Canada Mining – Page 234 – Republic of Mining

‘This one is special’: Fission Uranium’s monster resource estimate rekindles takeover chatter – by Peter Koven (National Post – January 13, 2015)

January 13, 2015

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

The monster resource estimate announced by Fission Uranium Corp. has boosted takeover speculation around the company, and chief executive Dev Randhawa isn’t doing anything to douse that talk.

He said in an interview Monday that investment bankers have already set up a data room for potential bidders. But he is in no rush to do a deal, as the company continues to expand its Patterson Lake South (PLS) uranium discovery in Saskatchewan’s Athabasca Basin.

“We don’t control if someone comes and makes a run at us. We are ready for it if someone does,” Mr. Randhawa said. It has been clear for several months that Fission’s PLS discovery is one of the best uranium finds in decades. But investors and analysts were still highly impressed when they saw the initial resource estimate.

Kelowna, B.C.-based Fission said late Friday the deposit contains an estimated 105.5 million pounds of uranium resources, of which almost 80 million are in the “indicated” category (the rest are in the more speculative “inferred” category). While the discovery is much smaller than Saskatchewan’s two largest uranium mines (McArthur River and Cigar Lake), it compares favourably to everything else in the province. And more than half of the resource comprises a “high-grade zone” that could potentially be mined at very low costs.

Obituary for John Patrick Sheridan (Toronto, Canada)

January 14, 2015January 12, 2015

Toronto – John Patrick Sheridan passed away on Saturday, January 10, 2015 at Sunnybrook Hospital after a lengthy battle.

He leaves behind his wife of 57 years Marjorie (Gilchrist), 81; his three sons, Michael (and his wife Grace), Patrick (and his wife Christa), David (and his wife Jeanine), and his daughter Susan (and her husband Nicholas): seven grandchildren Ryan, Sydney, Taylor, Cole, Seumas, Charlie and Humboldt.

He was born and raised in West Toronto to Susan Alberta and Charles Edward Sheridan with his two sisters, Marjorie and Mary (predeceased).

In his early days he played basketball and football at Runnymede Collegiate class of 1951. He spoke often of taking the street car to High Park to go fishing. Upon graduation from high school, he joined the 411 Fighter Squadron of the RCAF reserve program in 1952 to pay for his studies at U of T in Geophysical Engineering (class of 1955). He remained in the RCAF reserves until 1959 during which time he made many of his closest friends.

He met his wife, Marjorie, on a blind date in Toronto and they were married in 1958 in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. They had four children and lived in North Toronto.

He has been described as a “maverick” in the mining business, having staked mining claims all over Northern Ontario and Quebec in the 1950s.

Zambia pressed to reverse mining royalty hike – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – January 12, 2015)

January 12, 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.

JOHANNESBURG — Zambia’s government is under mounting pressure to reverse a royalty hike that could trigger thousands of layoffs at a copper mine owned by Barrick Gold Corp., but a rollback is unlikely until after an election this month, analysts say.

Trade unions, business groups and opposition politicians are pressing for a reversal of the sharp increase in the royalty rate on open-pit mining in Zambia. At least 12,000 jobs are in jeopardy across the mining sector in Africa’s second-biggest copper-producing nation, according to the Chamber of Miles of Zambia.

“It has created a lot of anxiety among Zambian workers,” said Nevers Mumba, one of the three leading presidential candidates in the Jan. 20 election. “Other investors could pull out of Zambia,” he said in an interview.

“There’s a risk of a run in that sector. I’m concerned about the ripple effect – it could have a terrible impact.” Under the new tax regime, which took effect on Jan. 1, the royalty on open-pit mining has tripled to 20 per cent, compared to the previous rate of 6 per cent.

Barrick and First Quantum Minerals Ltd. are among the Canadian mining companies that will be heavily affected by Zambia’s higher royalty rates. Barrick and First Quantum are two of the biggest foreign investors and private employers in Zambia.

Robert Friedland’s mining showdown in South Africa – by Geoffrey York (Globe and Mail – January 10, 2015)

January 12, 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.

MOKOPANE, SOUTH AFRICA — The two men took the cash from an envelope, counted it carefully and spread it on the table in front of Raesetsa Makgabo in her village home. It was exactly 5,250 South African rand (about $450 U.S.).

She says she remembers vividly what the men said next: They told her to take the money and allow the Canadian mining company to begin drilling on her maize fields – or lose her monthly pension.

Illiterate and unable to read the document in front of her, but fearful of losing the $120 monthly pension that was her main income, the 82-year-old villager took the pen and marked the agreement with a humble X beside her name. The two men, including an official from Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., signed the document dated May 10, 2011. Then the drilling began.

Ivanhoe’s $1.7-billion project, forecast to become the world’s biggest new platinum mine, is crucial to the fate of the Vancouver-based company – and to thousands of impoverished villagers near the site.

Ivanhoe says its Platreef mine will provide 10,000 direct and indirect jobs, along with a minority ownership stake for 150,000 residents and employees under South Africa’s black-empowerment rules.

Bre-X lawyer’s fight in the spotlight – by Rachel Mendleson (Toronto Star – January 9, 2015)

January 9, 2015

The Toronto Star has the largest circulation in Canada. The paper has an enormous impact on federal and Ontario politics as well as shaping public opinion.

Battle continues in court for man who got client acquitted after mining scandal.

The legal community is closely watching the latest round in Bre-X lawyer Joe Groia’s battle to defend himself against a controversial charge of “incivility,” which is raising fundamental questions of judicial independence and freedom of speech.

In Ontario Divisional Court on Thursday, Groia’s lawyer framed the case as an opportunity to preserve the right of all lawyers to vigorously defend their clients without fear of reprisal from an “overzealous” professional regulator.

“No lawyer wants to be the next Joe Groia,” lawyer Earl Cherniak told the panel of three judges. “Groia (has) defended his prosecution, not only for his own sake, but also in the public interest in the profession.”

The judicial review follows nearly five years of legal wrangling over charges of professional misconduct by the Law Society of Upper Canada, which took issue with Groia’s behaviour in the early stages of the insider-trading trial of former Bre-X geologist John Felderhof.

A mining company, Bre-X Minerals announced a promising find of gold in Indonesia in 1995, sending its stock price soaring. But the samples were found to be fraudulent — the largest mining fraud in Canadian history, driving the company into bankruptcy.

Barrick Gold Corp comes under fire, cut to underperform in extensive analyst report – by Peter Koven (National Post – January 9, 2015)

January 9, 2015

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

Barrick Gold Corp. has received plenty of criticism from the investment community over the past few years, much of it deserved. But few have been as thorough and pointed as Macquarie Capital Markets analyst Ron Stewart.

Over the course of a 17-page report released Wednesday, he argued the battered stock should still be avoided, even though it has already dropped more than 70% over the past three years, and pointed to a lot of faults at Barrick: lack of growth, excess debt, poor strategic clarity, operating risk and a head office that appears to be in turmoil.

Nearly every sell-side analyst calls Toronto-based Barrick a buy or a hold. But Mr. Stewart downgraded it to underperform with a target of $11 a share, noting the company has “limited options” to repair its balance sheet and needs more time to regain investor confidence.

“Miners are known for their ability to dig holes; big miners dig big ones,” he said in the report. “Barrick, the biggest gold miner on the planet, however has dug itself into a huge financial hole that is going to be difficult to get out of any time soon unless metal prices improve.”

Of course, he noted the company’s two biggest errors of the last few years: the botched construction of the Pascua-Lama project in South America and the $7.3-billion purchase of the Lumwana mine, which is set to be shuttered because of a massive royalty hike in Zambia.

Will 2015 finally be the year of the national securities regulator? – by Gordon Isfeld (National Post – January 5, 2015)

January 7, 2015

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

OTTAWA — It might have seemed like a straightforward proposition at the time: tying the strands of securities regulators across this country into one federal body with a unified set of rules.

But Canada — now a respected member of the Group of 20 industrialized nations — has for decades fallen short of that goal, leaving it out of step with global peers who long ago established national oversight of their respective capital markets.

Despite piling on study after study — some dating back nearly 60 years — along with numerous false starts, Ottawa is still less than halfway to its goal of creating some form of federal watchdog here.

It could be said that the most recent attempt, with the Conservative government pushing in 2013 to create the yet-to-be-launched Cooperative Capital Markets Regulatory System, the concept has finally reached the critical mass of signatories necessary to legitimize its existence and move forward.

Even now, of the country’s 13 provinces and territories, only five — Ontario and British Columbia in 2013, and Saskatchewan, New Brunswick and Prince Edwards Island in 2014 — are officially on board, while eight remain outside the framework. And of those, at least three — Quebec, Alberta and Manitoba — have vowed not to join.

Can the once-mighty TSX Venture Exchange be saved? – by Peter Koven (National Post – December 27, 2014)

January 7, 2015

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

Canada’s junior stock market is in crisis. Hundreds and hundreds of companies can’t raise money, do anything productive to create shareholder value, or get anyone to trade their stocks. But the biggest problem may be that most people just don’t seem to care.

Tell a Canadian market participant that the S&P/TSX Venture composite index hit an all-time low in December and you will likely be met with astonishment.

The once-mighty junior exchange, a place where issuers have raised more than $80 billion in capital during the past 13 years, has fallen so far off the investment community’s radar that most investors seem to have no idea it is plumbing such depths.

The raw numbers are grim. The index is down a whopping 73% since March 2011, and 80% from its all-time high in 2007. The total market value of the exchange’s nearly 2,000 companies is less than $30 billion.

By comparison, the market cap of companies on the Canadian Venture Exchange was more than $100 billion in 2001 before it was acquired by TMX Group Inc. and became the TSX Venture Exchange.

Energy Fuels strikes $179M deal to buy Uranerz amid rough uranium market – by Peter Koven (National Post – January 6, 2015)

January 6, 2015

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

TORONTO – Two Toronto-listed uranium miners are merging as they try to build a stronger company that can thrive amid low uranium prices.

Energy Fuels Inc. announced Monday that it is buying Uranerz Energy Corp. for roughly $179-million in stock. The move brings together two U.S.-focused companies that are struggling to make money and attract investor interest in the stagnant uranium market.

The offer is a 37% premium to Uranerz’s closing price last Friday, and some investors thought that was too rich. Energy Fuels shares plunged almost 15% on Monday after the deal was announced.

“The premium didn’t make a lot of sense to us,” said Aaron Salz, a research associate at Dundee Capital Markets. Dundee concluded that the deal is dilutive to Energy Fuels’ net asset value by 35%, and thinks a competing bid is unlikely.

But from a strategic standpoint, experts said the deal is logical. It gives Energy Fuels more scale, lower operating costs and a uranium mine in Wyoming called Nichols Ranch where production can be expanded.

Baffinland deflects Nunavut regulator’s recommendations (Nunatsiaq News – January 6, 2015)

January 6, 2015

http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/

“Changes in the health of caribou because of project activities are unlikely”

Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. has responded to recommendations from the Nunavut Impact Review Board, but the company doesn’t plan to follow many of them at its Mary River mine site.

The NIRB’s 2013-14 monitoring report -— designed to keep Mary River in compliance with its project certificate — did not raise any issues of significant concern, but made some recommendations following a September 2014 site visit.

Most had to do with different wildlife monitoring and waste management programs at the Baffin site, like the NIRB’s recommendation to analyse dust-fall or ash in caribou pellets.

Baffinland said it would continue to gather caribou fecal pellet samples for different kinds of monitoring, but that the program would be limited because there are so few caribou in the project area.

“Samples will be analyzed for ash content when a sufficient sample of fresh pellets are collected,” read Baffinland’s Dec. 12 response to the NIRB.

2014 in review: Decline and fall in the mining industry – by Rachelle Younglai (Globe and Mail – January 1, 2015)

January 5, 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.

The mining industry hasn’t had much good news in recent years, so further signs of an economic slowdown in China rattled already-skittish producers. With financial-sector reform choking off growth in China’s property sector, which uses vast amounts of raw material, a bloodbath for metal and mineral prices ensued. Companies’ stocks sank to decade lows, and cost cutting became the critical part of every miner’s strategy. Here are 2014’s pivotal moments.

Iron ore glut

Iron ore lost 50 per cent of its value in 2014, falling below $67 (U.S.) a tonne because of weak demand from China and a glut of supply. The world’s biggest producers – Rio Tinto Group, BHP Billiton Ltd., Vale SA and Fortescue Metals Group – responded not by cutting production, but by continuing to increase it, despite the low prices for the steel-making ingredient.

Their strategy has taken a toll on smaller, higher cost producers, such as Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. and Labrador Iron Mines Holdings Ltd. Both have suspended operations at iron ore mines in the Labrador Trough, a 1,600-kilometre-long area that straddles Labrador and Quebec. Two iron ore mines there, Bloom Lake and Wabush, have been shuttered, putting hundreds out of work.

Canadian prosperity requires a strong resource industry – by Gwyn Morgan (Globe and Mail – January 5, 2015)

January 5, 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.

“One of the key messages in Mr. Olson’s Rise and Decline of Nations is that
societies who don’t understand how their wealth is generated are destined
to lose it.” (Gwyn Morgan – January 5, 2015)

It’s been thirty years since Mancur Olson, the late American Economist, wrote The Rise and Decline of Nations. The premise of his widely acclaimed book is the longer a society enjoys political stability, the more likely it is to develop powerful special interest groups that erode economic prosperity. His words have proven prescient as we witness Europe’s debt-burdened stagnation and degeneration of the U.S. Congress into fractious ideological gridlock.

Canada weathered the 2008 economic crisis better than other countries, emerging as one of the world’s most financially sound and prosperous countries. The cornerstone that distinguishes Canada’s prosperity is our rich resource endowment, which generates some two million jobs, more than half of all merchandise exports and one-third of all capital investment.

Resource companies are planning capital investment of more than $600-billion over the next decade, creating hundreds of thousands more new jobs each year. But a new dynamic has emerged that threatens to stymie these investments.

Canada’s mining sector braces for another challenging year – by Ross Marowits (CBC News/Canadian Press – December 28, 2014)

January 5, 2015

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

Industry will benefit from weakened Canadian dollar

Canada’s mining sector is bracing for another challenging year in 2015 as slower growth in China is expected to continue to dampen selling prices for many metals.

Iron ore suffered the biggest drop in the past year, losing nearly half its value to reach the lowest price in more than five years. Some expect the price could fall further — perhaps to US$60 per tonne — on increased supply from Australia and Brazil by giants like Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, outpaces demand.

Coal, silver, potash, copper and lead prices also weakened in the past year. Not all metals and minerals suffered. Nickel was the big winner, with prices rising 17 per cent following Indonesia’s ban on exports. Other gainers were uranium, aluminum, zinc and diamonds.

Although mining is in a multi-year global slump, prices are significantly higher than they were a decade ago, said Pierre Gratton, president of the Mining Association of Canada.

“It’s a cyclical industry and we have to weather this,” he said in an interview. Gratton said mining companies are very focused on reducing costs and will benefit from both the weakened Canadian dollar and dramatically lower energy prices.

Roger Warren, Giant Mine Bomber, Has Day Parole Extended (Canadian Press/Huffington Post – December 24, 2014)

January 5, 2015

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/

A man who murdered nine people by bombing a Yellowknife mine 22 years ago continues to make “positive contributions to society” since being released from prison, a federal parole board has ruled in extending Roger Warren’s day parole.

The Parole Board of Canada granted the 71-year-old an additional six months parole on Nov. 21, stating board members found that by all accounts he is doing well and respecting conditions the board imposed.

“While mindful that the victims of your crime remain deeply affected by your actions,” reads recently obtained documents, “with no evidence that your risk is increasing and given the positive work you have done throughout your incarceration and community supervision, the Board finds that your risk to reoffend is not undue…”

Warren was sentenced to life in prison for second degree murder in January 1995 in the killing of nine replacement workers during an acrimonious strike at the Giant Mine.

He was found guilty of rigging a trip wire that detonated a massive dynamite explosion deep underground when it was snagged by a passing ore car holding the victims.