Kamloops region is particularly poised for growth from new projects and expansions
 
KAMLOOPS, BC, May 10, 2012 /CNW/ – British Columbia’s robust and responsible resource sector will help propel the $140 billion in new mining investment expected across Canada over the next five years, says the Mining Association of Canada (MAC). MAC estimates that B.C. has the potential to see more than $30 billion in investment from 30 projects over the next 10 years.
 
“As the third-largest mining jurisdiction in the country, B.C. will be a major contributor to the overall strength of the mining industry, which we expect to remain steady for years to come. That will bring numerous economic benefits and opportunities to British Columbians, while at the same time, help Canada maintain its status as a global mining superpower,” Pierre Gratton, MAC President and CEO, said during a speech in Kamloops on Thursday to celebrate Mining Week in the B.C.-interior city.
 
The City of Kamloops declared May 6-12 Mining Week alongside other celebrations taking place across the province in May to recognize the importance of the industry to the B.C. economy.
 
The mineral exploration, development and mining industry generated $8.9 billion in economic activity in B.C. in 2010, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).  The industry generated more than 21,000 direct jobs, 8,200 of which were at operating mines across the province and paid average salaries of more than $100,000 annually. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.canada.com/index.html

NEW GLASGOW, N.S. — High school students placed white roses on the Westray mine disaster memorial Wednesday during a ceremony that urged future generations to never forget the importance of worker safety.

Twenty-six flowers were laid on the dark granite stone, one for each of the miners whose names are etched into the memorial of the May 9, 1992 disaster.

Under leaden skies that delivered a steady downpour, Rev. Glen Matheson gave an account of the history of mining disasters, saying the explosion in Plymouth, N.S., at the Westray mine had been among the worst in Canadian history.

He read from the public inquiry into the disaster, which found that it was the result of “incompetence, mismanagement, bureaucratic bungling, deceit, ruthlessness, coverups, apathy, expediency and cynical indifference.” Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Brian Emmett is a principal at the Ottawa-based consulting firm Sussex Circle. He served as Canada’s first commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, and was an assistant deputy minister (policy) at Environment Canada, a vice-president (policy) at the Canadian International Development Agency and an assistant deputy minister (Canadian Forest Service) at Natural Resources Canada.

The way policy-makers and Canadians think about natural resources (fossil fuels, minerals and forest resources) is fundamentally important to the Canadian economy. How we perceive and evaluate our natural resource endowment shapes policy frameworks, which, in turn, can have profound effects on the way we live and the way we earn our living.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper touched on this during the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena last month, saying: “Resource development has vast power to change the way a nation lives. … It is also something which is tremendously responsive to actions of government.” Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Canada’s big gold miners are under siege in the markets, their shares tumbling even as bullion rides high, and they’re vowing to fight back.

“I’m a shareholder and my family is a shareholder, and we’re determined to change that around,” Tye Burt, chief executive officer of Kinross Gold Corp., declared Wednesday, referring to the company’s languishing stock price.

Mr. Burt and others in the industry are lamenting the gap between the value of gold stocks and the price of bullion, which is holding near-record highs after a surge that is almost a decade old now.

Kinross shares are down 60 per cent in the past eight months. Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX-T37.650.942.56%), the world’s biggest producer, has seen its stock sink 34 per cent since September, while smaller rivals such as Yamana Gold Inc. (YRI-T13.750.332.46%) and Iamgold Corp. (IMG-T10.80-0.07-0.64%) have suffered declines of 27 per cent and 55 per cent respectively from their 52-week highs. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

OTTAWA— Ottawa is promising to tell Canadians a lot more about foreign takeovers – the ones it reviews and the ones it rejects. That’s a good thing.

But it’s still well short of what the Conservative government pledged in late 2010 after abruptly killing BHP Billiton’s hostile bid for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and then-industry minister Tony Clement promised two things. They said they would clarify the key test used to judge foreign takeovers – the so-called “net benefit” determination. And secondly, they said they would get the House of Commons industry committee to review the Investment Canada Act.
 
Neither of these things has happened. Instead, the government is giving the Industry Minister new powers to disclose more information about takeovers without betraying commercial secrets. The bill also allows the government to compel would-be foreign acquirers to put up bonds to backstop their commitments to create jobs or invest in Canada. Read the rest of this entry »

www.resourceinvestor.com

I will be attending the Hard Asset Conference in New York a little later this month where I am sure the topic of gold will be hotly debated.  For one, I believe that gold is relatively cheap and will make its way considerably higher.  As for gold equities, they are trading at valuations only seen once in the last thirty plus years and despite all those who argue that gold ETFs have killed gold stock investment, I would not be too quick to count these stocks out.
 
With that said, I would like to talk about a more important commodity for mankind.  Yes, gold is important for those who are concerned about purchasing power, currency devaluation and a general hedge against economic and political uncertainty but when push comes to shove, could anyone really argue that anything is more important than food?
 
All food is grown (crops, fruits, vegetables, etc.) or comes from animals that themselves survive on things that are grown and, in order to grow things, we need fertilizer.  Fertilizer in comprised of nitrogen, potash and phosphate and whether you realize it or not, North America has a problem when it comes to phosphate because North America is not self-reliant. 

Canada has only one operating phosphate mine (Agrium’s Kapuskasing Mine) which is scheduled to close within a year and Florida’s operations have had issues mostly brought on by environmental concerns.  The result is that North America’s deficit will continue to grow adding to our reliance on foreign countries to offset this shortage. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/index.html

It’s what some on the West Coast might regard as an inconvenient truth. Although it is known for its spectacular natural beauty and as a hotbed of environmental activism, Vancouver is actually built on old-fashioned resource wealth.

Many of the key commodities Canada exports to the world – from lumber, pulp, coal and wheat to potash and yes, even Alberta’s crude oil – have been shipped for decades through the city’s sprawling port.

Already Canada’s busiest cargo hub and a vital link for Asian imports, Port Metro Vancouver plans to boost capacity by 50 per cent over the next 15 years. Yet, the port is only one aspect of the crucial role Vancouver plays in Canada’s resource-driven economy, which needs expanded access to Asia’s fast-growing markets to ensure the country’s future prosperity.

Dozens of major mining, forest products and resource services firms are based in Vancouver, with operations all over the world. These firms in turn drive much of the activity in the city’s legal, accounting and investment firms. Read the rest of this entry »

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/index.html

EDMONTON - Walking into the Shaw Conference Centre, professional gold panner Yukon Dan Moore stands over eager young miners swishing water through gravel, looking for gleaming flecks.

“Folks always ask is there any gold left in the world. Wow, there will always be gold, it’s everywhere,” said Moore, who with a long grey beard, leather hat and vest looks like he just left his riverside haunts. “I pan in the Thompson and other rivers in B.C., and I make a good living at it.”

If Moore is at one end of the mining process, University of Alberta mining engineering students such as Josh Andrews are at the other. He and others watched children driving Caterpillar simulators or using a toothpick to break apart a chocolate chip cookie — the toothpicks, which cost pretend money, represent equipment, while the chocolate is the ore.

Break too many toothpicks and the cost of extraction will be more than the ore is worth. “It’s a basic mining concept. We are trying to get kids to understand the challenges of mining,” said Andrews, who graduates and leaves soon for his first full-time job with Teck, Canada’s largest mining company. Read the rest of this entry »

Founded in 1928, Canadian Business is the longest-publishing business magazine in Canada.

Diamonds are symbols of permanence. Some—thought to have arrived on meteorites—may be 10 billion years old, more ancient than the planet itself. The fortunes of diamond mines, by contrast, can be protean. That’s worrisome for the Northwest Territories, home to Canada’s two largest diamond mines, Ekati and Diavik. Since November, their majority owners (multinational mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, respectively) both have commenced reviews of their diamond operations, effectively putting both mines up for sale. Some analysts speculate these reviews could result in individual mine sales or initial public offerings of entire diamond divisions.
 
Canada’s diamond industry has also reached a crossroads, for related reasons. It’s been more than two decades since geologists Chuck Fipke and Stewart Blusson discovered diamond-rich kimberlites in the N.W.T., sparking the biggest staking rush in Canadian history. Their Ekati mine, developed in partnership with BHP, opened in 1998. Rio’s Diavik followed in 2003. It’s tough to understate these mines’ impact on an industry characterized for most of the 20th century by monopolistic practices. By the early 2000s, Canada had become the world’s third-largest diamond-producing nation, behind Botswana and Russia. Our mines helped break the famed De Beers cartel.
 
It couldn’t last forever, though. In 2007, two men pondered the industry’s future. Tom Hoefer, then manager of public affairs at Diavik, warned at a conference that the industry needed to ramp up exploration. Canada’s mines were all old discoveries, and it was taking ever longer to bring new ones into service. Read the rest of this entry »

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

Securities regulators are back on the warpath when it comes to junior miners. In the past several months regulators have been busy sending a harsh message to companies that there will be consequences if they don’t follow precise disclosure rules related to their projects. Miners have lost out on financings and had trading of their stocks halted after getting in the crosshairs of securities commissions, a development that only adds more risk to an already risky business.

“It has certainly been a wake-up call to capital market participants that they need to be mindful of their technical disclosure, or their deals can get hung up,” said Jeremy Fraiberg, co-chair of the mining group at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

For investors, the crackdown is a reminder that caution is always warranted when looking at how companies interpret drilling results, economic assessments and other data. While Canada has come a long way from the Bre-X era, disclosure deficiencies still pop up.

Provincial regulators have recently gone after a long list of juniors for alleged lapses. Some of the most talked-about names include Extorre Gold Mines Ltd., Rio Novo Gold Inc., Karnalyte Resources Inc., Orbite Aluminae Inc., and Clifton Star Resources Inc. None of them have categorically denied making mistakes. Read the rest of this entry »

 http://www.ctvnews.ca/

MONTREAL — Canada could play a key role in a new international space race, with the next sprint to the moon gearing up as an extra-terrestrial gold rush.

Industry insiders will be watching closely this week as the heads of the world’s five biggest space agencies get together in Quebec City, where the partners on the International Space Station will discuss more than just the future of the orbiting lab.

They will also address an idea gaining currency in business and scientific circles: that within human reach lies an unfathomable wealth of resources, some of them common on Earth and others so exotic that they could change the way we live.

Canada could figure prominently in any discussion about lunar exploration, with nearly one-quarter of the world’s top mining companies headquartered here and this country also known for robotics like the famous Canadarm.

Several countries, including China, have expressed a desire to start mining the moon’s resources. The mining industry is now waiting for the Canadian Space Agency to make its intentions known, while the agency awaits direction from the federal government. Read the rest of this entry »

http://aheadoftheherd.com/

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information

A combination of mass retirements and increasing natural resource demand from emerging economies has created a crisis in the resource extraction sector – one which is definitely not on investor’s radar screens. 

Currently there is a “massive talent gap” that is going to get worse because the global mining industry is experiencing the biggest wave of workforce retirements in 70 years – the oldest baby boomers turned 65 years old in 2011.

The Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MIHRC) has recently said that about 40% of the resource extraction industry’s workforce is at least 50 years old and one third of them are expected to retire by 2022. 

The organization also forecasts that the Canadian mining industry will face a shortage of 140,000 workers by 2021 – this number of workers being needed just to maintain current levels of production. 

The Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada warned a severe oil patch labor shortage is looming and that the “patch” will need to hire 24,000 new employees by 2014.  Read the rest of this entry »

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

CALGARY — Control over scarce resources has spawned more than a few wars throughout history and the fight for skilled labour is simply the latest.

This weekend, dozens of Australian companies will be taking part in a Calgary jobs expo to woo Canadian-trained scientists and engineers to relocate Down Under. The expo, which will move on to Vancouver and Edmonton next week, comes as Canada’s resource sector is struggling to keep skilled workers.

“Right now there is a global war for talent in any resource or mining industry,” Rupert Merrick of Working In Ltd., the Australian company organizing the expo, said during a Thursday news conference. “The skills that they need are not present in sufficient numbers within their own country.”

Australia alone will need to recruit 100,000 skilled professionals to develop more than A$150-billion in mining and liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects set to roll out in the near future. With domestic labour extremely limited, local firms have turned to Canada for talent with great success. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

This has been a busy year for Brian Pukier, a partner with law firm Stikeman Elliott LLP and head of its Toronto mergers and acquisitions group. After a slow summer last year, the M&A space is finally back to normal, he says. “We’d always like more deals, but our firm is keeping busy,” he says.
 
Mr. Pukier’s firm does a lot of work in the resource space; he’s seen a lot of deals done in mining, energy and oil and gas, in particular. He points to high commodity prices, demand from Asia and higher overall confidence in the economy as reasons for the increase.
 
M&As won’t return to 2006-2007 levels, when everyone was making deals, he says, but the rest of the year will only get better. “As long as banks are lending, which they are, then I think we’re going to stay at least consistent,” he says.
 
While this country’s M&A market is doing nicely, the same can’t be said for the rest of the world. Global M&A activity last quarter was down 23 per cent year-over-year, according to Dealogic, a London, U.K.-based company that helps banks analyze capital markets. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Move over rare earths – graphite is the new darling of the mining industry. Canadian graphite miners are angling to be high-end suppliers to the global lithium ion battery market, where companies such as LG, Samsung, Mitsubishi and Hitachi are fuelling growing demand for new technologies ranging from smartphones and laptops to electric cars.

After decades of near-dormancy in the graphite industry, an increasing number of companies are racing to produce flake graphite, the purest natural form of the mineral touted for its lightness, extreme resistance to heat and high conductivity.

The mineral is a major component of lithium batteries – lighter and more powerful than traditional batteries – that are finding their way into ever broader markets, from laptops and cordless power tools to hybrid electric vehicles.

“If electric cars start happening, this is going to go through the roof,” said Simon Moores, a graphite market specialist for Industrial Minerals, a group that gathers data on the graphite and other mineral industries. Read the rest of this entry »