December 16, 2014 – Republic of Mining

Resource revenue sharing ‘not going away’ – by Jason Warick (Regina Leader Post – December 15, 2014)

December 16, 2014

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

“This is something we need to get right,” Cam Broten says

The Saskatchewan government should join the growing number of other provinces and consider sharing natural resource revenue with First Nations, say experts.

“How do you reconcile if you don’t share the resources?” said Vancouver lawyer Tom Isaac, author of Aboriginal Law: Commentary, Cases and Materials. Isaac, a University of Saskatchewan law graduate who represents governments and resource companies, said any revenue sharing must be sustainable and measured, but the issue “is not going away.”

Resource revenue sharing hit the national stage last week when former Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations Chief Perry Bellegarde was elected to head the national Assembly of First Nations. In a fiery speech to AFN delegates in Winnipeg, Bellegarde vowed resource development would occur only after First Nations’ concerns were addressed.

“We weren’t meant to be poor in our own lands,” Bellegarde said. Saskatchewan’s Energy and Resources Minister, Bill Boyd, was not available for an interview this weekend. In a written statement, the government said its position has not changed.

“Our province’s resources belong to everyone in the province. Revenues from Saskatchewan’s resources belong to all Saskatchewan people, and everyone, including First Nations, benefit from that revenue,” read the statement.

Researcher poses two scenarios for Nunavut gold mine closure – by David Murphy (Nunatsiaq-On-Line.ca – December 16, 2014)

December 16, 2014

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/

“People are actually left with mining skills, but not with other skills once the mine closes”

The 1,800-person community of Baker Lake has less than three years to go before the Meadowbank gold mine, about 100 kilometres from the town, closes down.

Until then, questions linger about how Nunavut’s only inland hamlet can support itself afterwards, problem free.

“People said overwhelmingly that — with the mine closing in 2017 — there is very little awareness and very little preparedness for that scenario,” said Annabell Rixen, a master’s student assessing the mine closure and community preparedness as part of a project called “Tuktu.”

Rixen’s presentation was part of the four-day Arctic Change conference, hosted by ArcticNet, which unfolded Dec. 8 to Dec. 12 at the Ottawa Conference Centre. Rixen boiled her research down to two visions: a worst and best-case scenario.

The best case: job training programs are implemented to stimulate new local businesses and money is injected into mental health, childcare and cultural programming. Also, dwindling caribou numbers return to full strength.

“As the elders emphasized: let our land recover. We need to give our land the proper time to rejuvenate,” Rixen told Nunatsiaq News.

NEWS RELEASE: Major Tribal Organizations Push U.S. State Department to Act on Transboundary Mine Concerns

December 16, 2014

National Congress of American Indians, Alaska Federation of Natives, and Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood Grand Camp Say U.S Tribal Voices Missing From Boundary Waters Dispute

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA and JUNEAU, ALASKA — (Marketwired) — Dec/16/14 –– The largest tribal organizations in the Lower 48 and Alaska are backing efforts to protect key salmon rivers in Alaska/British Columbia (B.C.) threatened by large-scale mining developments in Canada.

The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), and the Alaska Native Brotherhood & Alaska Native Sisterhood have recently passed resolutions calling for the U.S. State Department to use its authority under the 1909 Boundary Waters Treaty and engage with Canada to protect threatened transboundary rivers.

Six Canadian mines in the headwaters of the Taku, Stikine and Unuk Rivers are in various stages of permitting and development. One of the mines — Red Chris – has its permits and financing in place and is poised to open at any time over the objections of a group of Tahltan First Nation citizens. Each of the threatened transboundary rivers, which begin in B.C. and drain into Southeast Alaska, produce millions of wild salmon and support some of the most prime salmon habitat left in North America. Unless steps are taken to protect Alaska’s downstream waters, these transboundary salmon face potential contamination from acid mine drainage, heavy metals and other pollutants. These toxins could leach from the mines or be released in a catastrophic accident similar to what happened at Mount Polley mine in central B.C. on Aug. 4, 2014.

“The health of our rivers and streams is paramount for Alaska Natives and American Indians, especially those who rely on our traditional and customary ways of life.

Meet niobium, mining market’s hot new supermetal – by Nelson Bennett (Business Vancouver – December 16, 2014)

December 16, 2014

http://www.biv.com/

Local miners aim to cash in on lucrative niobium market with mines in B.C., Nebraska

Copper, gold and metallurgical coal – these are the bread and butter of B.C.’s mining industry. Now, with its proposed niobium mine, Taseko Mines Ltd. (TSX:TKO) wants to put some jam on the table.

Taseko recently entered the environmental review process for a proposed new $870 million niobium mine on Steve Creek, a tributary of the Ospika River, 140 kilometres north of Mackenzie, B.C.

Should Taseko’s Aley mine ever be built, it would be one of only four operating niobium mines in the world – unless competitors, such as Vancouver’s NioCorp Developments (TSX-V:NB), can beat Taseko to the punch.

“All of a sudden now, British Columbia has the potential to become one of the very few producers of niobium,” said Brian Battison, Taseko’s vice-president of corporate affairs.

Ferroniobium (FeNb) is something of a supermetal. Rare and valuable, it is light, but strong, highly resistant to heat and has anticorrosive properties. That makes it a valuable alloy in specialty metals, from the fans used in the turbines of jet engines to pipelines and the superconducting magnets used in the Large Hadron Collider.

Shuswap First Nations push mining guidelines – by Nelson Bennett (Business Vancouver – December 16, 2014)

December 16, 2014

http://www.biv.com/

Rules carry little legal weight but would be foolish for companies to ignore, experts say

A new mining policy issued by four Shuswap bands could bring more certainty for companies wanting to develop new mines in the region.

Or it could add a layer of bureaucracy that sends investment out of B.C., similar to the 1990s, when NDP anti-mining policies scared mining and exploration companies away from B.C. It depends on how the B.C. government responds to it, says a lawyer specializing in aboriginal law.

On December 1, the Northern Secwepemc te Qelmucw (NStQ) published a new set of guidelines for mining and exploration within the claimed territories of four bands near Williams Lake: the Xat’sull, T’exelc, Tsq’escen’ and Stswecem’c/Xgat’tem.

The 55-page document has been in the works for a couple of years, but Jacinda Mack, mining co-ordinator for the NStQ, said the Mount Polley mine disaster has added urgency to publishing the new guidelines. Mount Polley is one of four operating mines in the NStQ’s claimed territory, which is still the subject of treaty negotiations.

“It really affirmed for us that we had to get this policy out there in public,” Mack said. “One of the biggest things on our plate is dealing with the cleanup. This policy really lays out the expectations for how we want best practices to be adhered to.”

A new cold war: Denmark gets aggressive, stakes huge claim in Race for the Arctic – by Tristin Hopper (National Post – December 16, 2014)

December 16, 2014

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

For years, the Race for the Arctic had promised to be one of the most gentlemanly land grabs in history: Using only science and a whiff of diplomacy, the oil-rich Arctic Ocean could be peacefully divvied up between Russia, Canada, the United States and Europe.

That is, until the tiny nation of Denmark approached the United Nations on Monday with a staggering claim to nearly one third of the total prize — including the North Pole.

“It is ironic that the only country that right now could be said to be acting provocatively in the Arctic is Denmark,” said Michael Byers, the Vancouver-based author of Who Owns the Arctic? speaking to Danish media on Monday.

Canada has not yet wrapped up its final claim to areas of the Arctic Ocean now considered international waters, although Ottawa has vowed to shoot for 1.2 million square kilometres of ocean, including the North Pole. There is no definitive scientific evidence that Canada has any claim to the North Pole, but that did not stop Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander from issuing Santa Claus with Canadian citizenship last year.

On Monday, Rob Huebert at the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies called Denmark’s claim evidence that it was wrong to ever believe that the Arctic could be divvied up simply with geological data.

Editorial How to cut militias off from gold and mineral mines in Congo (Los Angeles Times – December 15, 2014)

December 16, 2014

http://www.latimes.com/

Few parts of the world have been more ravaged by war and violence over the last two decades than the Democratic Republic of Congo. That’s been made possible, in part, by the mines in the eastern part of the country that offer up tin, tungsten and tantalum — the 3Ts, as they’re known — and gold. Over the years, many of the mines have been commandeered or controlled by armed militias and the profits used to fund the continued violence.

But recently, human rights groups have successfully pressured makers of consumer electronics and electronic parts, which rely on the 3Ts, to track the source of their minerals and refuse to buy from suppliers who buy from mines that help fund armed rebels. A provision in the Dodd-Frank Act, passed in 2010, requires publicly traded companies to disclose if they have products containing minerals from Congo and what steps were taken to ascertain whether the ore came from tainted mines.

Together, these changes have dramatically shrunk the market for untraceable 3T conflict minerals, affecting prices and disrupting the supply chain. As a result, about 67% of tin, tantalum and tungsten mines in Congo are no longer in the control of armed militias, according to the Enough Project, a human rights group.

But demilitarizing the gold mines remains a challenge. Only a small fraction of the mined world’s gold comes from Congo — about 1%. But 98% of the artisanally mined gold in Congo is smuggled out of the country and much of that benefits armed groups, according to the United Nations Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Why Has South Africa Plunged Itself Into Darkness — Again? – by David Himbara (Huffington Post – December 15, 2014)

December 16, 2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

David Himbara is an educator, political economist and author.

Doug Kuni, a South African electricity expert, has advised his compatriots to buy candles and those who can afford it, to aquire a generator because “you are going to need it for the next five to ten years.” Kuni may be right. South Africa’s power system, including the utility company that runs it, Eskom, is in a mess. Shockingly, of the country’s installed 45,583 megawatts of electricity only 24,000 are available at present due to a series of old and new crises. There simply is not enough electricity to supply households and industry.

This is not the first time that South Africa has been plunged into darkness — the 2008 power crisis was equally painful.

What is the problem here? The money stops with the country’s leadership.

In the aftermath of the 2008 episode, the then president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, famously acknowledged his government’s failure to invest in energy infrastructure: “When Eskom said to the government: ‘We think we must invest more in terms of electricity generation’…We said not now, later. We were wrong. Eskom was right. We were wrong.”

The extraordinary leadership lapse in judgment becomes more evident when South Africa is compared to other mid-sized economies in terms of power-generation between 1994 and 2010.

Ontario needs its pride back – by Kelly McParland (National Post – December 16, 2014)

December 16, 2014

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

I’m half-way convinced that some weird political inversion has taken place, so that Ontario and Quebec have somehow ended up with the other’s government.

It’s like The Prince and the Pauper, or any of the long line of imitations that have followed that tale, in which children are somehow switched at birth and end up in the wrong household. It feels like Quebec Premier should be running Ontario, and Ontario’s Kathleen Wynne should really be premier of Quebec.

There are new signs of this almost every day. The Montreal Gazette reported Monday that Mr. Couillard’s government is sharply reducing funding for Fete Nationale, one of the public celebrations the separatist Parti Quebecois poured money into as a symbol of Quebec’s detachment from Canada. It’s held a week before Canada Day, celebrated only in Quebec, and was to get $5.4 million from the PQ in 2016. Instead, the Liberals will provide 40% less, or about $3.4 million.

This is the latest cost-reduction measure introduced by Mr. Couillard as he tries to eliminate Quebec’s deficit – which is a mere shadow of Ontario’s – and end the province’s long tradition of chronic over-spending. He hasn’t shied from controversy in doing so, going so far as to reform the hallowed $7-a-day daycare program, introducing a sliding scale of fees in its place.

Falling oil price puts Ottawa’s surplus at risk – by Bill Curry (Globe and Mail – December 16, 2014)

December 16, 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 — Finance Minister Joe Oliver is acknowledging the dramatic drop in oil prices will take a further bite out of government revenues, making Ottawa’s previously declared surplus less certain.

The government already shaved billions off of its revenue forecasts when it released a fiscal update on Nov. 12, when the price of North American crude was around $81 (U.S.). That price closed Monday below $56.

As the price of oil continued to slip after his fiscal update, Mr. Oliver initially maintained that these adjustments were conservative enough to capture lower prices without affecting Ottawa’s bottom line. But he said Monday the further drop will have an impact.

“We’re not about to come out with a number at this point. However, we’re confident we will achieve a budgetary balance next year,” he said Monday, before a meeting of provincial and territorial finance ministers in Ottawa.

The government is forecasting a surplus of only $1.6-billion, which would be at risk of slipping into deficit territory should oil prices stay low. Ottawa has set aside $3-billion for unforeseen events, and several economists said Monday that should be enough to maintain a small surplus.

NEWS RELEASE: Mining entrepreneur Julian Malnic Joins Deep Space Industries’ Board

December 16, 2014

Houston, Dec 16, 2014 (ABN Newswire) – Deep Space Industries is pleased to announce the election of Julian Malnic, accomplished entrepreneur and business leader, to its Board. Julian is a recognized leader in the global mining industry, having founded both Nautilus Minerals Inc. and Direct Nickel, an emerging nickel producer with a revolutionary and dramatically lower cost extraction technology. In his new role with DSI, Mr. Malnic will add invaluable experience, perspective and drive to the Board of Directors.

“Julian’s addition to DSI’s Board reflects the accelerating evolution of the Company” said Rick Tumlinson, Chair of Deep Space Industries. “Not only is he a geologist with a lot of processing experience, but he is also founder of the world’s first deep sea mining company. He brings us an invaluable level of experience in transformatory mineral resource ventures.”

In addition to founding both Nautilus Minerals Inc. (TSE:NUS)(LON:NUS) and Direct Nickel (ASX:DIR), Mr. Malnic is also the Founder and Chairman of the Sydney Mining Club, the managing director of Fluid Minerals Limited, and Director of Public Relations for the Constitution Education Fund of Australia. He is a well-known voice in mining and policy circles in Australia.

“Space resources is a fast-moving investment frontier and I really like DSI’s focus on using materials that are already out there,” said new Board member, Julian Malnic. “Deep Space Industries is not just an innovator in its industry, it is pioneering it. Using asteroid materials must be the primary basis for any serious development of space. I think DSI is very well positioned to do this.”