June 2, 2015 – Republic of Mining

RPT–Peru elections seen fanning flames of mining disputes – by Mitra Taj (Reuters U.S. – June 1, 2015)

June 2, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Mining conflicts in Peru, a top global minerals exporter, will likely heat up ahead of presidential and congressional elections next year as political outsiders whip up anti-mining sentiment, government officials and business leaders said.

Protests from local community groups have derailed three mining projects worth $7 billion in the past five years, and threaten to hold up more.

Carlos Galvez, head of Peru’s main mining association, said opponents of mining projects can win votes in rural areas where poverty rates are high and many eke out a living as farmers.

“Here everyone is anti. If you’re anti-mining then you’re in fashion,” said Galvez, who leads the National Society of Mining, Petroleum and Energy.

Southern Copper Corp’s $1.4 billion Tia Maria project was put on hold last month amid deadly protests.

David Montoya, a cabinet official tasked with conflict prevention, accused protest leaders of feeding fears about pollution from Tia Maria in order to win the dispute and pave a political future for themselves. “They shut down discussion,” he said.

Anger and Grief Simmer in Turkey a Year After Soma Mine Disaster – by Ceylan Yeginsujune (New York Times – June 2, 2015)

June 2, 2015

http://www.nytimes.com/

ELMADERE, Turkey — Through the lace curtains of her window, Beyhan Yilmaz cannot help but see the raw gash of the new coal mine carved through the green hills near her village. She is stung by the sight.

“I used to run away to that hill and have picnics with my husband under the pine trees,” Ms. Yilmaz recalled, with tears trickling down her cheeks. “As if the fact that they destroyed that beauty wasn’t painful enough, now every time I look out the window, I am reminded of the hell where my husband burned to death.”

Ms. Yilmaz, 26, is one of 10 women from Elmadere, in western Turkey, who were widowed by the deadliest industrial disaster in modern Turkish history, the explosion and fire that tore through a coal mine in the nearby town of Soma in May 2014, leaving 301 men dead.

The disaster led to protests in Soma and across Turkey that were broken up by the riot police using rubber bullets and water cannons. The anger here toward the government had barely receded a year later as the widows observed the grim anniversary. Families of victims say that no one has been held accountable and that they have been left to face the future on their own.

India steel mills set US$46 bln plan to expand capacity (Ejinsight.com – June 2, 2015)

June 2, 2015

http://www.ejinsight.com/

Indian steel mills plan to invest 2.94 trillion rupees (US$46.13 billion) in the next 10 years to expand production capacity.

The target is 300 million tons of production capacity by 2025, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing Steel and Mines Minister Narendra Singh Tomar.

Falling demand from China has resulted in a global oversupply but India is planning for the longer term, Tomar said.

He expects considerable homegrown demand as the government adds infrastructure such as roads, ports, housing and real estate for which steel will be a key component.

India, the world’s third largest steel producer by volume, has been struggling to add new capacity in recent years, mainly because of delays in securing environmental approvals and opposition by farmers who refuse to make way for plant construction.

In 2013, ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaker, scrapped plans to build a plant in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, citing delays in acquiring land.

Japan’s nuclear plan is bad news for LNG, coal – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.S. – June 2, 2015)

June 2, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, June 2 (Reuters) – The rise of China and India as energy importers has largely consigned Japan to the sidelines, but the world’s third-largest economy still exerts significant influence in some markets.

That’s why Japan’s long-term energy vision is too important to be ignored, given it is the world’s top importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG), number three in coal and four in crude oil.

A consultative committee on Monday endorsed the government’s blueprint for the energy mix it hopes to achieve by 2030, with the proposal now open for public comment for a month ahead of a likely formal approval by the trade ministry mid-July.

While the proposal has attracted controversy over a plan for nuclear energy to generate 20-22 percent of the nation’s electricity, it’s also worth noting how it sees the rest of the generating mix.

Renewables are set at 22-24 percent, LNG at 27 percent and coal at 26 percent. This represents a decline in nuclear’s share of electricity generation from the 30 percent it held before the Fukushima disaster following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Chileans Bet Apple Will Pay a Premium for Clean Rare Earths – by Eduardo Thomson (Bloomberg News – June 2, 2015)

June 2, 2015

http://www.bloomberg.com/

The future of rare-earth minerals used in everything from iPhones to Tomahawk missiles lies under the pine plantations of southern Chile, and in a secret formula, according to closely held junior miner Mineria Activa.

Elements such as neodymium and dysprosium are contained in clays near the city of Concepcion in concentrations similar to those found in southern China, which has all but cornered global supply until now. The similarities end there, Arturo Albornoz, who heads Activa’s Biolantanidos project, said in an interview.

While operations in China typically pump ammonium sulfate into the ground and wait for the chemical to seep out with the minerals, at Biolantanidos the plan is to dig out the clay, put it through a tank-leaching process with biodegradable chemicals and return it cleaned to the ground, replanting pine and eucalyptus trees.

It may be laborious, but Albornoz is hoping companies such as ThyssenKrupp AG, Apple Inc. and Tomahawk cruise missile maker Raytheon Co. will end up paying a premium, knowing their suppliers aren’t destroying the planet.

Prof looking for tales of life in Sudbury’s moonscape – by Heidi Ulrichsen (Sudbury Northern Life – June 2, 2015)

June 2, 2015

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Project explores the life of immigrants in Copper Clif, Coniston, Gatchell and the Donovan

Did you walk to school with a handkerchief over your face because the pollution was so bad? Did your mother have to replant the garden five times because of acid rain? Were mine tailings your personal playground?

Stacey Zembrzycki, a Sudbury-born adjunct assistant professor at Concordia University, wants to hear these kinds of stories.

It’s all part of a project called “Mining Immigrant Bodies: A Multi-Ethnic Oral History of Industry, Environment and Health in the Sudbury Region,” supported by Concordia University and a federal government grant.

She’s looking to interview men and women who came to Canada in the postwar period — as well as their children — and lived in Copper Cliff, Coniston, Gatchell or the Donovan, where mining impacted heavily on day-to-day life.

Zembrzycki also hopes to speak to those who worked in the mining industry or their families about the health impacts of these jobs.

NEWS RELEASE: KWG Appeal to Be Heard October 20, 2015

June 2, 2015

TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwired – June 1, 2015) – KWG Resources Inc. (CSE:KWG)

(FRANKFURT:KW6) reports that the Registrar of the Ontario Court of Appeal has notified the parties that October 20th, 2015 has been fixed for the hearing of the appeal of Canada Chrome Corporation (“KWG/CCC”) of the decision of the Divisional Court of the Ontario Superior Court made in July 2014 overturning the decision of the Ontario Mining and Lands Commissioner.

The respondent in the appeal is 2274659 Ontario Inc. and the intervenor is the Minister of Northern Development and Mines. Both parties have until June 29, 2015 to file responding materials if they elect to do so. 2274659 Ontario Inc. was formerly a subsidiary of Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. (“Cliffs”) and is now wholly-owned by Noront Resources Ltd. (“Noront”).

At a hearing before the Mining and Lands Commissioner (“MLC”) in early 2013, Cliffs sought an order to dispense with the consent of KWG/CCC for the granting of an easement for Cliffs to build a road on top of mining claims staked by KWG/CCC along a 340 kilometer corridor of high ground. KWG/CCC had spent some $15 million to explore the claims and assess their profiles and aggregates to provide a means of egress for the Big Daddy chromite deposit in which KWG/CCC has a 30% joint venture interest, with Cliffs then holding the 70% interest. The MLC declined to grant the order sought by Cliffs and Cliffs then appealed the MLC decision to the Divisional Court of the Ontario Superior Court.

Three key takeaways from the US Geological Report (Mining.com – June 1, 2015)

June 2, 2015

http://www.mining.com/

Click here for the 2015 Mineral Commodity Summaries: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mcs/2015/mcs2015.pdf

The 2015 Mineral Commodity Summaries, an annual report from the U.S. Geological Survey, shares information about domestic minerals and their importance to the U.S. economy. Below are some key highlights from this year’s report:

• The estimated value of mineral raw materials produced at U.S. mines in 2014 was $77.6 billion.

The domestic minerals mining industry is a major stimulant of the U.S. economy. The estimated value of minerals produced at U.S. mines increased by $3.3 billion in 2014, and during that year, industries utilized those minerals to add more than $2.5 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).

Industries, including technology, manufacturing, construction and automotive all depend on a secure mineral supply chain to produce the products we use each and every day. With the world’s population growing and requiring more access to technology, the global demand for minerals will continue to increase.

NEWS RELEASE: OMA JOINS COALITION URGING GOVERNMENT TO PROTECT THE ECONOMY AND JOBS UNDER NEW PENSION PLAN

June 2, 2015

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.

(June 2, 2015) The Ontario Mining Association, and a coalition of major Ontario employers under the leadership of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC), are calling on the provincial government to broaden its definition of a comparable pension plan under the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan (ORPP).

In a letter addressed to Premier Kathleen Wynne, the coalition of more than 150 organizations is urging the government to expand its definition of pension plan comparability to include capital accumulation plans, including (but not limited to) Defined Contribution plans. This move would ensure that companies in the province that have an existing pension plan for their employees would not be forced to incur this new cost of doing business, thus undermining the province’s economic competitiveness.

Set for introduction in 2017, the ORPP will require employees and employers to contribute 1.9% each (3.8% combined) on an employee’s annual earnings up to $90,000. Employers who offer ‘comparable’ workplace savings plans will be exempt from contributing to the ORPP.

Aureus Mining starts gold production in Liberia in shadow of Ebola crisis – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – June 2, 2015)

June 2, 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.

Aureus Mining Inc. has survived the Ebola crisis to produce its first gold in Liberia, the West African country that had no gold mine until the Canadian company arrived.

Aureus, which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange and on London’s AIM market, poured the first gold from its New Liberty open pit mine in Liberia’s northwest Friday evening. The $172-million (U.S.) mining project will be in full production in the autumn, when it will become one of the desperately poor country’s largest private employers.

David Reading, 59, the company’s Canadian-trained, British chief executive officer, said he was worried at one point that the Ebola crisis would doom the company’s Liberia plans. Liberia was one of the countries hit hardest by Ebola last year, with 10,666 reported cases and 4,806 deaths by the end of February, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

“You go through sleepless nights as management,” Mr. Reading said. “If we stop everything, the company would go bankrupt. But if we keep going and we lose someone, we’d never forgive ourselves.”

TMAC Resources Inc launches $105 million IPO – by Peter Koven (National Post – June 2, 2015)

June 2, 2015

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

TORONTO — Canada’s initial public offering craze is finally seeping into the mining sector, as TMAC Resources Inc. has launched the sector’s first significant IPO in many months.

The Toronto-based company, which is named after its well-known executive chairman Terry MacGibbon, is planning to raise $105 million, according to a preliminary prospectus filed with regulators. TMAC’s underwriters plan to sell 52.5 million shares at $2 each, with an option to sell up to 7.875 million additional shares if demand is strong enough. The stock will list on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

TMAC owns the Hope Bay project in Nunavut, a massive undeveloped gold deposit. U.S. gold giant Newmont Mining Corp. acquired the project for $1.5 billion in 2007, but was never able to put forward a good development plan and eventually wrote it down. That paved the way for TMAC, an upstart company, to acquire it in 2013.

Last month, TMAC completed a pre-feasibility study on Hope Bay that projected a capital cost for the project of $206 million. The study found that the mine would have a net present value of $626 million at a gold price of US$1,250 an ounce.

Mine closures, job losses on Brazil’s iron ore frontline – by Stephen Eisenhammer (Reuters U.S. – June 1, 2015)

June 2, 2015June 2, 2015

http://www.reuters.com/

CONCEIÇÃO DO MATO DENTRO, Brazil, June 1 A giant truck carries chunks of sparkling mountainside to a web of yellow conveyor belts at a huge mine in eastern Brazil, a few more hundred tonnes of iron ore that are good for its owner Anglo American but bad for a battered global market.

Part of a new generation of massive mines contributing to a supply glut, the Minas-Rio mine has the scale and modern design to produce iron ore, the main ingredient in steel, at well below the costs of more traditional projects.

“We’ll be competitive wherever the price is,” Paulo Castellari, the iron ore head for Anglo in Brazil, said on a recent visit.

But only a four-hour drive away, in the sleepy town of Itatiaiucu, workers at older mines are being laid off. Almost everyone in the town of 12,000 people follows the price of iron ore and for the last year they have watched it drop in half to near the lowest level in a decade. With it, about 20 percent of mining jobs in the town have been cut, the local union says.

“I go to work every day wondering if I’ll be next,” said José Roberto, 55, who has worked for 27 years at a local mine now owned by steelmaker ArcelorMittal, where the union says 30 of about 300 workers have been laid off in recent months.

Lifton says forget the Wall Street Journal on rare earths. – by Jack Lifton (InvestorIntel.com – June 1, 2015)

June 2, 2015

http://investorintel.com/

Yesterday’s (May 31’s) Wall Street Journal had a really poor article about the impending fate of Molycorp, bankruptcy from failure to meet payment on debts, as it reflects, in the WSJ’s opinion, the rare earth market(s).

The rare earth share market “mania” that began in the USA in 2007 when a group of funds and an entrepreneur bought the defunct, moribund, and on “care and maintenance” Molycorp from Chevron with the stated purpose of bringing it back into production was an attempt to “get ahead” of the “market” as then perceived by this group.

This original core group of Molycorp investors had noted that a rapidly growing demand for the rare earths in high tech consumer goods was going to have to depend on the tumultuous but unpredictable (with regard to the impact of governance by the state as well as private interests) Chinese domestic economy, because at that time (as it remains today) China was the overwhelmingly largest producer of the rare earths.

Today Molycorp has failed as a business even though it has raised and spent between 2 and 3 billion dollars to re-start its California mine and base-level separation facility.

Molycorp Struggles to Survive Rare-Earths Bubble – by John W. Miller (Wall Street Journal – May 31, 2015)

June 2, 2015

http://www.wsj.com/

U.S. rare-earths miner is expected to skip loan payment, which could lead to bankruptcy filing

MOUNTAIN PASS, Calif.—In the dusty mountains of the California-Nevada border, 4,800 feet above sea level, the U.S.’s only miner and processor of rare-earths elements is struggling to squeeze a profit out of its small open-pit mine and plant.

On Monday, Molycorp Inc. said it would skip a $32.5 million loan payment, triggering a 30-day grace period that could lead to a bankruptcy filing before the end of June.

The company is trying to survive one of the biggest commodity bubbles in economic history. Five years ago, export restrictions by China, the world’s dominant supplier, and a global political spat inflated the value of rare earths—15 elements used as niche ingredients in magnets, batteries, catalytic converters and other high-tech products—and propelled Molycorp’s stock-market value to over $6 billion.

Since then, rare-earths prices have been on a long slide downward. Now with a market capitalization of around $150 million, Molycorp is indebted and unprofitable. Customers are putting in orders, but the company hasn’t met production targets at Mountain Pass, and is in restructuring talks with firms representing its creditors.