Rio Tinto’s climate change resolution marks a significant shift in investor culture – by Anita Foerster and Jacqueline Peel (The Conversation – May 2, 2018)

https://theconversation.com/

What does the advocacy group the Australian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) have in common with the Local Government Super fund, the Church of England Pensions Board, and the Seventh Swedish National Pension Fund?

Quite a lot, it seems. These three institutional investors joined with the ACCR to co-file a shareholder resolution on climate change at mining giant Rio Tinto’s Australian annual general meeting in Melbourne yesterday. While Rio’s board advised shareholders to vote against the resolution, there was a very healthy showing of 18.3% shareholders voting in support (over 20% including abstentions).

The resolution called on Rio to review and comprehensively report on its membership of industry associations such as the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA). The MCA’s pro-coal political lobbying has been distinctly at odds with the position of companies such as Rio, which publicly support measures to reduce carbon emissions in line with the Paris climate agreement.

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Zambia’s copper production set to grow, but may be restricted by policy – BMI – by Marleny Arnoldi (MiningWeekly.com – May 2, 2018)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Although the growth prospects for Zambia’s mining sector remains positive for this year, amid rising copper prices and improved electricity supply, a worsening regulatory environment may negatively impact on the country’s copper production in the coming years, warns BMI Research.

“We expect Zambian copper production growth to accelerate in the coming months as copper prices and domestic power supplies improve. On March 20, the Zambian Ministry of Mines announced its targeted copper production levels of more than a million tonnes, up from 755 000 t in 2017,” BMI reports.

BMI expects Zambian copper production growth to average 8% this year, which will amount to production of 815 000 t – up 2% on that produced in 2017.

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Glencore Is Said to Take Congo Rift With Gertler to London Court – by Thomas Wilson (Bloomberg News – May 2, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Glencore Plc’s clash with former partner Dan Gertler over unpaid royalties at a key Congolese copper mine deepened as the legal battle spread to a London court.

The Swiss miner was on Tuesday granted a temporary injunction against the Israeli billionaire after petitioning the London court to rule against a Congolese judge’s decision last week to freeze assets at its Kamoto Copper project, people familiar with the matter said.

Gertler is claiming $2.28 billion in damages and unpaid royalties, which Glencore stopped paying after he was sanctioned by the U.S. in December.

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Pebble Mine Investor Again Needs Time to Finish Deal – by Stephen Lee (BNA.com – May 1, 2018)

https://www.bna.com/

The backer of an Alaska copper and gold mine project said May 1 it needs another month to finish an agreement with the mine’s owner.

Should financier First Quantum Minerals Ltd. and Pebble Mine owner Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. fail to come together, the project would be in trouble. Northern Dynasty needs First Quantum’s $150 million cash infusion to file its application for permitting and to cover its legal and consulting costs, while the Army Corps of Engineers writes its environmental impact statement.

Meanwhile, Northern Dynasty’s financial filings sketch a picture of a company operating close to the bone. The company only has roughly $50 million in cash on hand, according to a March 29 financial statement.

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The War on Coal Is Making the World’s Top Mine Owners a Lot Richer – by Thomas Biesheuvel and Thomas Wilson (Bloomberg News – May 2, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The world’s war on coal is making its biggest producers a lot richer, at least for now. Anglo American Plc, Glencore Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd. are generating the highest profits in years from their coal mines. Income for the 37 coal producers tracked in a Bloomberg Intelligence index was the highest in six years.

It all comes down to the simplest equation in business: supply and demand. With governments from Asia to Europe setting stricter pollution limits as the climate change debate intensifies, output of the planet’s dirtiest fuel is dropping.

Some of the more significant declines are occurring in China, the top mine operator, and financing for new supplies is drying up. That’s creating a windfall for the producers who remain.

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Illicit gold trade fuels conflict in South African mining town – by Christopher Clark (Al Jazeera – May 1, 2018)

https://www.aljazeera.com/

Authorities say 90 percent of murders in Durban Deep outside Johannesburg are linked to illegal gold mining.

Johannesburg, South Africa – Making her rounds on a bright spring morning, Cora Bailey brakes sharply and points at a cross-breed dog with thick chestnut fur and a missing hind leg. “This is Snoopy,” Bailey says, as the dog, true to her name, snoops through a putrid mound of rubbish amidst the long grass that lines the roadside.

“She literally took a bullet to protect her owner. Unfortunately, we couldn’t save her leg,” Bailey says. “Even the dogs aren’t safe here.” She sighs, lights a cigarette and drives on.

Fifteen years ago, Bailey, who has deep smile lines and a sharp sardonic wit, founded the CLAW animal welfare clinic here in Durban Deep, a defunct Victorian-era gold mine on the western flank of Johannesburg, South Africa’s famous “city of gold”.

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Carmakers and big tech struggle to keep batteries free from child labor – by Alanna Petroff (CNN Money.com – May 1, 2018)

http://money.cnn.com/

Car and tech companies are scrambling for supplies of cobalt, a mineral they need to power electric vehicles and smartphones. But they have a problem: Much of the cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries comes from a country where children work in mines.

A CNN investigation has found that child labor is still being used to mine the valuable mineral at some operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This country produces about two-thirds of the world’s cobalt and is estimated to sit atop half of the globe’s reserves.

There have been warnings about child labor before — Amnesty International highlighted the problem in 2016 and Glencore (GLNCY), a leading cobalt producer, said last month that some small mines in the DRC are using children.

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NOT ALL LITHIUM MINING IS EQUAL: HARD ROCK SHOWS POTENTIAL TO DISRUPT LITHIUM EVAPORATION – by Nicholas LePan (Mining Feeds.com – April 30, 2018)

http://www.miningfeeds.com/

Argentinian lithium producer Orocobre (TSX: ORL) recently reported lower than expected lithium production in its third fiscal quarter because weather interfered with its evaporation rates of its lithium brines. This reveals two problems with lithium brine production: reliability and geography. Another source of lithium is rising to met these problems, hard rock lithium mining.

One analyst pointed out that Orocobre’s production problems “clearly demonstrate” that production is not a straightforward process. “Weather events are beyond the control of Orocobre, but this reaffirms that there is still room to improve on the robustness of operations and reduce production variability from we ather impacts,” the analyst stated.

The company reported a 25-per-cent lower evaporation rate compared with the same quarter in 2017 which caused production problems and lithium output to fall 29 percent to 2,802 tonnes of Lithium Carbonate equivalent, from 3,937 tonnes in the December quarter. Its February rates were the lowest since 2011.

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Polluter Norilsk Nickel forced to clean up its act – by Henry Foy (Financial Times – April 30, 2018)

https://www.ft.com/

Miner plans $1bn plant to convert sulphur dioxide into gypsum to meet environmental rules

For the best part of 80 years, Russian miner Norilsk Nickel has been one of the world’s biggest metal producers, tapping vast reserves of nickel, copper and palladium in the country’s Arctic. But soon its future survival could depend on producing a vastly different product: gypsum.

Manufacturing the chalky mineral will not make money. The company admits that it does not even know what it will do with it. But come 2023, when it starts producing 5m tonnes a year, the superfluous piles of dusty aggregate will be worth billions of dollars.

That is because Nornickel, as the company is also known, is one of Russia’s biggest polluters, spewing some 1.67m tonnes of harmful sulphur dioxide each year into the air around the city of Norilsk.

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INTERVIEW-Vedanta chairman told Anglo not to sell South African assets – by Ed Stoddard (Reuters U.K. – April 30, 2018)

https://uk.reuters.com/

JOHANNESBURG, April 30 (Reuters) – The chairman of Vedanta Resources Plc, who is also Anglo American’s biggest shareholder, said on Monday he had convinced Anglo not to sell off key assets in South Africa.

Indian industrialist Anil Agarwal has an almost 20 percent stake in Anglo through his family trust Volcan Investments and has played down speculation that he is seeking a tie-up with Anglo.

But in an interview with Reuters, Agarwal made it clear that he has not been a passive shareholder. “I always believed that South Africa has a lot of potential, and Anglo management may not have always believed that … and they wanted to sell some assets,” he said.

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Just when you thought it was safe to buy SA mining shares again – by Brendan Ryan (MiningMx – April 30, 2018)

http://www.miningmx.com/

I think the decision by Minister of Mineral Resources Gwede Mantashe to do an “about face” over the High Court ruling on “once empowered, always empowered” and appeal the judgement is hugely negative.

It reveals that “the leopard cannot change its spots” because it shows once more that a critical part of the ANC’s ideological make-up is an underlying mistrust and dislike of the country’s mining industry. I expressed exactly this opinion of the ANC in a column published on April 11 after Mantashe’s speech to the Joburg Platinum Industry Seminar at which he declared the platinum sector was NOT in a crisis.

My opinion is not shared by the Chamber of Mines which is trying to smooth things over as best it can stating that it, “respects the right of the Minister and the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) to lodge an application to appeal the judgement.

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Copper and cobalt markets at risk of supply disruptions – by Neil Hume and Henry Sanderson (Financial Times – April 30, 2018)

https://www.ft.com/

Glencore and Freeport-McMoRan under pressure in DRC and Indonesia

The commodities industry has been focused on the crisis surrounding Rusal, the Russian aluminium producer, but a number of disputes entail higher prices for copper and cobalt.

In the past week, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s state-owned mining company has filed legal action against Glencore, while in Indonesia the government has imposed new environmental standards on the giant Grasberg copper and gold mine owned by Freeport-McMoRan.

“Political risk has gone from being little thought about to being a major concern,” Michael Stoner, an analyst at Berenberg, said.

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Contura, Alpha to merge, creating largest U.S. met coal producer – by Tom Hals (Reuters U.S. – April 30, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) – Contura Energy Inc and Alpha Natural Resources Holdings Inc said on Monday they agreed to merge, creating the largest U.S. producer of metallurgical (met) coal, used in steelmaking, and reuniting the two businesses that were split following a 2015 bankruptcy.

The deal comes as investors look for consolidation in an industry that is recovering from a deep downturn in 2015 and 2016, when several coal producers filed for bankruptcy in the wake of cheap natural gas and stricter regulations.

Under terms of the all-stock deal, Alpha shareholders will end up owning 46.5 percent of the merged entity. The two companies said they sold a combined 12.6 million tons of metallurgical coal in 2017, vaulting the merged company ahead of Coronado Resources Ltd of Vancouver.

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After the gold rush: Mining boom in Cameroon leaves ‘open tombs’ – by Reinnier KAZE/AFP (The Citizen – April 30, 2018)

https://citizen.co.za/

For a time, the land around the village of Longa Mali in eastern Cameroon was one of the most prized in Africa, and powerful machines gnawed greedily into its soil to extract precious gold. Today, abandoned with almost the same speed as it was coveted, the landscape is as dangerous as it is damaged, say campaigners.

Around a hundred deep holes lie around the village. Many of them are filled with water, making them a deadly risk for frolicking youngsters. In other locations, subsistence miners run the risk of being buried alive as they delve in deep, narrow holes for a few flecks of gold.

Longa Mali is one of dozens of places in Cameroon that are grappling with “open tombs” — the legacy left by mining companies. Last year, at least 47 people died on former mining sites in Cameroon’s East Region, according to an NGO called Foder, a French acronym for Forests and Rural Development.

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Glencore Drops as Clash With Former Partner Adds to Congo Issues – by Thomas Wilson (Bloomberg News – April 30, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Glencore Plc dropped the most among the U.K.’s biggest stocks as the company clashed with a former partner over royalties at key copper and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The shares fell as much as 3.9 percent after the company said late Friday that a Congolese court authorized bailiffs to freeze certain Glencore assets after Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler served orders on local units for almost $3 billion in damages.

The damages relate to royalties from the Mutanda Mining and Kamoto Copper projects, which Glencore stopped paying to Gertler since he was sanctioned by the U.S. for alleged corruption in December.

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