Iamgold cuts gold production forecast after ‘seismic event’ at Quebec mine (CBC News Business – June 29, 2015)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/business

Rockfall in May that trapped 9 miners has company reassessing practices in area prone to tremors

Canadian miner Iamgold Corp. has cut its gold production forecast for the year, after a probe of what it calls a “localized seismic event” in a Quebec mine.

On May 26, the company halted production at its Westwood mine, one of its newest mines, after a rockfall that trapped nine miners for about 18 hours.

The Westwood mine, which is located near the Cadillac fault, experience two seismic events, with magnitudes of 1.2 and 1.7.

​The Westwood event will “have a more significant impact on 2015 production than originally indicated,” Iamgold said a statement on Monday.

CEO Steve Letwin said mining companies working in the region ‘know that this district is prone to seismic activity and we are taking the necessary measures to keep our excellent safety record intact.”

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Exploration not benign, NGO says of Ring of Fire – by Jonathan Migneault – (Sudbury Northern Life  – June 30, 2015)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Wildlands League asks for environmental review process for exploration

An environmental organization based in Toronto says it worries about the environmental restoration in the Ring of Fire after exploration work concludes.

Representatives with Wildlands League, a chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, flew over parts of the Ring of Fire development in northwestern Ontario in March 2015 and took aerial photos of exploration camps in the region.

One image showed more than 25 drill pads – cleared circular areas that host two or three drill holes each – along a one-kilometre stretch of land. In the photo, the drill pads were connected by an horizontal trail cut through the woods, and a series of vertical lines.

“Exploration is a necessary part of the mining cycle, but it’s not benign,” said Anna Baggio, Wildlands League’s director of conservation planning.

Baggio said there is no environmental review process for mining exploration, and has advocated for a regional environmental assessment in the Ring of Fire, that would provide a blueprint for future exploration activities.

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Mount Polley could reopen in July: mines minister (CBC News B.C. – June 30, 2015)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia

11 months after its tailings pond collapsed, Mount Polley mine set to get approval to reopen

Less than a year after the Mount Polley tailings pond collapsed, spilling toxic waste water in central B.C. waterways, the mine could reopen as early as July, says B.C. Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett.

“The public, I’m sure, assumes that politicians make these decisions and we often don’t,” said Bennett. “I’m advised by the statutory decision makers in this case that the information from the company is there. Its being assessed. It’s probable Mount Polley will get a permit to open in the next couple of weeks.”

Last August, a wall of the Mount Polley tailings pond broke and spilled 10 billion litres of water and 4.5 million cubic metres of sand laden with toxic arsenic, nickel and lead into B.C.’s waterways.

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Global mining exploration in crisis, but not hopeless – report – by Megan Van Wyngaardt (MiningWeekly.com – June 30, 2015)

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

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Global mineral exploration is in crisis, but mining companies can turn their exploration performance around.

“Finding orebodies is not all about luck and success is not unpredictable. And while some companies struggle to replace depleted reserves, those that act in a countercyclical way – that build world-class exploration capabilities – will be rewarded with disproportionate returns,” said The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) partner Alexander Koch, coauthor of a new report by the management consulting firm, titled ‘Tackling the Crisis in Mineral Exploration’.

The report, which was released on Monday, noted that from 2010 to 2013, the yearly number of discoveries, excluding bulk commodities, declined by more than half, even after adjusting for discoveries yet to be drilled out.

The report highlighted that the sharp decline in discoveries occurred despite a period of significant increases in exploration spending, with “giant” discoveries dropping to only one or two a year.

At the height of the recent resources boom, average yearly exploration expenditure grew by almost 40% to record levels.

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Ring of Fire flyover photos raise concern – by Jeff Labine (Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal – June 30, 2015)

Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal is the daily newspaper of Northwestern Ontario.

A Toronto-based environmental group is claiming mining exploration in the Ring of Fire has already caused damaged to the Far North’s ecosystem.

The Wildlands League, which is a not-for-profit charity, released a series of aerial photos on Monday showing some of the exploration in the Ring of Fire area. The photos were taken last March when the group was heading to a First Nations community for a visit. One of the photos was of Esker Camp, which is about 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, as well as some of the camps that were once held by Cliffs Natural Resources and a runway.

The group claims that the photos challenge the idea of early mining exploration having little impact to the area.

Anna Baggio, the director of conservation planning with Wildlands League, said they have shown the pictures to First Nations advisors and government officials including the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines and all have been surprised by what they have seen.

“People haven’t really grasped what’s been going on in the Ring of Fire, even with early explorations,” she said.

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Ex-Xstrata CEO’s X2 Said to Be in Talks With Rio on Coal – by Javier Blas and Firat Kayakiran (Bloomberg News – June 29, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

X2 Resources, the private-equity firm founded by former Xstrata Chief Executive Officer Mick Davis, is in talks to buy Rio Tinto Group’s controlling stake in three Australian coal mines, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The negotiations are at an early stage and any deal, which may fetch $2 billion to $4 billion, could take two months to finalize, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. The Rio mines in New South Wales have positive cash flow, despite the current coal-price slump, the person said.

A deal would mark the latest move by Rio CEO Sam Walsh to exit less-profitable assets as the London-based company focuses on iron ore and copper. It would also be the first purchase for Davis since he raised several billions of dollars from investors to pursue mining acquisitions.

“They’re good mines, they’re large scale, long-life and have relatively low costs. If you have an interest in thermal coal you could do a lot worse than buying these assets,” Chris Drew, a Sydney-based analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said by phone. “Thermal coal is looking pretty difficult right now, but if you take a more positive view on the long term, then there’s potentially an opportunity there.”

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Gold miner opts for desalination to water planned Mexican mine (International Desalination & Water Reuse Quarterly – June 29, 2015)

http://www.desalination.biz/index.asp?channel=0

The gold mining arm of energy firm, Chesapeake, has opted to use desalinated seawater to supply water for its proposed Metates gold and silver mining project, in Durango state, Mexico. It has tendered for proposals to build and operate a 55Ml/d desalination facility to supply the mine with fresh water.

Chesaspeake Gold concluded that seawater desalination was the best source of water for the 30-year lifespan of the mine. This decision followed its review of a 2013 prefeasibilty study after Mexico’s water agency, Conagua, doubled the price of water this year. “Seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) water is projected to have lower overall capital and operating costs compared with conventionally sourced surface water.” the company said in a statement.

Chesaspeake Gold found that desalination of water from the Pacific offered a cost effective, reliable and sustainable water supply compared to taking water from Conagua. “Besides the economic benefits, desalination decouples the water supply and demand for Metates,” said Chesapeake president Randy Reifel in a release.

The proposed SWRO plant would be located within the same hydrologic basin and irrigation district as current users of surface water. Chesapeake said this would simplify water transfer and trade.

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Korea objects to heritage status for Japan’s World War II ‘slave labour’ sites – by Donald Kirk (The Independent – May 26, 2015)

http://www.independent.co.uk/

Japan has rebuffed South Korean demands that it admits Koreans served as slave labour at seven mines, shipyards and factories that Japan is seeking to be listed as Unesco world heritage sites.

A Korean Foreign Ministry official said that Korea’s ambassador for Cultural and Unesco Affairs, Choi Jong-moon, had returned empty-handed from Tokyo after debating the case of the Korean workers.

Mr Choi had sought to reach an understanding on Japan’s bid for Unesco world heritage status for 23 Japanese industrial sites, including the seven where Korea says 60,000 Koreans were forced to work for no pay. Japan denies this was the case.

The row focuses on whether those sites qualify for world heritage status solely for their role in the rise of modern Japan in the late-19th century during the long reign of the Emperor Meiji. The Japanese say that era has nothing to do with the period in which Koreans laboured under Japanese masters while Japan ruled Korea from 1910 to the end of the Second World War.

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Japan Admits World War II Prisoners Worked at a Mine Owned by the Premier’s Family – by Norimitsu Onishi (New York Times – December 19, 2008)

http://www.nytimes.com/

TOKYO — The Japanese government has acknowledged for the first time that Allied prisoners during World War II were made to work at a coal mine owned by the family of Prime Minister Taro Aso, contradicting his longstanding denials.

The admission came after the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, under prodding from an opposition lawmaker, released documents showing that 300 Australian, British and Dutch prisoners of war worked at a mine owned by Aso Mining during the last four months of the war.

At a parliamentary session on Thursday, Foreign Ministry and health officials acknowledged the validity of the documents, about 43 pages retrieved from the basement of the Health Ministry building.

The acknowledgment was another embarrassment for Mr. Aso, whose popularity has plummeted since he took office three months ago. His erratic stewardship over an increasingly shaky economy and insulting remarks about groups including the elderly have lowered his approval ratings to about 20 percent and drawn public attacks from his own Liberal Democratic Party.

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Would a PotashCorp takeover of K+S lift potash prices? (Agrimoney.com – June 29, 2015)

http://www.agrimoney.com/

Do potash prices stand to benefit from the strengthening of the Canpotex consortium?

The news last week that the Canadian potash giant PotashCorp had made a takeover offer for German miner K+S raised the prospect that the potash industry was poised for a period of consolidation, after two years of fragmentation.

However Credit Suisse has cast doubt on the idea that such a consolidation would drive potash prices upward, at the same time as industry sources move to allay fears of supply restrictions in Germany.

Fracturing market

The global potash market was thrown into disarray in 2013 with the collapse of the BCP cartel. BCP constituted Belarusian state­owned producer Beleruskali and Russian miner Uralkali.

BCP and Canopotex, a consortium of North American miners of which Canpotex is the largest, maintained a duopoly on potash for decades, setting prices through negotiations with buying consortiums in China and India.

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North York Moors mineral mine set to get go-ahead – by Helen Pidd (The Guardian – June 30, 2015)

http://www.theguardian.com/international

Promising to create over 1,000 jobs and pump £1bn-plus into the UK economy, the scheme has won over many locals but angered environmentalists

One of the biggest developments in a UK national park in living memory could get the go-ahead on Tuesday if councillors approve plans for a £1.7bn mineral mine under the North York Moors.

Following Lancashire council’s surprise decision to defy its own planners and legal advisers by rejecting fracking on Monday, the meeting in Whitby will be closely watched by those keen to see whether big resources projects can win over local officials.

UK firm Sirius Minerals – via its subsidiary York Potash – wants to dig a mile-deep shaft under the moors to tap a huge seam of a potassium-rich mineral called polyhalite, a type of potash used as fertiliser, for the next 100 years or more.

Promising more than 1,000 local jobs and an annual contribution to the UK GDP of over £1bn, the scheme has won over many initially sceptical locals worried about the environmental impact on the beautifully bleak moorland.

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Australia’s Iron-Ore Pain Deepens – by Rhiannon Hoyle (Wall Street Journal – June 30, 2015)

http://www.wsj.com/

Larger-than-expected drop in export income will make Tony Abbott’s promised balanced budget tougher to deliver

SYDNEY—The plunge in iron-ore prices since early last year is hitting Australia’s economy harder than expected, making it tougher for the almost two-year-old conservative government to meet its campaign pledge to balance the budget quickly.

Just three months ago, Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s government forecast that income from resource exports overall in the year ending June 30 would be down 8%, to 179 billion Australian dollars (US$137 billion). On Tuesday, it estimated earnings from exports of iron ore and other raw materials to China, Japan and elsewhere actually slid 11%, to A$174 billion.

The biggest driver of the estimated fall in income is a 27% drop in earnings from exports of iron ore, a steelmaking ingredient that is Australia’s top export, shipped mainly to China.

“Iron-ore export volumes are strong, but declining prices have certainly hit the bottom line,” said Diana Mousina, an economist at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The relentless drop has forced Mr. Abbott’s government to redraw budget forecasts a number of times already.

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Avalon banks on new ‘blood metals’ rule for Canada’s tin mine success – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – June 30, 2015)

http://www.mining.com/

Canada’s Avalon Rare Metals (TSX:AVL), until now mostly known for its incursion in the rare earths market, is proceeding with a $1.3 million work program in South-western Nova Scotia to reopen a historic tin-indium mine.

The company, working on completing a Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) for the project by November this year, is betting on recently approved legislation in Europe, which bans all products containing conflict minerals from war zones in Africa.

Speaking at the 128th Annual Meeting of The Nova Scotia Mining Society late in June, Avalon’s President and CEO Don Bubar said the European Union anti “blood metals” rules, together with the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act, which forces US stock exchange-listed companies to disclose the use of minerals from a conflict zone in their supply chains, gives Avalon’s tin project huge advantages.

The miner was granted a special exploration licence to search 22 claims totalling 356.12 hectares. It also received a $40,000 project grant from the province earlier this year to assist with test drilling.

“We’re hopeful, at this point,” Natural Resources Minister Zach Churchill told MINING.com in an interview mid-June, adding that since market prices for tin have improved, the Nova Scotia government is optimistic about the prospects at the location.

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Canada Day Column: Canada defies all logic – by John Grubber (Sudbury Star – June 30, 2015)

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

John Grubber is a Sudbury history teacher, author and illustrator.

As Canada Day approaches, and our 150th birthday as a country in 2017, it is important that we think not just of celebrations, national values, ideals and mythic nation-building, but of the very real economic and political reasons we came together in the 1860s.

It’s not quite Game of Thrones, but there is plenty of intrigue in the ‘boring’ topic of Confederation.

We commonly know the names of many of the players, led by Sir John A. Macdonald, that argued, debated, fought and compromised to bring us together as a nation, but we rarely consider the conditions that made such a bond necessary or urgent.

Looking at a map, we are an illogical country huge, spanning a continent, a huge range of terrain and when the first group of far-flung colonies united in 1867, largely filled with unexplored lands. We shouldn’t have been able to stay together, given the vast differences, but it was the determination of those who met in Charlottetown and Quebec in the 1860s that we would work out our differences and thrive.

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Building permit approved for $50M underground mine in B.C. – by Dirk Meissner (Canadian Press/CTV News – June 29, 2015)

http://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/

VICTORIA – British Columbia has approved a construction permit for a proposed $50-million silver, lead and zinc mine just south of the Yukon border after the project’s economic and environmental plans helped win support from an area First Nation.

Mines Minister Bill Bennett said Monday that the underground Silvertip mine could create up to 200 jobs and could be in operation for more than 20 years. Vancouver-based JDS Silver Inc., said once it receives the necessary permits, it plans to operate about 150 days a year and shut down in the winter months.

The mine, located about 90 kilometres southwest of Watson Lake, Yukon, has been of interest to several mining proposals since the 1950s due to the high-grade lead-silver-zinc deposit.

Bennett said the company can immediately start building and that the operation will produce a smaller environmental footprint than other larger mines in B.C.’s northwest.

He said it will be an underground operation so much of its ore tailings will be stored below ground.

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