Clinton strays from her roots as coal miner’s great granddaughter – by Valerie Volcovici and Amanda Becker (Reuters U.S. – August 10, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

WASHINGTON – In her 2008 bid for the White House, Hillary Clinton cast herself as a blue-collar Democrat who was unabashedly pro-coal, a stance that helped her beat opponent Barack Obama easily in primaries in states that produced or were reliant on coal.

Eight years later, a Reuters review of her recent campaign speeches and policy announcements shows that the great-granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner is now talking about the coal industry in the past tense.

The little-noticed shift in rhetoric speaks volumes about how the United States’ energy landscape has changed since Clinton last campaigned in 2008: oil and gas fracking have exploded and cheap natural gas has taken a huge bite out of coal.

In the intervening years the Obama administration has also proposed aggressive measures to tamp down greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels like coal, while once-powerful coal companies like Alpha Natural Resources, which declared bankruptcy last week, have lost their political clout.

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Japan split over restart of first nuclear reactor since Fukushima disaster (The Guardian – August 9, 2015)

http://www.theguardian.com/

Rising costs from gas and oil are sited by supporters of a programme to bring reactors back on line, but ageing plant and risks raise widespread concern

An otherwise unremarkable town in south-west Japan will be propelled this week to the forefront of the country’s biggest experiment with nuclear power since the Fukushima disaster in March 2011.

After months of debate about safety, Japan will begin producing nuclear energy for the first time in almost two years close to the town of Satsumasendai as early as Tuesday.

Restarting one of the Sendai nuclear plant’s two 30-year-old reactors represents a victory for the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who insists that without nuclear energy the Japanese economy will buckle beneath the weight of expensive oil and gas imports.

But his call for Japan to confront its Fukushima demons has been greeted with scepticism by most voters, whose opposition to nuclear restarts remains firm, even in the face of rising electricity bills.

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How Rio Tinto plans to cut costs by $US1 billion – by Amanda Saunders (Sydney Morning Herald – August 10, 2015)

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

You might not think vending machines would feature in Andrew Harding’s cost cutting drive. But for the Rio iron ore boss, cost-cutting is coming down to micro detail, which can save millions for a business that will ship 340 million tonnes of iron ore this year.

Rio has started putting safety glasses and gloves in a vending machine that requires a staff access card to withdraw them. Previously, the equipment was left in boxes for workers to take, with no way of monitoring use.

“It’s tracking and about feeling accountable for the use of the product,” Mr Harding told Fairfax Media after the miner last week posted a 43 per cent fall in underlying earnings to $US2.9 billion for the June half.

“There is no restriction on them – it’s safety equipment. But instead of someone going ‘this is unlimited, what the hell’ kind of thinking, it reminds people that it’s an important item, contributing to cost reductions. People know that they need to be thoughtful about the use of them, they are not taking more than they need.”

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Zimbabwe: Reprieve for Platinum Miners – by Golden Sibanda (All Africa.com – August 10, 2015)

http://allafrica.com/

CABINET last week suspended the 15 percent tax on raw exports of platinum for a period of two years to allow mining companies more time to set up platinum beneficiation facilities.

This allows the country’s mines to continue exporting raw platinum group metals without being subjected to the contentious tax.

The Ministry of Finance had early this year gazetted a statutory instrument effecting Government’s decision to subject raw PGMs to the export levy.

As such, the platinum mining companies had been lobbying for the removal of the tax arguing it rendered operations unviable in the wake of falling PGM prices.

In fact, the companies briefly suspended exports in April this year arguing that they could not continue due to the impact of tax on gross proceeds of sales.

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COLUMN-No breaks for coal miners from China, India imports – by Clyde Russell (Reuters U.K. – August 10, 2015)

http://uk.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Aug 10 (Reuters) – It seems coal miners and traders just can’t catch a break, with a rebound in China’s imports being tempered by early signs of a turning point in India’s import growth.

The main problem for coal exporters such as Australia, Indonesia and South Africa is that China’s surge in imports in July is unlikely to be sustained, while India’s decline may well be the start of a longer-lasting trend.

China, the world’s biggest producer and importer of coal, brought in 21.26 million tonnes in July, up 28.1 percent from June’s 16.6 million and the highest in eight months, according to customs data released Aug. 8.

However, imports are down 7.7 percent on a year earlier and down 33.7 percent for the first seven months of 2015, making July’s month-on-month result an outlier in a overall weakening trend.

It’s also likely that July’s strength will remain an exception, rather than herald the reversal of the existing trend.

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Glencore’s Trading Profit at Risk From Rout in Commodities – by Jesse Riseborough and Javier Blas (Bloomberg News – August 10, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Glencore Plc’s trading business is at risk of missing its earnings target for this year, if analyst estimates and historical precedent are any guide.

The division may report adjusted earnings before interest and tax of $1.28 billion for the first six months of the year, according to the average estimate of nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News. That’s less than half the company’s full-year target of $2.7 billion to $3.7 billion. For the past three years, second-half trading profit has never beat first-half.

The trading operation, which handles everything from cotton to copper to oil, is under pressure as a glut of global metal supply reduces the premiums that Glencore can charge to clients.

Agriculture traders have also struggled, with Cargill Inc. reporting its first quarterly loss since 2001 and Bunge Ltd. missing analysts’ estimates. Glencore shares hit a record low last week and have slumped 62 percent since 2011.

“While everyone has been quick to call the end of the commodities super-cycle, the more important shift for Glencore is the end of the era of super-profits in trading,” said Ben Davis, analyst at Liberum Capital Ltd. in London. “What made Glencore rich in the past is unlikely to happen again.”

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The dangerous search for emeralds in Colombia – by Joshua Partlow and Julia Symmes Cobb(Washington Post – August 9, 2015)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

After taking over a major mine, a U.S. company has been met with violence

Muzo, Columbia – The chopper touched down on the hillside helipad and Charles Burgess, a cigar-chomping former U.S. government employee, stepped out to survey the full sweep of his Andean domain.

Since before the conquistadors, men have dug for emeralds in the soil of this steep-walled jungle valley. The gemstone bounty found here fueled the empire of Victor Carranza, the feared billionaire “emerald czar” who vanquished his rivals in bloody battles that left some 6,000 dead.

Now all that Burgess could see — from the green peaks where the vultures circled to the valley floor where grimy campesinos shoveled dirt in the black river — belongs to his American mining company, which has taken control of the world’s largest and most valuable emerald mine.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Burgess said. By purchasing Carranza’s share of the mine two years ago, the Houston-based company, Minería Texas Colombia, known as MTC, is now the only foreign mining company in the treacherous world of Colombia’s emerald trade — once responsible for about two-thirds of the world supply.

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As storms batter Chile’s coast, some copper mines suspend work – by Rosalba O’Brien (Reuters U.S. – August 9, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO – Heavy rain and winds hit the southern cone of South America over the weekend, battering the Chilean coastline and leading to the precautionary suspension of work at some mines in the top copper exporter.

Over 1,000 people from Antofagasta in the far north to Los Rios in the south of Chile were affected, with some being housed in shelters after being evacuated or losing their homes to floods, and over 120,000 were left without electricity, the emergency service Onemi said on Sunday.

Mud landslides wiped out roads in and around the city of Tocopilla in the Antofagasta region, leading to three deaths, while another three were killed in accidents along the coast, local media reported.

Over 15 millimeters (0.6 inch) of rain had fallen in six hours in normally bone-dry Antofagasta, the interior ministry said.

After months of drought, the rains that began early last week in central Chile and have since spread north have brought some relief to farmers and ski resort owners, but spelled more potential bad news for Chile’s key copper mining industry, mostly based in the north of the country and already hit by floods once this year.

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UPDATED: Vale sanctions underground mine at Voisey’s Bay (CBC News Newfoundland – August 10, 2015)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/

Will extend mine life to 2035 and nearbly double workforce to 850

Mining giant Vale has approved construction of an underground mine at Voisey’s Bay that will extend the life of the northern Labrador mine by about 15 years and provide hundreds more jobs.

A company spokesman said construction will begin next year, and is timed to ensure a continuity of supply for the new multi-billion-dollar nickel processing plant in Long Harbour.

“For us it’s a natural evolution of the mine there,” said Cory McPhee, vice-president of corporate affairs for Vale’s base metals business.

“We’ve always known that the open pit was going to be exhausted at some point. And going underground was the next natural step. And that’s the key to exploiting the resource that’s available to us.”

It will take about five years to complete the underground mine, which is about the same time the surface mine is expected to reach the end of its lifespan.

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Screamers (Mining Themed Science Fiction Movie – 1995) (Toronto Film Scene: Online Film Magazine – November 2014))

http://thetfs.ca/

For our science fiction issue, it seemed obvious to address and Cronenberg or Vincenzo Natali film, so we decided to go a little off the beaten path and choose Screamers, a 1995 Canadian co-production (with the US and Japan) starring Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis and directed by Christian Duguay.

The film takes place in the the year 2078 on a planet called Sirius 6B, on which miners are at war with the corporation who employs them to mine a very potent energy source. Unfortunately, the side effect of the mining is severe radiation, creating horribly unsafe working conditions.

To combat the corporation, the miners create weapons called “screamers”, spinning blade weapons that follow heartbeats and come up from the ground to slice their enemies into pieces. The war seems close to an end, but now the miners face a new enemy: screamers who can think and replicate themselves.

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Major north American gold majors are under the pump – by Lawrie Williams (Mineweb.com – August 10, 2015)

http://www.mineweb.com/

While the major North American gold mining companies are successfully cutting costs to keep their heads above water, it’s far from all plain sailing.

LONDON – With the quarterly and half-yearly reporting season well under way we can report that most of the top North American gold miners, which have all now reported their 2nd quarter figures, have been continuing to make progress in cutting costs. Here we are looking at the gold miners projected to produce in excess of 1 million ounces (circa. 31 tonnes) of gold, or gold equivalent, in the current year.

All, bar Kinross Gold, have come in with All-In Sustaining Costs (AISC) guidance figures for the year at comfortably under the $1,000/oz ounce level which leaves them in a relatively strong position in the current weak gold price environment.

Indeed as multi-operational gold producers, they probably have more scope for further cost cutting should prices weaken further, although at the expense of reducing reserve levels in tonnage terms, and more flexibility in making potential closure or divestment decisions concerning marginal or unprofitable operations.

But so saying, while corresponding earnings figures may be better than might have been anticipated given the gold price falls, continuing write-downs are making financials look depressing in terms of the reported bottom line figures.

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GLOBE EDITORIAL: To glimpse the future of oil, look at coal in the U.S. (Globe and Mail – August 8, 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.

“We’re the first generation to feel the impact of climate change, and we’re the last generation that can do something about it,” Barack Obama said on Monday. The President backed up his words with the Clean Power Plan, a White House initiative that will almost certainly end coal-fired electricity production in the United States in the next decade.

There are five lessons in the announcement for Canada, which recently signed on to the G7 commitment to “decarbonize” the global economy by the end of the century.

Lesson 1: Greenhouse-gas emissions are a legitimate public-health issue. Mr. Obama has done an end run around Congress and unilaterally set regulations to cut carbon-dioxide emissions from electricity production by 32 per cent (compared with levels in 2005) by the year 2030.

He can do this under the Clean Air Act, which obliges the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate any pollutant that is a danger to public health. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that large amounts of carbon dioxide qualify as a dangerous pollutant, since they lead to climate change.

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Brazil the winner from the Andrew Forrest way – by Matthew Stevens (Australian Financial Review – August 10, 2015)

http://www.afr.com/

The only way Australia and its miners would benefit from any form of co-ordinated iron ore production constraint would be if Brazil could be convinced to add its name to our cartel.

But even with Brazil’s unlikely and illegal embrace of a cartel, the net gains for Australia would be marginal and fleeting, says the most authoritative and technical analysis conducted yet on Andrew Forrest’s contention that Australia’s economy is being abused by its biggest iron ore miners, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.

Forrest and his company Fortescue continue to rail about planned expansion, under which both their Pilbara competitors will add about 20 million tonnes to production over coming years, while Gina Rinehart introduces another 55 million tonnes to an already bloated global system.

Having initially taken the Forrest bait on the idea of some sort of market review, governments state and federal promptly backed off after some unusually blunt criticism from the likes of BHP boss Andrew Mackenzie.

But that didn’t settle things for good old Brian Fisher. Fisher is the economist who ran the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics during its pomp as government’s commodity industry number cruncher, and now directs his own firm, called BAEconomics.

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UPDATE 1-K+S says private shareholders back rejection of Potash offer (Reuters U.S. – August 10, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

FRANKFURT, Aug 10 (Reuters) – German salt and fertilizer company K+S AG has claimed support from private or retail investors for its rejection of a 7.9 billion euros ($8.6 billion) offer from Potash Corp of Saskatchewan.

K+S said on Monday it had surveyed private or non-institutional shareholders, who hold about 30 percent of its shares, and said more than 84 percent who replied were in favour of rejection, though it also said only about 28 percent had responded to its questionnaire.

Potash Corp has been pushing to talk with K+S management despite the German company’s initial rejection last month of the Canadian company’s bid worth 41 euros per share.

K+S, whose shares traded up 0.8 percent at 37.43 euros by 1130 GMT, lacks the protection of a big anchor investor, with nearly all its shares freely traded on the stock exchange, and the results of K+S’s survey provide the first real indication of how investors may respond to Potash Corp’s approach.

Only about 4 percent of the more than 39,000 private shareholders who participated in the survey said they would accept a 41 euros per share offer, K+S said.

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EPA: Pollution from mine spill much worse than feared – by Steve Garrison and Joshua Kellogg (USA Today – August 10, 2015)

http://www.usatoday.com/

FARMINGTON, N.M. — Officials from the Environmental Protection Agency said Sunday that the Gold King Mine discharged an estimated 3 million gallons of contaminated water, three times the amount previously believed.

The mine continues to discharge 500 gallons per minute, EPA Region 8 administrator Shaun McGrath said in a teleconference call Sunday afternoon, but the polluted water is being contained and treated in two ponds by the site of the spill near Silverton, Colo.

According to preliminary testing data the EPA released Sunday, arsenic levels in the Durango area of the Animas River were, at their peak, 300 times the normal level, and lead was 3,500 times the normal level. Officials said those levels have dropped significantly since the plume moved through the area.

Both metals pose a significant danger to humans at high levels of concentration.

“Yes, those numbers are high and they seem scary,” said Deborah McKean, chief of the Region 8 Toxicology and Human Health and Risk Assessment. “But it’s not just a matter of toxicity of the chemicals, it’s a matter of exposure.”

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