BHP Billiton And Rio Tinto Risking A Monopoly Investigation – by Tim Treadgold (Forbes Magazine – October 14, 2014)

http://www.forbes.com/

Two of the world’s biggest mining companies, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto , might be attracting the attention of government anti-monopoly and trade regulators in attempts to protect their share of the world iron ore market.

A powerful Australian politician warned earlier today that both miners ran the risk of breaching international trade rules by deliberately expanding to thwart competition.

Colin Barnett, head of the Western Australian state government, said that the directors of BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto should be worried about how European and World Trade Organization regulators might react to recent statements from some of their executives.

Time For The Directors To Be Nervous

“If I was sitting around a board table in one of those big companies I’d be pretty nervous about what the WTO and European regulators would think about this,” he said.

“It’s a precarious area they’re going into.” The problem, as Barnett sees it, is that BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto might be behaving in a monopolistic way — a timely observation given that a day earlier the Nobel prize for Economics was awarded to a French academic who specializes in the behavior of monopolies and oligopolies.

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South Africa considers declaring certain minerals as ‘strategic’ – by Zandi Shabalala and Ed Stoddard (Reuters U.S. – October 14, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

JOHANNESBURG – (Reuters) – South Africa’s mines minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi said he was considering declaring certain minerals such as coal and iron ore as “strategic” for the country.

“We haven’t classified any, but it is provided for under the mineral bill, which is before the president. If that bill is signed into law, then it will give the minister the ability to declare certain minerals strategic for purposes of industrialisation in South Africa,” he said.

Under the bill, such minerals “will be sold for production costs excluding transportation. That is the mine-gate price. And the industry is comfortable with that, because they negotiated that formula,” he said.

He would not be drawn categorically on what he will declare strategic but said, “Iron ore is obvious and coal, because coal fires our power stations.”

He added, “There is coal for export and coal of a lesser quality, which stays in the country. That we would want to keep for our power stations.” Companies that could be affected include Kumba Iron Ore, which is a unit of Anglo American, and mining companies Exxaro and BHP Billiton.

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Mongolia as the Key to a Russian-South Korean Strategic Partnership – by Andrew Korybko (Global Research – October 11, 2014)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/

Nestled between Russia and China, Mongolia is a geographically obscure country with the sparsest population density in the world. It isn’t exactly what comes to mind when one thinks of East Asian or Pacific economic opportunities, yet for Russia, Mongolia is the key that it needs to unlock strategic relations with South Korea.

Ulaanbaatar’s unique Third Neighbor Policy has allowed it to cultivate favorable relations with Seoul, and coupled with its valuable coal reserves and rare earth minerals, it has just the type of resources that South Korea needs. By bridging the geographic divide between the two, Russia stands to gain by entering into a strategic and multifaceted partnership with South Korea that proves the seriousness of its Pacific Pivot and could potentially transform Northeast Asian affairs.

Mongolia’s Third Neighbor Policy

Mongolia has historically been in the Russian sphere of influence, but after 1991, the country spearheaded the so-called Third Neighbor Policy to diversify its relations in the post-Cold War world. This saw it reaching out in economic, political, and military (although largely benign) ways to distant partners such as the EU and NATO, as well as closer ones such as Japan and South Korea.

The guiding philosophy behind this policy was that Mongolia did not want to be dominated by either Russia or China, the latter of which it secured its independence from in 1911 after centuries of control.

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Australian Dollar’s Slide Shields Miners From Nickel Price Slump – by Rhiannon Hoyle (Wall Street Journal – October 14, 2014)

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

SYDNEY—A weakening Australian dollar is shielding the country’s nickel miners from the full force of falling metal prices, giving them an edge over rivals with operations from the Philippines to Canada.

Nickel, which is traded globally in U.S. dollars, has tumbled 12% on the London Metal Exchange since the start of last month on concerns about the amount of metal piling up in warehouses. That has reversed a price rally since the start of the year, when a ban on ore exports from Indonesia prompted big consumers in China to scramble for alternative supply.

For global nickel miners, falling prices are squeezing profits and shaking investor confidence in the industry. Nickel is needed to make stainless steel, and is found in everything from saucepans to shipping containers.

In Australia, however, the pain felt by miners hasn’t been quite so acute. A pullback in the Australian dollar against the U.S. dollar means nickel prices have only fallen about 6% since the start of September after being converted into local currency.

At current exchange rates, a nickel price of US$16,550 a metric ton allows Australian miners to get about 18,830 Australian dollars for each ton of their output.

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Glencore and BHP Billiton face off in clash of the mining titans – by Andrew Critchlow (The Telegraph – October 11, 2014)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Glencore’s Ivan Glasenberg and his counterpart at BHP Billiton were breaking bread a day after details of the $160bn “GlenTinto” deal emerged. But how much longer can these mining titans remain friends?

Ivan Glasenberg and Andrew Mackenzie — the two biggest names in global mining — had their eyes firmly fixed on each other as they were locked deep in intense conversation during a private lunch last Wednesday at the Santini restaurant in Belgravia.

Just 24 hours earlier Glasenberg, the billionaire South African chief executive of Glencore, had revealed to the market details of an audacious bid to take over Rio Tinto – currently one of the biggest rivals of BHP Billiton, the Anglo-Australian mining giant led by Mackenzie. If successful, the merger would have flipped the entire mining industry on its head.

Whether it was a remarkable coincidence, or just another routine meeting between two powerful chief executives, the lunch could not have been more timely, given the profound challenges facing the global resources industry following the recent slump in iron ore prices and concerns that the decade-long bull run for mining companies has run its course.

Although it is understood that the lunch had been in their diaries for at least a month, both men had plenty to talk about, especially so soon after Glasenberg’s failed bid to create a $160bn (£100bn) merged company that the City has already dubbed “GlenTinto”.

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Nursing juniors Australians beat Canadians – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – October 13, 2014)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Is it timing, spending or just having guts?

HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) – Maybe it’s an Australian knack for stomaching awful things. Vegemite. Bloodied juniors.

Richard Schodde, Managing Director of MinEx, a small but powerful mining research firm out of Australia, always has some interesting slides in his presentations. In one of his latest he drew a picture of the diverging fate of two patients: ASX and TSX/TSXV exploration juniors.

Australia and Canada have long dominated global exploration (though China is rising.) But the Australians – nursing deep wounds to be sure – are still faring much better than Canadians.

The comparison drew Schodde, on the road in New York, into a 30-minute talk on Friday morning before his hotel’s house-keeping kicked him out of his room.

The basics

Proportionally-speaking, Australian exploration juniors have healthier (albeit still very stressed) cash reserves than Canadians.

That the juniors are in an abysmal state, cash-wise, will come as no surprise to anyone following the sector. But the yawning gap between ASX and TSX/TSXV juniors may.

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Monsoon to curb Philippines nickel mining, hurt China supply – by Erik dela Cruz and Melanie Burton (Reuters India – October 14, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

Manila – Oct 14 (Reuters) – Seasonal rains are set to disrupt nickel mining in the Philippines for the next four months or so, crimping exports to top buyer China and stoking a shortfall in the global supply of ore.

Miners in the Philippines say they will be able to fulfil their 2014 contracts as they have factored in the impact of the annual monsoon.

But, with a ban on raw metal shipments by former top exporter Indonesia, the seasonal decline in the Philippines’ output could force China’s vast stainless steel industry to run down its stocks of nickel ore, reigniting a rally in nickel prices.

Most producers in the Philippines’ main nickel mining region of Caraga are expected to close operations as normal from October or November until early next year in anticipation of heavy rains. The Philippines has emerged as the top supplier to China’s producers of nickel pig iron, a key ingredient in stainless steel.

“They (China NPI makers) are definitely going to be caught short,” said Daniel Hynes, analyst at ANZ in Sydney. “Obviously they’ll just have to dig into their inventory to meet demand in the shorter term or look at importing some ferronickel from various sources.”

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NEWS RELEASE: Antipodean version of Ontario Mining Association’s SYTYKM celebrates its first winners

This article was provided by the Ontario Mining Association (OMA), an organization that was established in 1920 to represent the mining industry of the province.

An e-mail received recently from the Land Down Under has served as a reminder that the launch of season seven of the Ontario Mining Association high school video competition So You Think You Know Mining is just around the corner. “Inspired by your initiative, South Australia’s first Dirt TV winners have been announced. I am sure you’ll enjoy the winning entry,” said SACOME (South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy) in the e-mail message.

The 2014-2015 version of SYTYKM will be offering prize money of $42,500 to Ontario high school film makers, up from $40,000 in season six. The deadline for entries is being set at March 30, 2015. Watch the OMA website www.oma.on.ca. Further details will be provided soon.

Now back to the Southern Hemisphere. Earlier this year, Jason Kuchel, Chief Executive of SACOME, said that on a visit to Toronto he was so impressed with SYTYKM that he knew he had to adopt it at home.

“The SYTYKM competition’s growth over recent years is remarkable and truly inspirational,” added Mr. Kuchel. “The competition works on so many levels, including building community awareness of the benefits of the sector, increasing understanding of career opportunities among high school children and addressing the science and arts curriculums with a practical, real-world example that is also a lot of fun.”

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Resources, Empire & Labour: Crisis, Lessons & Alternatives – Edited by David Leadbeater

To order a copy of Resources, Empire & Labour: Crisis, Lessons & Alternatives, click here: http://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/resources-empire-and-labour

The interconnections of natural resources, empire and labour run through the most central and conflict-ridden crises of our times: war, environmental degradation, impoverishment and plutocracy. Crucial to understand and to change the conditions that give rise to these crises is the critical study of resource development and, more broadly, the resources question, which is the subject of this volume. Intended for researchers, students and activists, the chapters in Resources, Empire and Labour illuminate key aspects of the resources question from a variety of angles through concrete analyses and histories focused on the extractive industries of mining, oil and gas.

Saskatchewan: Social Democracy in a Resource Hinterland – by John W. Warnock

Saskatchewan has always been seen as a hinterland area and economy within the Canadian territorial state. Geographically, it is part of the interior plains of the North American continent. Prior to the European colonial invasion it was the home to Indigenous Peoples who had adapted to the local ecology and survived mainly as hunter-gatherer communities. The colonial settlement of the region expanded in the late nineteenth century under the National Policy of John A. Macdonald’s Conservative government. Across the prairie grain belt, land taken from the Indigenous Peoples was declared state land and then distributed to white settlers through the Homestead Acts.

The National Policy was a capital accumulation project: the creation of a national market, the population of the west by white settlers from Europe and the United States, the development of the wheat economy for export and the protection of industrial capitalism in central Canada.Behind a tariff wall, an economic surplus could be extracted from independent commodity producers via banking and finance and the monopoly power of the farm supply industry and the downstream processing and distribution industries. As I have argued and referenced elsewhere (Warnock 2004), this system of political economy became a major Canadian example ofmetropolitan domination of hinterland areas.

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Uncertainty clouds the investment outlook of Quebec’s mining industry – by Bertrand Marotte (Globe and Mail – October 14, 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.

MONTREAL — Quebec’s attempts to put an end to years of image-corroding uncertainty and lack of clarity for the mining industry are getting mixed reviews.

The Liberal government of Premier Philippe Couillard has revived plans to accelerate natural resource extraction in the vast northern reaches of the province. And the new Mining Act has helped bring greater predictability and transparency to a political environment many critics said was damaging Quebec’s reputation as an attractive jurisdiction for mining investment.

But problems and unresolved issues remain, even factoring in the current global commodities downturn, say some industry players and observers.

Take the case of Strateco Resources Inc., which recently shut down its uranium mining project in the Otish Mountains of northern Quebec after years of what its chief executive says have been frustrating dealings with provincial authorities. “This has been extremely difficult,” Strateco president and chief executive officer Guy Hébert said.

For years, the government declined to grant Strateco the right to start underground exploration at the site, known as Matoush, despite the company jumping through hoops to get 22 permits from Quebec at different phases of the project, he said.

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Bees help restore Sudbury mining site – by Lisa Wright (Toronto Star – October 14, 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.

“Unsightly” mess left behind by a century of mining.

Retired foreman Wayne Tonelli worked in Sudbury’s nickel mines since he was a teenager, but his new gig is pretty sweet.
That’s because his old boss Vale (formerly Inco) is mining for more than metals these days. The company is in the ‘liquid gold’ business, enlisting thousands of honey bees to help restore a Sudbury landscape blighted by more than a century of nickel and copper mining and smelting.

“I like being outside after 40 years underground,” says Tonelli, now a bee-keeper for the international resources giant as part of a company program to re-green the area that decades back looked like a moonscape.

He carefully tends to seven hives containing 350,000 bees that are used to pollinate the blooming wildflowers the company has planted across 120 acres of unsightly black slag piles formed by waste from the Copper Cliff smelter complex, upon which the massive Superstack chimney sits.

“Bio-diversity is the buzz word in the resource industry these days,” explains Glen Watson, superintendent, reclamation and decommissioning for Vale’s Ontario operations.

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Why are iron ore prices falling so quickly? – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – October 14, 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.

ROME- Iron ore mines are to Australia what the oil sands are to Canada. The Aussie iron ore business is enormous, capital intensive, profitable and has an insatiable customer – China – just as the oil sands can depend on the United States to consume almost all of its output. The Aussie and Canadian industries share another trait: falling prices.

The value of both iron ore and oil is plummeting. But the similarities end there. Oil is falling because of excess supply and waning demand in the Western world, in good part because zombie Europe is on the verge of a new recession. But global demand for iron ore is still climbing, if at a somewhat slower pace than last year. So why are iron ore prices falling, and why are they falling so much faster than oil?

The price for iron ore in China, the world’s biggest consumer of the material used to make steel for everything from office towers to dishwashers, is down about 30 per cent this year (compared to a 20-per-cent drop for oil). The spot price for iron is off about 40 per cent, though it bounced back a few bucks this week to reach $83 (U.S.) a tonne.

Iron ore is falling even though Chinese demand for steel is up about 5 per cent year on year, while demand for imported iron ore is up 15 per cent or so, outpacing import demand in 2013.

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Opposition builds to Energy East pipeline plan – by Shawn McCarthy (Globe and Mail – October 14, 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 — TransCanada Corp. faces a rough ride in Central Canada over its proposed $11-billion Energy East pipeline as industrial users and natural-gas distribution companies warn they’ll be short-changed by the company’s plan to switch the pipeline to gas from oil.

Both Quebec and Ontario governments plan to intervene in the National Energy Board review, which will kick off when TransCanada files for regulatory approval later this month. Both provincial governments are being urged to defend their natural gas customers who say their interests are being sacrificed to western oil producers.

Quebec’s regulatory body, Régie de l’énergie, held hearings last week on the Energy East plan, and will provide advice to the Liberal government on whether the project benefits the province.

In the hearing, India-based IFFCO Canada Enterprises Ltd. warned it will cancel plans to build a $1.6-billion fertilizer plant in the province if it can’t secure a reasonably priced source of gas in light of TransCanada’s plan to transform its west-to-east mainline to carry crude.

The province’s biggest gas distributor, Gaz Métro, plans to condemn the project as it is currently structured when it comes before the federal regulator for hearings.

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[Nevada] State needs to extract more taxes from mining – by Bob Fulkerson (Las Vegas Review-Journal – October 12, 2014)

http://www.reviewjournal.com/

On Nov. 4, Nevada voters will decide whether to remove mining’s unique, 150-year-old tax protections from the state constitution and allow the Legislature to update the mining tax system to reflect modern times. Passage of Question 2 won’t raise or lower the taxes that mining pays. But it will remove the special protection that no other industry in our state enjoys.

Nevada’s mining taxes are nearly nonexistent compared with the rest of the world, and we are one of three states with no corporate profits tax to help pay for the services that benefit those corporations. Billions of dollars of mineral wealth has been extracted here; the vast majority has been exported. It’s been that way since statehood, when gold and silver from the Comstock built San Francisco and the Pacific Stock Exchange.

Nevada is the No. 1 gold producer in the United States and one of the top five gold producers in the world. Mining corporations account for 98 percent of toxic chemicals released in Nevada, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and a single gold ring leaves in its wake, on average, 20 tons of mine waste. The average gold mine uses enough water to provide the basic water needs for a population equivalent to that of a large American city for a year.

In 2011, the laundry list of deductions, coupled with the fact that the mining companies had rarely, if ever, been audited by the state, came to light during hearings.

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Glencore Held Talks With Cliffs Natural Resources Over Iron-Ore Assets – ALISTAIR MACDONALD, ALEXIS FLYNN and JOHN W. MILLER CONNECT (Wall Street Journal – October 10, 2014)

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

Glencore Was Spurned by Rio Tinto Earlier This Year

Spurned by Rio Tinto RIO.AU -3.00% PLC, Glencore GLNCY -2.40% PLC CEO Ivan Glasenberg continued to look at other potential iron ore targets with a call to U.S. miner Cliffs Natural Resources Inc., CLF -0.95% according to people familiar with the matter.

Glencore talked to Cliffs about its Australian iron ore assets around a month ago, these people said. While that conversation was described as very preliminary, the call underscores that Mr. Glasenberg isn’t placing all his iron ore ambitions on another attempt at Rio Tinto.

Earlier this week, Rio Tinto said Glencore had approached it in July about a possible takeover, which would have created the world’s biggest mining company by value.

Glencore isn’t a major producer of iron ore but has a large marketing arm that trades the product for other miners. Buying up active miners, or combining with Rio Tinto, would allow it to trade its own product, and potentially to bolster prices by closing mines or delaying expansion.

The Swiss-based commodities giant, whose portfolio ranges from cotton to zinc and grains, is prohibited under U.K. takeover rules from making a new approach on Rio Tinto for at least six months. But as Mr. Glasenberg weighs whether to make a second attempt on London-listed Rio, he still retains an open mind on other iron-ore assets, according to two London-based bankers.

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