEWS RELEASE: It’s Gold Mining, MacGyver-Style, when FOOL’S GOLD Premieres on Discovery May 13

New original Canadian series mines for gold…and for laughs!

Discovery Fool’s Gold 

TORONTO (April 21, 2014) – Todd Ryznar and his ramshackle crew at Shotgun Exploration are looking to strike it rich in the gold-laden hills of Northern Ontario and retiring in style. The only problem for this start-up DIY mining company? They don’t know what they’re doing! Premiering Tuesday, May 13 with back-to-back episodes at 8 and 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on Discovery, FOOL’S GOLD follows modern-day prospector Ryznar and his ragtag gang of would-be miners in their search for gold. But first, they’ll have to figure out what to do and how to do it – after all, their search for gold won’t be easy when the main equipment is made from a rusty bed frame and a an assortment of old washing machine parts!

Commissioned by Discovery Canada and produced by Toronto’s 11 Television Canada, the humorous eight-part series joins the beleaguered Ryznar and his rookie crew – at the mine and on the town, through bug-infested days, frigid nights, and beer-fuelled weekends – as they make a hilariously haphazard foray into the world of the professional gold digger. Armed with backwoods ingenuity, perseverance, stubbornness – and little else – will their beginner’s luck be rewarded, or will their hopes be dashed?

A real estate speculator-turned-gold prospector, Ryznar purchased the Straw Lake Beach Mine near Fort Frances, Ontario in 2005. After years of failed attempts of finding gold on his own, Ryznar has convinced a hastily-assembled group of his friends to spend eight weeks in the Ontario wilderness in a single-minded search for their share of Northern Ontario’s surprisingly plentiful gold deposits.

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[Norilsk Russia and Nickel Mining] Life behind closed doors in the Arctic is…..fun! – by Kate Baklitskaya (Siberian Times – April 22 2014)

http://siberiantimes.com/home/

Norilsk is home to the world biggest mining and metallurgy complex, and is shut off from the world in more ways than one.

From deep in Soviet times, it was ‘closed’ to outsiders, and currently remains exceptionally hard to visit for foreigners. It appears on lists of the top ten most polluted cities in the world, and yet has no road or rail connections to the ‘mainland’, as the rest of Russia is known here, and the sea port Dudinka, which is 100 km from Norilsk is closed for nine months a year. Yet, intriguingly, the 177,000 people living in Norilsk – which accounts for two per cent of Russia’s entire GDP – seem more contented than many others in Russia.

On a Saturday night, local photographer Nadezhda Rimskaya, 32, goes to OverTime bar to see the local rockabilly band. Nadezhda graduated from a college in St Petersburg but decided to return home and has been working here for the last four years. The concert finishes after midnight and the group of young people decide to go for a late dinner.

Luckily there are places where the kitchen remains open after midnight – for example Maxim pub. Indeed, Moscow-level restaurants and night clubs, bars and coffee shops, are increasing in Norilsk powered by the high demand, surprising as this may seem.

‘Norilsk misses just two things – oxygen and the internet’, says Nadezhda on her night out, referring to the general lack of oxygen in the air in the north and the absence of the high speed internet in the city. Everything else is fine here and in many ways much better than in many Russian cities. I’m honestly surprised when I hear people say that Norilsk is ‘horrible’. That’s just a misinformed stereotype.’

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COLUMN-Everybody but the curve thinks iron ore is going down – by Clyde Russell (Reuters India – April 22, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.

(Reuters) – It’s hard to find any bullish predictions for iron ore prices, with the consensus being that it will drop to below $100 a tonne. Except this isn’t reflected in the financial markets.

The latest bearish signal for iron ore is the decision by an Indian court to allow the mining of 20 million tonnes per annum in the state of Goa, most of which will end up on the export markets.

While this isn’t enough ore to cause prices to slump, it adds to the overall growth in supply, which is widely expected to overwhelm growth in demand, especially as top buyer China’s economy loses some momentum. But despite the bearish outlook, the actual pricing for iron ore, both in the spot and futures markets, is holding up well.

Asian spot prices .IO62-CNI=SI were $113.30 a tonne on Monday, down 15.6 percent so far this year. But they are up 8.2 percent from the year low of $104.70 on March 10 and 31 percent above the 2012 low of $86.70, which was the weakest price for three years.

But more importantly than the spot market, the main paper markets are also showing pricing resilience. The curve for Singapore iron ore swaps <0#SGXIOS:> has a good track record of pointing to turns in market pricing.

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Goldcorp Inc abandoning hostile bid for Osisko – by Peter Koven (National Post – April 22, 2014)

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

Goldcorp Inc. has elected not to raise its hostile offer for Osisko Mining Corp., leaving the company to be acquired by Yamana Gold Inc. and Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.

Vancouver-based Goldcorp announced on Monday afternoon that it will let its $3.6-billion hostile bid for Osisko expire on April 22 instead of raising it.

Goldcorp vowed all along that it would not overpay for Osisko, and most investors suspected it would not raise its offer for a second time. Goldcorp launched its first bid in January and increased it earlier this month.

“We stated from the beginning of this process that we would remain disciplined with respect to our offer to acquire Osisko, and our decision not to amend the offer is consistent with that commitment,” chief executive Chuck Jeannes said in a statement.

“We move forward with an outstanding portfolio of mines and projects, and our focus will remain on maximizing the value of our investments and generating strong returns for our shareholders.”

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Barrick Gold-Newmont Mining ripe for merger as conditions favour tie-up of world’s gold giants – by Peter Koven (National Post – April 22, 2014)

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

Barrick Gold Corp. and Newmont Mining Corp. have held merger talks numerous times in the past without getting a deal done. But conditions finally appear right to bring together the world’s two largest gold producers.

A rough gold market, along with new personalities on both sides of the negotiating table, have helped the two companies overcome their longstanding differences and put them on the cusp of a deal that analysts and investors have eagerly awaited for years.

Recent merger talks between the two sides broke down over a disagreement on what assets to put into a spin-off company, according to sources. However, the broad terms of the merger were largely agreed upon, with Toronto-based Barrick planning to buy Denver-based Newmont for close to US$13-billion in stock, representing a small 13% premium over its recent trading range.

The two gold miners hoped to announce the deal ahead of Newmont’s annual meeting on Wednesday, but that now appears unlikely. Newmont shares rose 6.4% on Monday. Barrick shares opened higher, but then declined as gold dropped and investors absorbed the merger news. They ended the day down 4%.

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Terence Corcoran: From Northern Gateway to Keystone, the undefinable ‘social licence’ movement is in control of jobs and growth – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – April 22, 2014)

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

The Northern Gateway and Keystone pipelines keep getting hammered, the result of what seems like universal adoption of a new free-market killing concept known as a “social licence to operate.” The idea is an outgrowth of the anti-corporate governance crusades and NGO activism of the last few decades. First came stakeholderism, then corporate social responsibility(CSR). At least with CSR corporations were seen to be in charge of their own affairs, taking it upon themselves to curb their carbon emissions and diversify their workforces, or whatever, as they saw fit.

Under social licence mandates, corporations must now negotiate directly with the people, in line with the old Communist maxim: “Everything belongs to the people.” The corporate sector fell for the idea, and now it is lost under what has become something of social licence to kill growth and jobs.

In a non-binding plebesite earlier this month, residents of Kitimat, B.C., appeared to reject Enbridge’s Northern Gateway gas pipeline and tanker port project. The 60-40 verdict was taken as a defeat for Enbridge, a sign that -–as the Vancouver Sun editorialized—the company “simply does not have the social licence necessary to proceed.”

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Barrick must check its hubris to achieve a smooth Newmont merger – by Boyd Erman (Globe and Mail – March 22, 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.

Barrick Gold Corp. says its strategy is no longer about bigger, but about better. A successful merger with Newmont Mining Corp. has got to be about a bit of both.

Barrick is not talking yet, as no deal is done, but job one when a transaction is finalized will be to explain just how a combination with Newmont would square with Barrick’s new strategy.

Toronto-based Barrick has long sought to gain control of Newmont. Talks have gone on and off for more than decade as Barrick grew to become the world’s largest gold producer.

Newmont plus Barrick would create by a huge margin the world’s largest gold miner. There was a time when that would have been sufficient rationale for Barrick, but that is no longer good enough. Shareholders want returns and cash flow from their mines. They want profit from mining companies, not just growth.

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Harper’s vision of Canada as energy superpower thwarted by opposition to pipelines – by Les Whittington (Toronto Star – April 21, 2014)

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

A grassroots movement against B.C.’s Northern Gateway project and a White House decision to delay approval of Keystone XL are the latest blows to Conservatives’ plans to ship more oilsands crude abroad.

OTTAWA—The Harper government, which never foresaw that pipelines would become the battleground in a frenzied struggle over climate change, is contending with a continentwide wave of political opposition that has imperilled plans to sell more Canadian petroleum in foreign markets.

In British Columbia, a few thousand people in the small coastal town of Kitimat have given powerful symbolic momentum to the movement against pipelines designed to carry oilsands-derived crude for export.

In one of the first soundings of voter attitude toward the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline planned for B.C., the citizens of Kitimat turned out to reject the project in a referendum. The result of the unusual April 12 plebiscite, though non-binding, was seen as a serious blow to Enbridge Inc., the company behind the planned $6.5-billion conduit to carry oil from Alberta across the Rockies to an export terminal in Kitimat.

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Rio’s Oyu Tolgoi woes deepen – by Matt Chambers (The Australian – April 22, 2014)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business

MONGOLIA has stepped up criticism of Rio Tinto over continuing delays to expansion of the pair’s $US11.5 billion ($12.3bn) Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine, revealing a big divide still stands in the way of the profitable second stage of the giant mine.

In a letter to Rio chief Sam Walsh leaked to the Mongolian press at the weekend, Prime Minister Norov Altankhuyag chided Rio over behind-the-scenes moves to declare it was seeking an end-of-year extension to project financing for the $US5.1bn underground expansion of Oyu Tolgoi.

Lenders’ commitments for a $US3.6bn financing package for the stalled expansion expired last month because Rio and the government could not agree on Mongolia’s take from the project, access to water, and a $US2bn cost blowout on the first-stage ­expansion.

The disagreement threatens to derail the underground expansion of the project, which is where most of the value is set to be ­realised. The March 27 letter from Mr Altankhuyag, who has declared Mongolia is ready to wrap up the funding, shows the government is unhappy with Rio’s public statements on the project.

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[Sudbury] Stantec exec ‘living the dream’- by Laura Stricker (Sudbury Star – April 22, 2014)

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

Local boy Mike Mayhew is responsible for creating and sustaining relationships in the mining industry worldwide. At Stantec, where he works, more than 450 people in 20 countries are employed in the sector. Close to 300 of those are based in Sudbury.

The 42-year-old is a busy guy – never too busy, though, to play the guitar. Leaning against a bookcase the instrument is within easy reach of his office chair. “I’m living the dream here,” Mayhew says, beaming. Earlier this month he was made the sector leader/director for global mining, a new position at Stantec.

“As the sector leader of Canadian operations, I’m responsible for growing and nurturing our relationships in the mining sector and looking for other opportunities to grow and expand our business and tap into all the other services that Stantec offers to our clients,” he explains.

“If they’re looking for mining support and expertise, we have that. If they’re looking for environmental support and expertise, we have that. We have building infrastructure, we have project management, we (can) tap into expertise around the world.

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How to cool the planet – by Lorrie Goldstein (Toronto Sun – April 19, 2014)

 http://www.torontosun.com/home

Nuclear power, natural gas and carbon capture technology hold far more promise than near-useless wind and solar energy

The key finding in the latest report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is this: It acknowledges the reality any viable move to a low-carbon dioxide global economy must include nuclear power, replacing coal power with natural gas and carbon capture and storage (CCS).

Predictably the IPCC — being in thrall to radical environmentalists who hate all of these ideas — goes on to praise expensive, unreliable and inefficient wind and solar power which, at their current level of development, cannot power modern, industrialized economies like Canada’s.

Nor can they power developing economies like China’s, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, which is building hundreds of coal-fired electricity plants. The key passages of the latest 33-page IPCC report are on page 23 and 24, where it addresses the need for non-emitting and low-emitting conventional energy technologies to reduce rising global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

“Nuclear energy is a mature low-GHG emission source of baseload power” the IPCC acknowledges, “but its share of global electricity generation has been declining (since 1993).

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Ottawa to force energy companies to report payments made to native bands – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – April 21, 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 — The federal government is proposing measures that would require mining and oil companies to report all payments made to native band councils and their corporations as part of Ottawa’s push for greater transparency among aboriginal governments.

Officials from Natural Resources Canada are consulting with industry, non-governmental organizations and aboriginal communities over plans to require mandatory reporting of all payments made by resource companies to foreign and domestic governments. Unlike similar regulations in the United States and Europe, the federal rules would include aboriginal governments and their corporations.

The demand for mandatory resource-revenue reporting comes amid a concerted effort by the Conservative government to increase financial disclosure from aboriginal communities to combat concerns over mismanagement and corruption. In a high-profile case last week, the Nishnawbe-Aski Police Service charged the former co-manager of the remote Attawapiskat Reserve in Northern Ontario – who is also the common-law spouse of chief Theresa Spence – with two counts of fraud and theft after the band council conducted its own investigation.

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From wasteland to parkland: Mining greens up – by Daina Lawrence (Globe and Mail – April 22, 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.

Today, the aerial view of the historic Coniaurum gold mine, owned by Goldcorp Inc. since 2002, more closely resembles a putting green on a golf course than an old mine site. But it didn’t always look like this.

For decades it was a wasteland of discarded rock – leftovers from its previous life as an active mine since 1913, until a storm in 1961 caused a breach in the tailings dams and shut down operations for good.

Past practices did not call for any closure or clean up of these sites, so for more than 30 years the Timmins, Ont.-based mine site sat almost untouched. But through a mergers and acquisition deal, Goldcorp Inc. inherited the historic mine (along with almost 20 others) and in 2005 the company began its multimillion-dollar reclamation project. It took three years and between $10-million and $12-million to complete, but the current property now grows plant life and even acts as home to a colony of beehives that aid in Coniaurum’s revegetation.

“The goal, with this property in particular, is to bring us back as close as possible to the original vegetation that would have been there before mining,” says Marc Lauzier, manager of Goldcorp’s Timmins property. “We have to do what’s right and do a complete mining cycle, which ends when you can return the land to its original state,” he adds.

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Indonesian ban on unprocessed ore exports may help Vale – (CBC News Sudbury – April 17, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/sudbury/

A new commodities report projects a boost in the price of nickel over the next three years — and that will have an impact on mining companies in Sudbury.

The projected price hike is connected to what’s happening overseas in Indonesia, where that country recently put a ban on exports of unprocessed ore—an effort to encourage foreign investment in domestic refining activity.

The country produces about 28 per cent of the world’s nickel, so its withdrawal from the global market marks a significant drop in supply. Recent nickel prices have reflected this new reality, as it reached a six-month high this week at $8.11/lb.

“I have revised upward my price forecast for 2015 to $9 a pound,” said Patricia Mohr, a commodities specialist with Scotiabank.  “We started this year at prices just a little above $6, so it does represent quite an improvement.”

Miner Vale has operations in Indonesia, but spokesperson Cory McPhee said the company won’t be affected by the ban. “We’re a company that actually produces a refined nickel product in Indonesia,” he said.

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