Ring of Fire Chiefs may demand basic services before mineral development – by Bryan Phelan (Onotassiniik Magazine – Fall 2014)

http://onotassiniik.com/

The same day in June that David Paul Achneepineskum, CEO for Matawa First Nations Management (MFNM), spoke at the Ontario Mining Forum, CBC News reported on a drinking water emergency in Marten Falls First Nation.

Marten Falls, one of nine First Nations that receive advisory and support services from the MFNM tribal council, had been without potable water since a boil-water advisory was issued in 2005, CBC reported June 18. The situation became worse this April when a water filter broke at the community’s water treatment plant, making the water unsafe even for bathing. Chief Eli Moonias said subsequent requests for emergency federal and provincial funding to fix the water treatment plant had to that point been ignored.

Achneepineskum, formerly a band manager and councillor in Marten Falls, referenced this issue and its broader implications while speaking in Thunder Bay as part of a Mining Forum panel on building consensus for mining development in the Ring of Fire.

“If you go to our communities, any one of them, they talk about the social and health issues, they talk about housing, they talk about bad water … particularly water,” he said. “We want proper water treatment, schools, health programs. And in some cases, our chiefs may push that this will be a prerequisite before any development happens, not after the fact.”

In March, the nine members of the Matawa Chiefs Council signed a framework agreement with Ontario that will guide regional negotiations for development in the Ring of Fire, in the traditional territories of several Matawa communities.

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Why the Vale-Glencore merger failed – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – September 4, 2014)

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

He can only speculate, but a Laurentian University economist offers several reasons why talks between mining giants Vale SA and Glencore to merge the companies’ Sudbury operations may have broken off.

Jean-Charles Cachon, an economist and a professor in Laurentian’s Faculty of Management, said internal restructuring at both firms, the rising price of nickel and copper, and the complexity of harmonizing the Sudbury operations might have put the brakes on merger talks.

Reuters news agency reported this week the companies had stopped talking about forming a partnership in Sudbury, although neither Vale nor Glencore would confirm that. Vale’s head of base metals, Peter Poppinga, did say in July there had been a “strategic break in bigger discussions” between the two companies.

Cachon, who has taught at Laurentian for decades, has followed the two mining companies in Sudbury through several ownerships.

He recalls the former Inco and Falconbridge, now Vale and Glencore, having a plan to merge in 2005. That plan had to be revised and amended when new harmonization talks began between the rebranded companies last year because some operations had closed and new ones had opened since that plan was developed.

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Smart governments encourage foreign investment – Glasenberg – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – September 3, 2014)

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

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Smart governments encouraged foreign investment and ensured that they did not make it too difficult or impossible for companies to invest, Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg said on Wednesday.

Glencore – which employs 42 500 people at its South African operations, 20 300 of them in coal and 22 200 in alloys, and which last year paid $126-million in taxes and royalties and $490-million in wages – is one of the few mining majors that are continuing to invest in South Africa.

Replying to questions at a media briefing on the prospect of coal being declared strategic in South Africa, Glasenberg said that taking into consideration future growth requirements of Eskom, it was questionable whether the State power utility and South Africa would have sufficient funding to develop the number of coal mines required.

“It would be difficult. You need foreign investment coming in. So whether Eskom is going to make coal a strategic mineral or not, we will invest in this country if we believe that we can get the right returns for our shareholders.

“And what do we bring? We bring a load of money. We invest it in new mines, we employ a lot of people, we pay royalties and taxes and the government gets an ongoing, long-term benefit from us.

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Start small with Ring of Fire infrastructure: Noront CEO (Northern Miner – September 3, 2014)

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

There’s no question massive infrastructure will need to be built in order to mine the large chromite deposits in the Ring of Fire, says Noront Resources (TSXV: NOT) president and CEO Alan Coutts.

However, Coutts sees the big infrastructure needs — such as Mushkegowuk Tribal Council’s recent announcement regarding a First Nations-led plan to develop rail, power and a sea port in James Bay — as a project for the long term.

“The needs that Mushkegowuk are talking about are the long-term infrastructure needs if there is to be large-scale chromite mining in the Ring of Fire,” Coutts said. “In my opinion, that’s at least a decade off — there’s nobody advancing a large-scale chromite project now and certainly the ability to permit such a project with big waste rock piles, big tailings storage areas, and large water treatment needs because of the water coming into pits — it’s a long way off.”

Cliffs Natural Resources (NYSE: CLF) suspended work on its Black Thor open-pit chromite project in the Ring of Fire late last year, leaving junior Noront as the nearest-term potential producer in the remote region of Ontario.

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Tsingshan eyes first Indonesian nickel pig iron output in Jan – by Fergus Jensen and Melanie Burton (Reuters U.S. – September 4, 2014)

 http://www.reuters.com/

JAKARTA/SYDNEY – (Reuters) – China’s Tsingshan Group expects to start production at its Indonesian nickel pig iron smelter as soon as January, becoming the second plant to ramp up since the country’s new mineral processing laws came into force at the start of the year.

“Hopefully by October or November we will have started commissioning,” said Slamet Panggabean, finance manger of Tsingshan’s local joint venture partner Bintang Delapan Mineral, referring to the firm’s pilot smelter project in Morowali on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.

“The plan is for production (to begin) in January or February.” As part of a strategy to reap more value from its mineral wealth, Indonesia banned ore exports in January as it pushed its nickel and copper miners to set up metal processing plants. The move has driven up London Metal Exchange nickel prices by a third so far this year.

Stocks of nickel pig iron at China’s stainless steel makers are running down, leaving them exposed to a supply gap next year and fuelling the need to build smelters in Indonesia as quickly as possible.

Tsingshan, China’s second largest stainless steel company, was one of the few firms to act when the law was enacted in 2009 and is well ahead of other nickel pig iron producers, many of which held back on hopes the ban would be rolled back.

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Will We Have Enough New Mines? – by Henry Bonner (Daily Resource Hunter.com – September 3, 2014)

http://dailyresourcehunter.com/

As metals prices boomed during the last decade, small explorers and big miners spent billions of shareholder dollars seeking new deposits. Investors wanted the high rewards of a discovery as metals soared in price. At $1,900 per ounce of gold, even mediocre finds could make money.

Richard Schodde, of MinEx Consulting, has studied past exploration cycles in detail. He says we are seeing a tightening of the sector, as the availability of capital has plummeted. Costs of exploration are coming down as companies cut back on high-salaried employees and reduce operating costs.

The amount of money spent exploring rose during the last decade from $2.9 in 2002 to $29.4 billion in 2012, before falling back to $21 billion in 2013 says Mr. Schodde. Over the time-frame 2002-12 $136 billion was spent world-wide on non-bulk exploration, resulting in 647 significant new discoveries, of which only 18 are considered to be ‘top tier.’

Despite a 10-fold increase in the amount of money spent on exploration over the last decade, the amount of new discoveries was relatively unchanged – meaning that more money was spent per new discovery. Mr. Schodde explains that as more money went into the sector, expenses related to exploring went up. Geologists and engineers demanded higher salaries. Drilling equipment and operators became more expensive, and money was spent liberally on general and administrative expenses.

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