Twitter
Boston-Bay-Mines-Announcement

Day: March 13, 2015

[Northern Ontario – Iroquois Falls] Small Town Shut Down – The Agenda’s Steve Paikin interviews Michael Shea, Jamison Steeve, Madge Richardson and Stan Sudol (March 11, 2015)

http://theagenda.tvo.org/ Resolute Forest Products is shutting down the newsprint mill in Iroquois Falls, Ontario, a move that will result in the loss of 182 jobs , continuing to erode livelihoods in a town of just 4600. The forestry company essentially built Iroquois Falls a century ago and was its largest employer. Like many other single-resource …

Read more

THE LUNCH: The skinny on ex-Xstrata boss Mick Davis and X2 – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – March 13, 2015)

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.

LONDON — There’s a lot less to Mick Davis than there used to be.

Let’s start with the man himself. When he was running Xstrata PLC, the mining company he sold to Glencore PLC, the world’s biggest commodities trader, in 2013, he was a big man – “Big Mick,” they called him. He topped out at 317 pounds and had developed Type 2 diabetes. In the interests of survival, he launched a hostile raid on his own girth. Today, Big Mick is on the verge of skinny, at 196 pounds, a downsizing so successful that he no longer has to take diabetes medications.

I ask him how he did it. “You eat less, exercise more, and stick to it,” he says. “I took up cycling and I love it.”  His day job has shrunk too, even more so. At its peak just before the 2008 financial crisis, Xstrata, which bought Canada’s Falconbridge Ltd. in 2006, had a market value of about $85-billion (U.S.), making it the fourth- or fifth-largest mining company in the world, with almost 70,000 employees and contractors.

Today, he runs X2 Resources, which has 10 employees and zero assets other than $4-billion of investor capital, some of it from Canadian pension funds, sitting idly in the bank.

X2 was launched a year ago and has been shopping for mining assets or operating companies, but has come up short. Mr. Davis admits he is finding it harder to buy now than in the previous decade, when he spent $35-billion on 40 rapid-fire acquisitions in one of the greatest bull runs in history. “We’ve given some people an expression of interest,” he said. “I expect to do a deal this year.”

Read more

Gina Rinehart blames high mining costs on government – by Julie-anne Sprague (Sydney Morning Herald – March 11, 2015)

http://www.smh.com.au/

Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart has attacked federal and state governments for inflicting high costs on local miners, which are battling plunging iron ore prices as global supply swells.

Mrs Rinehart, who is building on her father’s iron ore legacy by developing the $10 billion Roy Hill mine in Pilbara, also endorsed expansion strategies by BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. The major miners have come under fire for flooding iron ore markets and depressing iron ore prices.

“You know if Australia doesn’t export, someone else will,” Mrs Rinehart told Fairfax Media on the sidelines of the Global Iron Ore & Steel Forecast conference, in Perth, on Wednesday.

Mrs Rinehart, who is estimated by BRW to have a $20 billion fortune, said it was high costs, rather than low iron ore prices that affected her Roy Hill project.

“What affects the project is high costs,” Mrs Rinehart said. “As I have said so many times it is really important government cost burdens are lowered. We have regulations; be it approval processes, be it permits, be it licences, be it the checks that have to go on after those compliances.” She said governments needed to take regulatory costs seriously.

Read more

Mongolia: Between a Rock and a Hard Place – by Marcel Plichta (International Policy Digest – March 12, 2015)

http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/

Since the establishment of a democracy in Mongolia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, foreign interests have attempted to reassert control over the landlocked piece of steppe between China and Russia.

Mongolia’s position, located between two ambitious powers, means that it is the target of Chinese and Russian influence, often to the detriment of the fledgling democracy and its people. Historically Mongolia’s geographical position and nomadic inhabitants (of which there are still many) has made it vulnerable to the influence of its neighbors. Mongolia was subjugated to both Beijing and Moscow at different times and still struggles with the political influence of both powers.

Economics further complicates Mongolia’s diplomatic issues; vast amounts of mineral wealth have been discovered in Mongolia since the early 90’s including large reserves of copper, gold, and coal. Previously Mongolia’s weak economy, based on pastoral products such as beef and cashmere production, meant that it provided very little potential wealth for powers seeking to control it.

These discoveries have led to serious interest from a resource-hungry China, which accounts for 89% of Mongolia’s exports, as well as Russia, which faces more competition for resources in an ever more hostile Europe.

Despite the renewed interest from its neighbors, most foreign companies involved in the Mongolian mining sector have been Canadian or Australian, of the 11 foreign companies invested in copper production, 9 of them were Australian or Canadian.

Read more

This Area is the ‘Future of the Mining Industry… I’m not Interested in Anywhere Else’ – André Gaumond, Virginia Mines – by Henry Bonner (Goldseek.com – March 12, 2015)

http://www.goldseek.com/

André Gaumond has led the discoveries of six gold deposits in his career.

His flagship discovery, Eléonore, earned his company around C$420 million when they sold it to Goldcorp Inc1. He retained a royalty interest, which earned Virginia a buyout from Osisko Royalties for around C$520 million2.

They turned C$18 million spent on exploration into a discovery that earned them around C$1 billion. André’s repeat successes don’t come just from being lucky. He’s been exploring the same region in Northern Quebec for his entire career, making him the leader for exploration and development in that region.

André’s company, Virginia Mines, has announced a merger with Osisko Royalties Ltd. this year. Now he’s planning to get his hands dirty once again and aims to put another significant discovery to his name. As Pierre Lassonde once told him, “Land possession is not something. Land possession is everything.”

I spoke with André about how insights he had as a young man led him to some of the most valuable – and overlooked — land for mineral exploration in the world.

Henry: André, if you were just now entering the exploration sector, where would you be most interested in going and what do you think you would do to start out? André: Well, as you know, we decided to focus in Northern Quebec. Virginia Mines decided to focus in Northern Quebec right from the beginning.

Read more

These gold hunting drones and drills don’t need a permit to make your rich – Business Network News Andrew Bell interviews Shawn Ryan (March 5, 2015)

http://www.bnn.ca/

Article by Jeff Lagerquist, BNN.ca staff

The people behind GroundTruth Exploration Inc. are the Navy SEALS of prospecting. They use innovative technologies to gather precise intelligence. They can work under the harshest conditions deep in the wilderness, almost anywhere in the world, leaving behind virtually no trace. The data they gather can literally be worth millions. And they get the job done with a level of speed and efficiency that threatens to upend the way mineral deposits are found.

Shawn Ryan, principal at GroundTruth relishes the comparison to the elite U.S. fighting force, and says his Yukon Territory-based company’s potent combination of existing technologies newly applied to the prospecting industry can cut exploration costs by 80 percent.

“What would normally cost us two field seasons in the Yukon, and $500,000 to $700,000, we do it in two weeks, any time of the year, for under $100,000,” he said.

Read more

Franco-Nevada ready to bankroll cash strapped producers ahead of exploration drought – Business Network News Andrew Bell interviews Pierre Lassonde (March 3, 2015)

 

http://www.bnn.ca/

Article Jeff Lagerquist, BNN.ca staff

It’s a buyer’s market for gold royalty companies as cash-strapped miners look to fill the capital void left by fleeting venture capital and bank debt. Few know this as well as Franco-Nevada (FNV.TO 1.17%), the Toronto-based rival of Silver Wheaton (SLW.TO 2.16%) who announced a dividend for the first quarter of 2015 earlier this month.

Pierre Lassonde, Franco-Nevada’s chair, is making big bets ahead of the exploration drought he sees five-to-ten years down the road to the tune of U.S. $900 million in 2014.

Franco-Nevada announced in October it’s providing an up-front deposit of $648 million to acquire the gold and silver stream from Freeport-McMoRan Inc.’s (FCX.N -4.1%) Candelaria operation in Chile from Lundin Mining Corporation (LUN.TO -2.14%). It’s the biggest deal of the year for Franco, the royalty and streaming investor that became famous for acquiring a royalty on Barrick Gold’s Nevada mine in 1985.

Read more

Northern Development and Mines minister takes issue with NDP advisor’s Ring of Fire comments – by Leith Dunick (tbnewswatch.com – March 13, 2015)

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

Ontario’s Minister of Northern Development and Mines on Friday slammed comments made Thursday by former NDP leader Howard Hampton on what he said was a lack of progress developing the Ring of Fire.

Michael Gravelle said he was startled and offended by how “flippant and dismissive” Hampton was in saying the province has done nothing in a decade to move the multi-billion-dollar project forward.

“I had to ask myself the question, ‘Has he actually looked at the regional framework agreement that we have signed and negotiated with the Mattawa First Nations?’”

Calling the framework historic and unprecedented, Gravelle on Friday said the process is anything but superficial and certainly more than just firing off occasional press releases, as Hampton, now a paid Ring of Fire advisor of the federal NDP, intonated a day earlier.

The minister said the Ring of Fire isn’t going to happen overnight and the right steps are being taken. The framework sets in place guidelines for regional infrastructure and takes into consideration enhanced environmental monitory, socio-economic issues and supports and resource revenue sharing.

Read more

Government failing to fuel Ring of Fire, says Ontario Chamber of Commerce – by Mark Sabourin (EcoLog.com – March 13, 2015)

http://www.ecolog.com/default.asp

The stink of the Cliffs mining debacle has soured the air around Ontario’s Ring of Fire and has slowed pace of development in the remote but mineral-rich area. Ontario should kick-start development afresh by fast-tracking the most promising proposal on the table and moving aggressively on an infrastructure plan. If it does, dollars will flow into the region from the federal government and the private sector.

So says the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) in its just-released report card on the Ring of Fire. In 2014, it outlined the potential the region holds and laid out a path to further development. This year’s 2015 report card evaluates the provincial government’s progress against that plan and gives it a failing grade.

Stan Sudol, communications consultant, mining columnist and owner/editor of RepublicOfMining.com, calls it “a stunning indictment of government incompetence, both provincial and federal.”

The OCC conservatively estimates that the first 10 years of development of the Ring of Fire will add up to $9.4 billion to the GDP, sustain up to 5,500 jobs annually, and generate $2 billion in government revenue.

The Ring of Fire is everything it’s cracked up to be, Sudol told EcoLog News, and likely more. Once more of the region becomes road-accessible — inevitable once development gets underway — geologists are confident that even more discoveries will follow. If northwestern Ontario is a mineral-rich iceberg, the Ring of Fire may be only its visible tip.

Read more

More Coal Cuts Needed as Demand for Steel Slows: Commodities – by Liezel Hill and Tim Loh (Bloomberg News – March 12, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

(Bloomberg) — In the last year, mining companies eliminated about 15 million tons of production capacity for the coal used to make steel, while outlining plans to double those cuts in the near future. It won’t be near enough.

That’s the determination of Chief Executive Officer Don Lindsay at Teck Resources Ltd., the world’s second-biggest exporter of metallurgical coal. For supply to match flagging demand, the industry must cut a total of as much as 45 million tons, he says, raising the ante as prices sit at a six-year low.

While U.S. and Australian miners are now losing money on as much as 50 million tons of annual capacity, they’re dragging their feet on reductions at high-cost mines. The result: a “miserable” market for at least six months, and perhaps as long as a year, according to Lindsay.

“There’s a lot of production that’s underwater, but it takes a long time for them actually to shut,” Lindsay said in an interview. “They always last longer than you think.”

There are two main types of coal. Lower-quality coal is burned to generate electricity, and coal with fewer impurities is used to make steel. Metallurgical coal makes up about 15 percent of production, and sells for about twice the price of thermal coal.

Read more

Wolf Minerals’ tungsten mine to start production in Devon – by James Wilson (Financial Times – March 13, 2015)

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

It has required moving wildlife, building “bat hotels” and planting 40,000 replacement trees. But after more than a year of construction, Britain’s first metals mine for more than four decades is nearing completion.

On the edge of Dartmoor, in Devon, cranes loom over the steel skeleton of a shed as long as a football pitch and 25m high. Within months a complex circuit will begin to process the local rock and liberate the tiny fraction, less than 0.2 per cent, that matters.

The tungsten that Wolf Minerals will mine here is worth almost $30,000 per tonne: enough for a business with $100m in annual revenues.

Tungsten is one of the hardest of elements, seven times heavier than water and used in toolmaking and armaments. The Devon deposit was mined during the first and second world wars, but before Wolf spotted the opportunity to acquire the mining licence, the last serious exploration took place in the 1980s, before China’s explosive industrial growth.

The process plant, the nearby tailings dam for waste rock and the big open pit itself are the essential “kit” of a modern metal mine. They are familiar from Australia to Zambia but not in the UK, where such mining has been all but extinct in recent decades. The closure of almost all Britain’s collieries after a bitter 1980s strike further loosened the country’s bond with mining, and while London remains a centre for global mining finance, the projects are usually thousands of miles away.

Read more

Future Arctic: More Mining, More Shipping and More Tourists – by Benjamin Hulac and Climate Wire (Scientific American – March 13, 2015)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/

As the Arctic thaws, northern nations dream of a new economy

ROVANIEMI, Finland—In one of this nation’s northernmost cities and at the close of a winter that citizens here have called unusually mild, foreign ambassadors spoke of their nations’ hope to do business in the Arctic, Finnish spokesmen outlined their plans to attract international money, and business owners burnished their cases for investment in the polar north.

“Nordic lights is a good example of business actually nowadays,” Juha Mäkimattila, the chairman of the Lapland Chamber of Conference, said at a dinner for foreign guests Wednesday, with a slideshow of aurora borealis photographs thrumming behind him. “We can actually make money on the northern lights from people from new parts of the world.”

At the two-day Arctic Business Forum, hosted by the Lapland chamber, delegations from more than 20 nations, most which do not border the Arctic Circle, said the tone reflected a robust appetite for economic expansion, natural resource extraction and an optimistic prognosis for strong tourist spending.

Meeting in a city that advertises itself on its website as “The Official Hometown of Santa Claus,” most speakers alluded to environmental management but didn’t get into the problems of melting permafrost or the additional threats of future oil spills or the loss of species.

On both days, the tone was bullish. Diplomats from global trade and economic powers signaled their governments’ growing interest in Arctic transit and heavy shipping in the Arctic Ocean.

Read more

Kirkland Lake mounts a comeback on the Southern Abitibi (Northern Miner – March 12, 2015)

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

VANCOUVER — The past two years have been a story of redemption for producer Kirkland Lake Gold (TSX: KGI; US-OTC: KGILF) at its Macassa and South Mine complex in the prolific the Southern Abitibi gold belt 46 km due southeast of Timmins, Ont. The company just wrapped up its third consecutive quarter of positive earnings and free cash flow, and looks poised to hit the upper end of its annual production guidance.

On March 11 Kirkland reported that it sold 39,700 oz. of gold last quarter at an average realized price of US$1,371 per oz., which resulted in cash flow from operations of $23.7 million. Over the past nine months the company has cranked out around 162,000 oz. of gold at all-in sustaining cash costs of US$1,289 per oz., which marks a material improvement over the 131,000 oz. it produced in 2014 at all-in costs of US$2,054 per oz.

The main driver for Kirkland has been higher grades encountered at the South Mine Complex (SMC), which has also resulted in improved throughput rates at the Macassa mill.

Average production rates last quarter were around 934 tonnes per day, which marks a 3% quarter-on-quarter increase. The good news for Kirkland is that it managed a further improvement in January, when throughput averaged 1,107 tonnes per day resulting in the delivery of around 34,500 tonnes of ore to the mill.

Read more

Lake Shore’s potential new ore – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – March 13, 2015)

http://www.mineweb.com/

We take a look at what’s driving reserve and resource growth at Lake Shore Gold.

Lake Shore Gold, an Ontario miner, issued a good gold reserve update on Thursday: by key analyst measures it beat expectations. The headline was 29% reserve growth, after depletion.

It was impressive, albeit growth on top of already short-lived reserves. Lake Shore has only about five years of minelife, though, it must be said, it has pushed that minelife out consistently with reserve additions over the years. The grade dropped, slightly, in its reserve update, but ounces grew: to 773,000 ounces gold @ 4.4 g/t Au from 598,000 @ 4.6 g/t Au.

For it, on a day that the spot price of gold was bouncing off $1,150/oz, Lake Shore did well in trading, gaining as much as 1.2% during the day.

But if the reserve growth surprised, a little, the real meat is yet to come. Much more interesting still, at this point, is what Lake Shore can bring in its relatively new 144 Gap discovery, 500 metres from its mining operations at Thunder Creek.

In drilling 144 Gap this and last year, Lake Shore caught some attention and for good reason: The hits have been high grade and broad. Late last year Lake Shore reported as much as 7.18 g/t Au over 24 metres among a number of other strong hits. More recently it has highlighted as much as 5.36 g/t Au over 47 metres. The intercepts have put the discovery at the forefront of Lake Shore’s drilling plans.

Read more