Miners face challenge tapping copper opportunities – by James Wilson (Financial Times – January 6, 2015)

 http://www.ft.com/intl/companies/mining

The giant Chilean Escondida mine produces more copper than anywhere on earth. Some 1.2m tonnes emerge from the BHP Billiton-run facility each year. For the largest miners, Escondida also serves as a key measure for world copper output.

To meet global demand over the next decade, the industry “will have to add the equivalent of a new Escondida every 15 months”, says Jean-Sebastien Jacques, head of copper at Rio Tinto, which owns a minority stake in the mine. First Quantum, a mid-tier copper miner, says that if China, India and Brazil were to reach EU levels of copper use by 2020, it would imply nine new Escondidas.

Such predictions explain why big UK miners are talking up their growth potential in copper, even though worries over Chinese demand have driven the price of the metal to its lowest since 2010.

Both Rio and BHP believe the copper market is oversupplied now but will tighten from 2018, with growing deficits. “The copper story remains very strong,” says Mike Henry, BHP’s president for marketing.

Some of the UK’s pure-play copper miners are investing heavily in growth. Antofagasta expects to lift annual output from its Chilean mines from 700,000 tonnes last year to 900,000 tonnes by 2018. Kaz Minerals is building two mines in Kazakhstan.

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Minnesota couple who canoed from Boundary Waters to nation’s capital ponder next adventures – by Steve Karnowski (The Associated Press/Winnipeg Free Press – January 5, 2015)

 http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

MINNEAPOLIS – Two experienced adventurers who paddled, portaged and sailed 2,000 miles from northern Minnesota to Washington, D.C., say they plan to keep up the fight in the new year to protect the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness from copper-nickel mining.

Amy and Dave Freeman set out Aug. 24 from Ely. They canoed 180 miles through the BWCA, then portaged to Lake Superior. They strapped their canoe to a sailboat for the next 600 miles to Lake Huron, then switched back to the canoe for the final 1,300 miles, travelling mostly by rivers and canals across parts of Canada and the eastern states. They reached the Potomac waterfront in Washington on Dec. 2 — 101 days after they set out.

The Freemans wanted to call attention to the threat they say copper-nickel mining poses to the Boundary Waters and to mark the 50th anniversary of the federal Wilderness Act, which protects pristine areas such as the BWCA. Their next plan is a bike ride across Minnesota in 2015 hauling another canoe to press their message.

But it won’t be the same signature-covered “petition canoe” they paddled to Washington. They gave that to the U.S. Forest Service, the agency that oversees the BWCA. Dave Freeman said the bike tour, which is being organized by the Ely-based group Save The Boundary Waters, will last about six weeks and a large group of people will participate for a week or two at a time.

“I think it’s going to be a lot of fun. We’re going to try and hit as many of the college campuses in Minnesota as possible,” he said.

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Paul Marcotte acknowledged for mining contributions – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – January 7, 2015)

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.

Starting out as a 20-year-old female in the mining supply and service industry, Alicia Woods would sometimes be met with skepticism by those who doubted her knowledge and questioned her place in the industry. That all disappeared when people learned her dad was Paul Marcotte.

“It was because of the credibility of the Marcotte name, and the respect that the industry had for my father, that made it easy for me to enter such a non-traditional role in the world of heavy underground equipment,” Woods said.

Marcotte, a founder of Marcotte Mining Machinery Services, was recognized posthumously by the Sudbury Mining Supply and Service Association (SAMSSA) with an induction into the Hall of Fame Dec. 4, along with Doug Smith, the founder of Manitoulin Transport.

Marcotte was born in Quebec, but grew up in Sudbury, and entered the industry with his father at Jarvis Clark before the family — dad Raymond and brothers Paul, Raymond, Pierre and John — forged out on its own with Marcotte Mining in 1979.

As business grew, the company went from repairing and rebuilding equipment manufactured by others to becoming a successful original equipment manufacturer (OEM), with the company offering new design and manufacturing options, Woods said.

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NEWS RELEASE: New court victory for the Innu against Rio Tinto (IOC): Quebec Court of Appeal authorizes $900M lawsuit

New court victory for the Innu against Rio Tinto (IOC): Quebec Court of Appeal authorizes $900M lawsuit

UASHAT MAK MANI-UTENAM, QC, Jan. 7, 2015 /CNW Telbec/ – The Innu First Nations of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam and Matimekush-Lac John, whose traditional territory (Nitassinan) covers a large part of North-eastern Quebec and Labrador, celebrated on January 6, 2015 a new legal victory in their 900 million dollar lawsuit targeting the Iron Ore Company of Canada (majority owned as well as operated by the mining giant Rio Tinto).

Rio Tinto (IOC) was seeking to have the case dismissed before trial by arguing that the Innu should have sued the government rather than the company. On September 19, 2014, the Rio Tinto (IOC) motion to dismiss the lawsuit was rejected at first instance by the Quebec Superior Court and the Court of Appeal has now refused to hear an appeal of the judgment by Rio Tinto (IOC).

“Rio Tinto and its subsidiary IOC continue to try to ignore us, just as they always have. IOC’s president even refuses to meet with us personally. But after this judgement, Rio Tinto (IOC) will no longer be able to hide. The highest Court in Quebec has made clear that Rio Tinto’s subsidiary IOC will have to answer in Court for its violations of our constitutionally protected rights, which violations date back to the 1950s”, declared the Chief of Uashat Mak Mani-Utenam, Mike McKenzie.

Despite their 900 million dollar lawsuit and the injunction they are seeking to put an end to the “IOC megaproject”, the Innu have tried time and again to achieve an honourable outcome with Rio Tinto by way of negotiation.

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Will 2015 finally be the year of the national securities regulator? – by Gordon Isfeld (National Post – January 5, 2015)

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

OTTAWA — It might have seemed like a straightforward proposition at the time: tying the strands of securities regulators across this country into one federal body with a unified set of rules.

But Canada — now a respected member of the Group of 20 industrialized nations — has for decades fallen short of that goal, leaving it out of step with global peers who long ago established national oversight of their respective capital markets.

Despite piling on study after study — some dating back nearly 60 years — along with numerous false starts, Ottawa is still less than halfway to its goal of creating some form of federal watchdog here.

It could be said that the most recent attempt, with the Conservative government pushing in 2013 to create the yet-to-be-launched Cooperative Capital Markets Regulatory System, the concept has finally reached the critical mass of signatories necessary to legitimize its existence and move forward.

Even now, of the country’s 13 provinces and territories, only five — Ontario and British Columbia in 2013, and Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Prince Edwards Island in 2014 — are officially on board, while eight remain outside the framework. And of those, at least three — Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba — have vowed not to join.

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A female face on aboriginal recruitment [Goldcorp Eléonore gold mine] – by Daniel Bland (Winnipeg Free Press – January 7, 2015)

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/

When Yvette Mattawashish was eight, she remembers playing in the ditches along the roads of her native Mistissini, a James Bay Cree reserve 900 kilometres northeast of Ottawa. “I used to crawl in the tunnels they’d dig to put in the big water pipes and culverts,” she says laughing now at the memory. “I’d curl right up inside them.”

Today, at 22, Yvette is one of only three James Bay Cree women trained and employed as an underground development miner. And while the path she took to get there is typical in many ways to that of other young aboriginal women in the remote north, it is also extraordinary.

According to a report by the Conference Board of Canada, the annual gross domestic product of mining in Canada’s north, which was $4.4 billion in 2011, is expected to reach $8.5 billion in 2020. A lack of infrastructure in roads and energy is frequently mentioned as the major obstacle to development in the remote north.

Given the demographics of most First Nation communities — a very young population most of whom have not completed high school — effective strategies to engage aboriginal leadership and train local aboriginals to do jobs mines will require may prove to be every bit as important as building a road to access a mine or a deep water port to ship ore. Particularly crucial are efforts to target aboriginal women like Yvette.

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Oil price plunge is Canadian business story of year – by Lauren Krugel (Toronto Star – December 31, 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.

CALGARY — From Alberta oilfields to Bay Street boardrooms to the gas station on the corner, the precipitous drop in crude prices is expected to have far-reaching impacts across the country heading into 2015, making it The Canadian Press Business News Story of the Year.

The abrupt turnaround in oil markets was chosen by half of the 50 editors and news directors across the country who participated in the annual survey.

In explaining their pick, many respondents noted the story’s ripple effects beyond the oilpatch. Richard Dettman, business editor at News 1130 in Vancouver, said the halving in crude prices over a six-month span created a “gusher of stories” — the hit to federal and provincial government coffers, the plunging loonie and the benefit to consumers, to name a few.

Lynn Moore, assistant city editor, business at the Montreal Gazette, highlighted several ways in which oil’s decline will reverberate across Canada.

“A sustained period of low oil prices will throw a big wrench into the works of the Canadian economy and collective psyche.

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The end of Canada’s oil superpower pipe dreams – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – January 7, 2015)

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

The Washington dust has not yet settled around Canada’s Keystone XL pipeline, but the fuzzy images visible Tuesday through the political storm do not look promising. Nothing in the current play of politics and oil prices would lead to the conclusion that Keystone will ever get approved.

But it’s worse than that for Canada. As the world oil market swirls, not just Keystone is at stake. The greater risk is that the great national global energy superpower dream is going down the drain, washed away by a confluence of forces over which Canada has no control.

On Tuesday, the White House said President Barack Obama would veto the latest Republican effort to push a Senate Keystone bill through Congress. It was an easy decision for the President to announce, since it appears the Senate failed to come up with the necessary 67 votes to override Mr. Obama’s veto.

When even a Republican-dominated Senate can’t muster enough support to force the President’s hand, it’s a sure sign that environmentalists and other activist opponents of Keystone still dominate the pipeline decision-making process.

While Canada’s dreams of exporting more oil sands production to the United States face a grim political environment, the economic environment looks even shakier.

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Can the once-mighty TSX Venture Exchange be saved? – by Peter Koven (National Post – December 27, 2014)

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

Canada’s junior stock market is in crisis. Hundreds and hundreds of companies can’t raise money, do anything productive to create shareholder value, or get anyone to trade their stocks. But the biggest problem may be that most people just don’t seem to care.

Tell a Canadian market participant that the S&P/TSX Venture composite index hit an all-time low in December and you will likely be met with astonishment.

The once-mighty junior exchange, a place where issuers have raised more than $80 billion in capital during the past 13 years, has fallen so far off the investment community’s radar that most investors seem to have no idea it is plumbing such depths.

The raw numbers are grim. The index is down a whopping 73% since March 2011, and 80% from its all-time high in 2007. The total market value of the exchange’s nearly 2,000 companies is less than $30 billion.

By comparison, the market cap of companies on the Canadian Venture Exchange was more than $100 billion in 2001 before it was acquired by TMX Group Inc. and became the TSX Venture Exchange.

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Ontario and federal government need to work together to move Ring of Fire forward: Gravelle – by Jodi Lundmark (tbnewswatch.com – January 7, 2015)

http://www.tbnewswatch.com/default.aspx

THUNDER BAY — A collaborative partnership between the provincial and federal government is crucial in developing the Ring of Fire.

That’s what Minister of Northern Development and Mines Michael Gravelle said is clear after Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper met early Monday evening to discuss the economy, including nationally significant infrastructure projects like the Ring of Fire.

Gravelle said he had already spoken to Conservative Minister of Natural Resources Greg Rickford over the holidays about the mining project, but the recent meeting between the two leaders has encouraged the two ministers to speak further on the topic.

“There is no question again that this is an extraordinarily exciting economic opportunity,” said Gravelle Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s a complex project, but one where in order for us to truly reach the full potential, both the economic development potential and the social potential, the partnership and the shared funding by the federal government is going to be crucial.”

The provincial government has committed $1 billion to the Ring of Fire, specifically for transportation infrastructure. 

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Restructuring Ontario Northland prepares to pick up steam – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – January 7, 2015)

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. Ian Ross is the editor of Northern Ontario Business ianross@nob.on.ca.

A new “transformational” era has arrived at a reformed Ontario Northland Transportation Commission (ONTC) and its interim CEO is urging everyone to get on board.

Senior management at the North Bay-headquartered Crown agency are hitting the road for a series of town hall discussions in communities across northeastern Ontario to lay out their plans to transition into a new chapter.

“I’m hoping it’s sort of a Northern Ontario family initiative,” said chief operating officer Corina Moore, who’s temporarily occupying the seat while a search is underway for a permanent chief executive.

Paul Goulet resigned as president and CEO in October after more than four years at the helm. The ONTC’s telecommunications arm, Ontera, was sold to Bell Aliant during the Ontario government’s aborted divestment attempt, but the rest of the rail, motor coach and repair shop business units remain intact.

Nevertheless, some major changes are in store as Ontario Northland’s restructuring plan is rolled out over the next three years to usher in a more sustainable version of the corporation; one that’s more efficient and less reliant on taxpayer subsidies.

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