Copper – Page 47 – Republic of Mining

World’s Top Copper Producer Hit by Unrest as Mines to Halt – by Laura Millan Lombrana (Bloomberg News – October 23, 2019)

October 23, 2019

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Chile’s powerful copper-mining unions are encouraging workers in the world’s top producer to down tools and join anti-government demonstrations that have swept the country for the past five days.

Unions representing workers across Chile’s main mines have announced one or two-day stoppages as they call for the government to withdraw the state of emergency and listen to people’s demands. Port terminals, including some key copper-shipping facilities, will join the stoppage, unions said.

While Chile is the top copper-producing nation, churning out just under a third of global supply, it’s still unclear how much impact the disruption could have on copper markets, if any.

President Pinera Says Chile ‘at War,’ Calls on People to Choose Sides – by Laura Millan Lombrana and Sebastian Boyd (Yahoo/Bloomberg News – October 21, 2019)

October 21, 2019

https://finance.yahoo.com/

(Bloomberg) — Thousands of protesters gathered in Chilean city squares on Monday after a weekend marked by images of soldiers and police clashing with demonstrators and shooting at masked looters. The Chilean peso and local shares slumped.

Chile is enduring a fourth day of rioting and protests in the worst social unrest since the country returned to democracy in the late 1980s to become Latin America’s most prosperous nation.

Eleven people have died and 1,500 have been arrested in a wave of arson attacks, looting and riots that have brought cities to a near standstill. President Sebastian Pinera declared a state of emergency Friday and called on the army to restore order.

Nickel Relives The Failed Attempt By The Hunt Brothers To Corner Silver – by Tim Treadgold (Forbes Magazine – October 20, 2019)

October 21, 2019

https://www.forbes.com/

Attempts to “corner” a metal market invariably end in tears, if not jail time, which is what happened with silver in 1980 and copper in 1995, so when the market in nickel “inverted” last week warnings were issued that an old game was being played in one of the new generation of battery metals.

The term inverted essentially means that the short-term price of a product, whether a metal or a government bond, rises above the long-term price, which is unnatural and a sign of trouble ahead. An inverted bond yield can be interpreted as a recession pointer.

Three Brothers And A Silver Plan

Silver had its crisis when three brothers who were heirs to the Hunt Oil fortune acquired, or attempted to acquire, one-third of the global supply of the metal.

China takes the long view on copper despite soft market – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – October 21, 2019)

October 21, 2019

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

China is taking the extremely long view on copper. State-owned Chinese firms are making big bets on Canadian copper companies at a time when other investors are backing away amid weak commodity prices and a shaky international geopolitical climate.

Last week, state-owned Chinese miner Jiangxi Copper Co. Ltd. announced it had amassed a 10.8-per-cent stake in Vancouver-based First Quantum Minerals Ltd., through Pangaea Investment Management Ltd. Jiangxi also said it may end up increasing its stake to 16.6 per cent through a share purchase agreement with an unnamed counterparty.

Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., which is developing the giant Kamoa-Kakula copper resource in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has attracted two major Chinese backers over the past few years.

Chile’s Codelco ditches ‘green copper’ push, eyes wider mine clean-up in two years – by Fabian Cambero (Reuters U.S. – October 17, 2019)

October 21, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – In 2017, the world’s largest copper producer – Chile’s Codelco – announced a plan to sell “green copper” at a premium price to customers using more sustainable practices like renewable energy and recycled water to cut its carbon footprint.

The project has run aground however, Codelco insiders and an executive said, as the miner realized it would struggle to guarantee its copper’s sustainability once it left the mine to be melted down and taken to market. Without that, traders said, higher prices were unjustifiable.

Now, the world’s largest miner of the prized red metal told Reuters it would drop the “green copper” plan piloted in one of its smaller mines in favor of a broader initiative to make its product more sustainable.

Investment firm backed by China’s Jiangxi Copper takes 10.8-per-cent stake in Canada’s First Quantum – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – October 18, 2019)

October 18, 2019

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

An investment firm backed by Chinese state-owned Jiangxi Copper Company Ltd. has amassed a 10.8-per-cent stake in First Quantum Minerals Ltd., sending shares of Canada’s biggest copper miner sharply higher.

In September, The Globe and Mail reported that Vancouver-based First Quantum had hired bankers to fend off a potential takeover bid from Jiangxi Copper after the price of its stock had fallen over the past few months.

First Quantum later said it hadn’t discussed selling the company outright, but acknowledged it had held talks about selling a stake in its Zambian assets. On Thursday, the company said in a statement that in recent months it has been “in discussions with Jiangxi Copper regarding a possible investment in the Zambian assets of the company,” but there was “no certainty that any transaction will proceed.”

Chile’s Codelco ditches ‘green copper’ push, eyes wider mine clean-up in two years – by Fabian Cambero (Reuters U.S. – October 17, 2019)

October 17, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

The project has run aground however, Codelco insiders and an executive said, as the miner realised it would struggle to guarantee its copper’s sustainability once it left the mine to be melted down and taken to market. Without that, traders said, higher prices were unjustifiable.

Now, the world’s largest miner of the prized red metal told Reuters it would drop the “green copper” plan piloted in one of its smaller mines in favour of a broader initiative to make its product more sustainable.

U.S. edges China out of race to fund Bougainville independence vote – by Jonathan Barrett (Reuters U.S. – October 16, 2019)

October 16, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

SYDNEY (Reuters) – The United States and its Pacific allies have plugged a funding gap that endangered next month’s independence referendum in the Papua New Guinea (PNG) region of Bougainville, a strategic move that also sidelined China, two sources told Reuters.

Western nations are looking to rein in China’s influence in the increasingly contested Pacific, where it has recently drawn away two of Taiwan’s allies, Kiribati and the Solomon Islands, triggering a strong rebuke from the United States.

The vote in PNG’s autonomous region of Bougainville, formerly the site of a bloody civil conflict, will run from Nov. 23 to Dec. 7, and could trigger separation negotiations to create a new nation in the strategic waters of the Pacific.

Mine tales: Bisbee’s famed Lavender Pit wasn’t its only open-pit mine – by William Ascarza (Arizona Daily Star – October 14, 2019)

October 15, 2019

https://tucson.com/

Bisbee, in the Mule Mountains of southeastern Arizona, has an extensive mining history dating from the 1870s. It is said the value of copper produced from the Copper Queen in 1925 alone was valued 10 times more than the cost of the Gadsden Purchase, which was $10 million in 1854.

The first open pit mine at Bisbee was the Sacramento pit comprising 35 acres. It began as a shaft in 1911 and six years later developed as an open pit.

Extensive geological research had determined copper ore deposits throughout the Bisbee district resulting from a large mass of intrusive granite porphyry pushed up into the surrounding schist and limestone. The copper was deposited in limestone traps forming ore bodies. Over time, progressive layers of barren limestone were formed on top, with the entire mass tilting southeastward.

[Copper Mining] THE BOUGAINVILLE REFERENDUM AND BEYOND – by Ben Bohane (Lowyu Institute – October 8, 2019)

October 9, 2019

http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Australia has a long history and a complicated relationship with Bougainville, an island group to the east of the PNG mainland that was administered by Australia as part of Papua New Guinea for 60 years between 1915 and 1975.

On 23 November 2019, its 300 000 people will commence voting in an independence referendum, and a clear majority is expected to vote for independence from Papua New Guinea. The Bougainville Peace Agreement requires PNG and Bougainville to negotiate an outcome after the conclusion of the referendum, and Canberra has indicated that it will respect any settlement reached between them. James Marape, the new PNG prime minister, has expressed a clear preference for an autonomous, not independent, Bougainville.

With geostrategic rivalry growing across the Pacific, Australia will need to step up its engagement and consider further policy approaches to Bougainville if it wishes to remain a trusted peace and security broker in Melanesia. If the people of Bougainville vote for independence and are unable to reach agreement with the government of Papua New Guinea, the Bougainville issue may precipitate another regional crisis.

China tightens grip on Ivanhoe’s massive congo copper project – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – October 8, 2019)

October 9, 2019

https://www.mining.com/

Zijin, one of China’s largest mining groups, is increasing its stake in Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines (TSX:IVN) to 13.88% from 9.8% by acquiring 35.7 million shares from CITIC Metal and 12.9 million shares from founder Robert Friedland for about C$194 million ($146m).

The move means that Friedland’s interest in the company has shrunk to 13.2%, leaving the two Chinese companies as main shareholders.

Zijin, China’s No.1 gold producer and Ivanhoe’s partner in the massive Kamoa-Kakula copper deposit in the DRC, first acquired a stake in the Vancouver-based miner in 2015. Citic Metal followed suit last year, becoming Ivanhoe’s largest shareholder. Its ownership will fall to 26.4% with today’s transaction.

Column: Copper trapped between faltering supply and weak demand – by Andy Home (Reuters U.K. – October 2, 2019)

October 3, 2019

https://uk.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – It’s turning out to be a bad year for copper supply. Both mined and refined production fell in the first half of the year, according to the International Copper Study Group (ICSG). What was always going to be a year of weak supply growth has been made worse by a stream of supply disruptions.

At other times such production woes would have been a red flag for copper bulls, who like nothing more than trading copper’s notoriously volatile supply side. This year, however, falling production is doing no more than preventing the copper price falling further.

At $5,665 per tonne London Metal Exchange (LME) three-month copper is a long way off April’s highs above $6,600 and is now down by 3% on the start of January. The problem is that copper demand is faring just as badly as supply, with manufacturing activity contracting just about everywhere.

COLUMNS: We users of mineral resources should also be responsible enough to develop them – by Karl Everett (Duluth News Tribune – September 24, 2019)

September 24, 2019

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/

Karl Everett of Duluth is a professional engineer, geologist, environmental health and safety consultant, and vice president of the Mesabi Range Geological Society.

We don’t need to buy Greenland for mineral resources; we have plenty of mineral resources to develop right here in northern Minnesota. Minnesota is the largest producer in the United States of the ferrous minerals in iron ore and taconite, which provides jobs and revenue in northern Minnesota and accounts for almost a third of the Gross Regional Product.

In addition to iron ore, northern Minnesota has one of the world’s largest copper deposits and the world’s third-largest nickel deposit. These deposits include platinum, palladium, gold, and cobalt. There are also manganese and titanium deposits located in northern Minnesota.

All these mineral resources are adjacent to existing Iron Range mines that have the existing transportation and infrastructure for the development of these sources, including power, rail systems, and port facilities for shipping. The region also has the workforce for mining.

First Quantum weighing sale of minority stake in Zambian copper assets – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – September 24, 2019)

September 24, 2019

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Shares in First Quantum Minerals Ltd. nosedived on Monday after it batted away speculation it could be acquired any time soon, instead saying it has held talks about selling a minority stake in some of its Zambian assets.

Last Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the Toronto-based senior copper miner had attracted takeover interest in light of its floundering share price. The Globe and Mail later reported that Chinese state-owned firm Jiangxi Copper Co. Ltd. had approached First Quantum but hadn’t yet made a formal takeover offer. First Quantum’s share price jumped a total of 20 per cent in the last two trading sessions of last week.

In a statement on Monday, First Quantum said it “has not engaged in any discussions regarding a takeover bid or other change of control transaction and has no knowledge of potential take-over bids, change of control transactions or proposals.”

BUTTE, MONTANA: World Museum of Mining (Atlas Obscura.com – September 2019)

September 13, 2019

https://www.atlasobscura.com/

The World Museum of Mining sits on the grounds of a formerly active mine and boasts many different original structures and equipment, encapsulating a major part of Butte, Montana’s, rich mining history.

By the late 19th century to the early 20th century, the town had established itself as one of the major copper boomtowns of the American West. At that time, copper was in high demand and was needed for new technologies, including the use of electric power. By 1910, Butte was dubbed “the richest hill on Earth,” as it had many different mines sprawled around its city limits.

One such mine that was unveiled within the city in 1875. It was known as the “Orphan Girl Mine,” also nicknamed “Orphan Annie” or just “The Girl,” because of its desirably cool working temperatures (55 to 56 degrees Fahrenheit).