Twitter

Day: October 9, 2015

Old Mo’s. New Tricks. Canadian Mines have fun, doin’ good as a team in Movember – by Movember Staff

Mo Bro Randy Whitcome, BHP Billiton - Specialist Compliance Legal, Potash.
Mo Bro Randy Whitcome, BHP Billiton – Specialist Compliance Legal, Potash.

It’s the time of year when men are getting ready to grow the most epic moustache.

Movember is upon us, the month formerly known as November, which is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces around the world, all in the name of men’s health. During Movember Canadians band together in teams within their industry to create a network challenge at Movember.com.

These networks create a fun and competitive environment that showcases the collective achievement of the industry while raising awareness and funds for men’s health, particularly prostate cancer, testicular cancer, poor mental health and physical inactivity. To date, $175 million has been raised in Canada.

In 2014, BHP Billiton Canada, had 39 members on their Movember team called Average Joes with Awesome Mo’s. Lead by Mo Bro Randy Whitcome, the team has raised over $17,000 and had fun doin’ good with fundraising activities that included direct donations from family and friends and fun challenges.

“My most memorable moment during Movember was hearing some tough Mo Bro’s sharing very personal stories with their co-workers”, said Randy Whitcome, Team Captain, Average Mo’s with Awesome Mo’s. “It made me proud to be part of the team and to have our company rally behind us and the cause.”

This year, the Movember Foundation is adding another way to champion men’s health with the addition of MOVE – a 30-day fitness challenge to promote physical activity. For Mo Sistas, MOVE is a way to do something tangible in the name of men’s health, and for Mo Bros it’s a new challenge. Grow your Mo, MOVE, or take things to the next level and do both.

Read more

Celebration of Peru’s Economic Boom Comes Late (Associated Press/New York Times – October 9, 2015)

http://www.nytimes.com/

LIMA, Peru — The world’s top finance officials lavished praise on Peru’s “economic miracle” this week, lauding it for cutting poverty by half during a decade-long bonanza of record-high prices for gold, copper and other metals it mines.

In a gleaming $160 million convention center built for the meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, policymakers called Peru a prize pupil of their prescriptions for financial stability.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim deemed it a “growth star.” IMF chief Christine Lagarde likened Peru’s economic growth recipe to its world-famous cuisine. Unfortunately, the praise may have come too late.

Plunging prices for minerals, Peru’s economic backbone, have cut annual growth to less than half the 6.3 percent that made it the envy of Latin America from 2002-2012, a period when per capita income doubled to more than $6,600.

Several mammoth mining projects have been stalled by violent protests and declining mining revenues threaten to force cuts in the social spending.

Read more

Essar-Cliffs tension at fevered pitch – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – October 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.

Cut off from its iron ore supply, Essar Steel Algoma has filed a request for a temporary restraining order in an Ohio court against Cliffs Natural Resources. In an Oct. 6 news release, Essar said the matter is before a federal judge in Cleveland, Ohio.

“Essar Steel Algoma fully expects Cliffs to honour the supply agreement until such time as the matter has been justly resolved,” the Sault Ste. Marie plate and sheet producer said in a statement.

Hours earlier, Cliffs announced it had halted shipments to Essar by terminating its longstanding agreement to supply Essar with taconite iron ore pellets. The decision took effect Oct. 5.

A spokesperson with Cliffs was unavailable for comment. Essar spokeswoman Brenda Stenta said a “swift ruling” is expected on the matter. “There is no immediate impact to operations.”

Read more

PRECIOUS-Gold rises to seven-week high on dovish Fed minutes – by Marcy Nicholson and Mariana Ionova (Reuters U.S. – October 9, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

NEW YORK/LONDON, Oct 9 (Reuters) – Gold rose to a seven-week high on Friday after minutes from the Federal Reserve’s last policy meeting showed the U.S. central bank was in no hurry to raise interest rates, pressuring the U.S. dollar.

Spot gold was up 1.6 percent at $1,156.70 an ounce at 2:44 p.m. EDT (1844 GMT), after touching a peak of $1,159.80, its highest since Aug. 24. It is on course to gain 1.5 percent this week.

The U.S. futures contract for December delivery settled up 1 percent at $1,155.90 an ounce.

Prices were supported by Fed minutes released on Thursday, suggesting the central bank was deeply cautious about tightening monetary policy even before last week’s soft jobs data showed a sharp slowdown in U.S. hiring.

“There is less of a sentiment in the market that an interest rate hike will take place anytime soon,” said Bernard Dahdah, metals analyst at Natixis. “The data that has come out of the U.S. lately hasn’t been very positive.”

Read more

The good, bad and ugly: China’s economic rebalancing and commodity demand – by Prinesha Naidoo (Mineweb.com – October 9, 2015)

http://www.mineweb.com/

Not all commodities are equal. Some will bounce off and others will take a beating from China’s shift to consumption.

JOHANNESBURG – Fears of a significant slowdown in China’s economy, the second largest in the world, have whipped markets into a frenzy this year. As global equity markets opened on August 23, one by one and region by region, key indices flashed red.

This, as the after-effects of China’s Black Monday – in which the country’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index extended its losses to post its steepest one-day decline of 8.5% since the 2007 financial crisis – was ripping through world markets and prompting historic single-day sell-offs across the board.

Since then, continued volatility in Chinese markets, tempered somewhat by state intervention, which Goldman Sachs values at $236 billion over three months, has left investors across the globe uneasy.

Last year, the country’s economic growth slowed to 7.4%, its lowest level in more than 20 years. The extent to which the economy will slow this year remains a mystery –

Read more

Lithium Market Set To Explode – All Eyes Are On Nevada – by James Stafford (Oil Price – October 6, 2015)

http://oilprice.com/

While other commodities are floundering or completely collapsing in this market, lithium—the critical mineral in the emerging battery gigafactory war—is poised to explode, and going forward Nevada is emerging as the front line in this pending American lithium boom.

Most of the world’s lithium comes from Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Australia and China, but American resources being developed by new entrants into this market have set up the state of Nevada to become the key venue and proving ground for game-changing trade in this everyday mineral. Nevada is about to get a boost first from Tesla’s (NASDAQ:TSLA) upcoming battery gigafactory, and then from all of its rivals.

For several years, experts have been predicting a lithium revolution, and while investors were being coy at first, the reality of the battery gigafactories is now clear, and nothing has hit this home more poignantly than Tesla’s recent supply agreements with lithium providers who will be the first beneficiaries of this boom, followed by a second round of lithium brine developers that are climbing quickly to the forefront.

As Jeb Handwerger—founder of Gold Stock Trades—recently told the Resource Investor: “This is just the beginning. We’re in the early stages of a revolution in powering transportation and homes.

Read more

Police raid Vale office in Sudbury – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – October 9, 2015)

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

Three sources have told The Sudbury Star that police and Environment Canada officials raided Vale’s general engineering building in Sudbury on Thursday as part of an investigation into what one source said was a spill affecting fish and wildlife.

A source said Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Environment Canada employees spent four hours removing files, cabinets and computers with passwords from the Vale building on Lorne Street in Copper Cliff.

Another source said police and government officials seized all files, passwords and data from the environmental department, located in the engineering building.

“And they were collecting security cards after the employees left, so they couldn’t come back to the building,” said the Vale employee, who provided the information to The Sudbury Star on the condition of anonymity.

Vale’s Sudbury spokeswoman Angie Robson confirmed that Environment Canada was on site Thursday “collecting information related to alleged infractions under the Fisheries Act that allegedly occurred in 2012.

Read more

Canada’s Liberals Vow to End Rampant Boil Water Advisories on Reserves – by Hilary Beaumont Vice News – October 6, 2015)

https://news.vice.com/

“We’re seeing a debate nationally about whether a person should wear a piece
of clothing, yet our First Nations communities are dying because of the poor
water conditions in their communities,” Chief Isadore Day said at a press
conference Monday in Toronto.

“So to be clear, you are committing then within five years there will be
clean water on all, for all First Nations?” VICE News Canada managing editor
Natalie Alcoba asked Trudeau at the town hall.”In all those 93 communities,
yes,” Trudeau replied.

If he’s elected prime minister on Oct. 19, Canada’s Liberal leader would end the rampant, widespread issue of boil water advisories on First Nation reserves.

Justin Trudeau made the promise Monday night during a town hall hosted by VICE Canada following announcements earlier that day by two First Nations that have each endured boil water advisories for nearly 20 years.

“We have 93 different communities under 133 different boil water advisories across the country,” Trudeau said when asked about the water issue.

Read more

John Baird says pushback needed to support mining (Northern Miner – October 8, 2015)

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

Former Foreign Minister John Baird says the mining industry and government “must play offence, not defence,” when it comes to defending their interests and combatting anti-mining activism.

“Far too often, the industry, and to some extent government, are playing defence when it comes to anti-mining activists and their close friends in the media,” Baird declared in a keynote address at a mining conference in Toronto. “To a great extent, anti-mining activism has become a bit of an industry in this country, and it takes many, many forms.”

Baird resigned his post as cabinet minister earlier this year and now sits on the advisory board of Barrick Gold Corp., is a global strategic advisor to engineering and development consultancy Hatch Ltd., and is a senior advisor at Bennett Jones, a law firm active in the mining industry.

“You would be absolutely amazed at how many times that we discovered Canadian taxpayers’ dollars going to fight Canadian commercial interests abroad, especially in the extractive sector,” he told the conference, organized by Red Cloud, a capital markets advisory service firm.

Read more

Glencore Cutbacks Shift to Zinc in Metal Rout – by Rhiannon Hoyle (Wall Street Journal – October 8, 2015)

http://www.wsj.com/

The commodities giant will close two mines and cut up to 1,600 jobs globally as zinc prices slump

SYDNEY—Commodities trader Glencore PLC, which has faced intense pressure from investors over its debt pile, said it would cut global zinc production by a third after a collapse in prices of the industrial metal.

The Switzerland-headquartered commodities group said it would cut annual zinc production by roughly a third, or 500,000 metric tons, including closing its Lady Loretta mine in Australia and Iscaycruz mine in Peru. The changes will also reduce its annual output of lead, also produced at those mines, by about 100,000 tons, it said.

Shares in Glencore, the world’s biggest miner of the industrial metal, rose more than 6% in response to the move.

They are the latest in a string of mine closures for Glencore, from coal to platinum deposits, as sliding commodity prices make it harder for the resources giant to turn a profit. It comes at a time when the company has been under scrutiny by investors, concerned that falling raw-material prices could strain the mining and commodity-trading group’s finances. Glencore has already raised equity and suspended its dividend to help fireproof its balance sheet.

Read more

BHP Billiton exec talks up Nickel West prospects – by Barry Fitzgerald (The Australian – October 9, 2015)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

BHP Billiton has served up a surprise by talking up the prospects of its Nickel West division in the face of depressed prices for the stainless steel ingredient.

Nickel West is the price-challenged division BHP withdrew from sale last year after failing to attract reasonable offers, and it is the division that was not good enough to be included with the other non-core assets spun off by BHP into South32 earlier this year.

Because Nickel West was seen internally as doubly non-core to BHP, it was to be run for cash and would not receive new investment, raising fears that the once proud business — spawned during the Poseidon nickel boom and a cornerstone of BHP’s 2005 acquisition, WMC — would be left to wither on the vine.

But at the Australian Nickel conference in Perth, Nickel West’s new asset president, Eddy Haegel, said there was a now sense of “nervous excitement’’ in the division. He said Nickel West had embarked on a journey to reinvent itself by adopting a junior miner mindset, while remaining inside the world’s biggest mining company.

Read more

Bank of England checks commodity exposures of financial institutions – by Neil Hume, Martin Arnold and David Sheppard (Financial Times – October 8, 2015)

http://www.ft.com/

The Bank of England has asked British financial institutions to reveal their full exposure to commodity traders and falling prices of raw materials amid concerns over the impact of the oil and metals slump.

The Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority, which was set up in 2012 to ensure the “safety and soundness” of banks in the wake of the financial crisis, sent the requests to the UK’s big banks in the past week, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The PRA move that mirrors similar inquiries it made earlier this year about the banks’ exposure to Greece and to China, was prompted by a sharp drop in the shares of Glencore, the biggest publicly listed trading-house-cum-miner at the start of last week.

It was not provoked by any immediate concerns of a default, a person familiar with the matter said, but it was checking that banks knew what their exposures were to individual commodity houses and that they had examined the wider knock-on effects if a large commodity trader was to collapse.

Read more

[Alaska] Polls show concern over transboundary mining, desire for action – by (Juneau Empire – October 9, 2015)

http://juneauempire.com/

Salmon Beyond Borders and SkeenaWild, groups from Alaska and British Columbia that have opposed mining in BC and Alaska’s transboundary river watersheds, recently received the results of two polls they say show a clear desire for action on both sides of the border.

The two polls, one in Alaska and one in B.C., were commissioned by the groups and conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. Some highlights from a press release include:

• Nearly three-quarters of Alaska respondents expressed concern about a mining waste spill in B.C. affecting shared watersheds that drain into Alaska, with the number jumping to 86 percent for Southeast Alaska respondents.

• Seventy-six percent of Alaska respondents want Alaska to have a seat at an international table to address concerns about upstream B.C. mining in shared transboundary watersheds. Forty-five percent said their vote for a member of Congress hinges on elected officials pushing for this seat at the table.

Read more

Russia prepares for large-scale rare earth metals production – by Eugene Gerden (Investorintel.com – October 8, 2015)

http://investorintel.com/

The government of Russia’s Murmansk region, a region, located in the northwestern part of Russia, has started a search of an investor for the development of the local Afrikandovsky field of rare-earth metals, according to Alexei Tyukavin, first deputy-governor of the region.

According to Murmansk regional government, successfull development of the field will allow to establish a full-scale production of titanium dioxide, as well as rare-earth metals.

Estimated volume of investments in the project is 8 billion rubles (US$200 million). Ore reserves of the field will ensure continous operation of a mine and processing complex, that will be built later during the next 100 years.

The tender is expected to be completed by the end October of the current year. The license for an investor will be granted for 25 years. In addition to rare earth metals, titanium, iron, tantalum, niobium and other metals.

The Russian government puts big hopes on the implementation of the project, considering the Murmansk region as a new center of Russia’s rare-earth metals production.

Read more

Timmins Museum marks 40 years of its own history – by Sarah Moore (Timmins Daily Press – October 7, 2015)

The Daily Press is the city of Timmins broadsheet newspaper.

TIMMINS – There’s been scandal, engineering marvels and, of course, there has been gold — and the Timmins Museum has brought that rich history to life for the last 40 years.

The museum, which is now located on Second Avenue in the city’s downtown, has been operating since 1975. It was initially opened as a National Exhibition Centre in South Porcupine, one of only 23 in Canada, to house travelling exhibitions from across the country.

Four years after the centre was created, a community museum component was also added to showcase permanent collections spotlighting artifacts that told the story of the City of Timmins, specifically.

“The community had been looking for a museum since the early 1950s,” said Karen Bachmann, the director/curator of the Timmins Museum. “Pieces had already been collected by the chamber of commerce that at the time were being stored at the chamber, the fire hall in Porcupine, the vaults at city hall and in some people’s homes, so it brought together a lot of this stuff.”

Read more