Mining Conflict and Opposition – Page 53

Will Ontario’s New Mining Act Make the Province Uncompetitive? – by Virginia Heffernan (Earth Explorer – June 12, 2013)

June 19, 2013

http://www.earthexplorer.com/

It was standing-room-only at the May 28th meeting of the Toronto Geological Discussion Group (TGDG) as a panel of legal, government and industry experts grappled with the contentious new Ontario Mining Act. No fights broke out under the expert moderation of Analytical Solutions’ Lynda Bloom, but the conversation did get heated.

Still in its infancy, the new Act ups the ante when it comes to consulting Aboriginal communities and private landowners before putting boots to the ground. Exploration plans and permits are required even for certain early-stage activities, and Aboriginal communities can apply to have culturally significant areas withdrawn from staking.

You can download a fine summary of the changes from the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mines website.[http://www.mndm.gov.on.ca/en/mines-and-minerals/mining-act/mining-act-modernization]

Some insights from the discussion:

Rules are nothing without resources

Although Ontario government representative Rob Merwin, who worked closely on modernizing the Act, says there are consultants and ministry staff onboard to help with the consultation process, some industry representatives feel the responsibility for resolving disputes rests too heavily on their shoulders and that the government should be differentiating between real grievances and those launched for personal gain.

Peru protesters push to stop $5 billion Newmont mine project – by Mitra Taj (Reuters India – June 17, 2013)

June 18, 2013

http://in.reuters.com/

PEROL LAKE, Peru – (Reuters) – Thousands of opponents of a $5 billion gold project of Newmont Mining circled a lake high in the Andes on Monday, vowing to stop the company from eventually draining it to make way for Peru’s most expensive mine.

Lake Perol is one of several lakes that would eventually be displaced to mine ore from the Conga project. Water from the lakes would be transferred to four reservoirs that the U.S. company and its Peruvian partner, Buenaventura, are building or planning to build.

The companies say the reservoirs would end seasonal shortages and guarantee year-round water supplies to towns and farmers in the area, but many residents fear they would lose control of the water or that the mine would cause pollution.

“Hopefully, the company and the government will see the crowd here today and stop the project,” said Cesar Correa, 28, of the town of Huangashanga in the northern region of Cajamarca. He was one of some 4,000 protesters who arrived at Lake Perol on foot or on horseback, many wearing ponchos, as well as traditional broad-brimmed straw hats or baseball caps.

Some carried blankets and bags of potatoes and rice – planning to camp out at the site for weeks to halt the project. “Why would we want a reservoir controlled by the company when we already have lakes that naturally provide us water?” asked Angel Mendoza, a member of a peasant patrol group from the town of Pampa Verde.

Insecurity in Congo copper province a “serious concern” -UN – by Jonny Hogg (Reuters India – June 17, 2013)

June 17, 2013

http://in.reuters.com/

Rebels attack Congo Katanga mining province

KINSHASA, June 17 (Reuters) – Security in Congo’s copper-mining heartland of Katanga is a “very serious concern” that must be tackled politically and militarily, the outgoing head of the U.N. peackeeping mission said on Monday. The province, which sits on some of the world’s largest copper reserves, last year exported 600,000 tonnes. Miners including Freeport McMoRan and Glencore already operate there.

In March, hundreds of rebel fighters attacked the Katangan capital of Lubumbashi and then surrendered following bloody clashes with security forces. On Sunday, a soldier was killed during fighting between the army and insurgents 20 km (12 miles) from the city.

“It’s a quite significant problem, and I think it has all the prospects of becoming worse,” Roger Meece, the head of the U.N.’s peacekeeping mission in Congo, known as MONUSCO, said.

“One can do what is possible militarily and or with a police force but … the real solutions have to be found in these political factors,” Meece, who is leaving his post later this month, said in an interview.

Minnesota’s next mining boom has picturesque Ely divided – by Josephine Marcotty (Minneapolis Star Tribune – June 16, 2013)

June 19, 2013June 17, 2013

http://www.startribune.com/

ELY, Minn. – Every year Randy Stender and his family spend Memorial Day weekend at Birch Lake Campground, a tradition that ties him to the wild, unspoiled lands here on the edge of the Iron Range where he grew up. There was a time, he says, when he and his wife would have moved back — if there had been a job like the one his father once had at Reserve Mining.

So when he heard that Birch Lake’s shoreline could become the site of one of the largest copper mines in the country, he immediately grasped the conflict gripping this charming tourist town and spreading across Minnesota. “That’s the catch,” he said, opening his arms wide to the lake that shimmered in the morning light. “Because I kind of like it like this.”

The prospect of a massive new mining industry here is igniting long-simmering tensions — between those who long for the surge in prosperity it could bring and those who say it threatens the splendor of the North Woods and the tourism that relies on it.

At least a dozen companies are exploring for copper, nickel, gold and other precious metals in a vast geological formation called the Duluth complex, which stretches from Tamarack, Minn., to the nearby Kawishiwi River that feeds the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Company officials say hard-rock mining can — and will — be done safely, while creating thousands of jobs and spawning a new industry that could someday dwarf the state’s taconite and frac sand mining operations.

Which Way to Ring of Fire? As Cliffs stands down, Noront and KWG propose alternate transport routes – by Stockhouse.com (June 14, 2013)

June 17, 2013

http://www.stockhouse.com/

Which Way to Ring of Fire? As Cliffs stands down, Noront and KWG propose alternate transport routes

It’s a suspension, not a cancellation. Yet the June 12 announcement from Cliffs Natural Resources dumped cold water all over Ontario’s Ring of Fire. By putting the region’s largest project on hold, the company has also shelved plans for an all-weather road to the south, a vital link some other companies were counting on to develop the McFaulds Lake area about 540 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay. But Noront Resources [V.NOT] quickly responded that its own projects are “still good to go” thanks to a proposed east-west road. Not to be outdone, KWG Resources [V.KWG] pursues the feasibility of north-south rail.

Seemingly a Plan B, Noront’s east-west corridor was actually the company’s first idea. It would link the Eagle’s Nest project to Highway 808, roughly 230 kilometres southwest. But in May 2012, the Ontario government conditionally agreed to help finance the north-south route, part of Cliffs’ $3.3-billion proposal to build the Black Thor mine with road access to a new processing facility near Sudbury. On that basis, Noront used the north-south route in the base case for the September 2012 Eagle’s Nest feasibility study. Noront retained the east-west route as back-up.

Prudently, it now seems. Explaining the suspension of what would have been North America’s first major chromite mine, Cliffs’ senior vice-president of global ferroalloys Bill Boor said, “Certain critical elements of the project’s future are not solely within our control and require the active support and participation by other interested parties such as government agencies and impacted first nation communities.”

Cliffs puts Ring of Fire project on hold – by Shawn Bell (Wawatay News – June 13, 2013)

June 17, 2013

http://wawataynews.ca/

Citing a list of holdups with its proposed Ring of Fire chromite project, Cliffs Natural Resources announced on June 12 it has suspended its environmental assessment (EA) for the $3.3 billion mine project.

Bill Boor, Cliffs senior vice president, told Wawatay News that the uncertainty over the federal EA process – given Matawa First Nations’ ongoing legal case calling for a Joint Review Panel assessment – played a significant role in Cliffs decision to halt the project.

“Cliffs wants to work with First Nations on how we’ll cooperatively make sure we have an assessment that works for all of us, so we can assess this project in the best possible way,” Boor said. “We haven’t reached an agreement on that, and one of the issues is the judicial review.”

Boor emphasized that the uncertainty over the federal EA process was only one reason Cliffs decided to temporarily suspend work on the project. He noted that Ontario has still not approved Cliffs’ terms of reference for the provincial EA, and that a number of agreements with the provincial government remain unfinished.

Cliffs’ has also not been granted access to land it requires for an all-weather road to the mine site, another issue that has stalled the project. A land dispute between Cliffs and KWG Resources is currently awaiting ruling from Ontario’s mining commissioner.

Cliffs should stop pointing fingers, check its corporate ego before resuming work on Ring of Fire – by Ramsey Hart (MiningWatch Canada – June 14, 2013)

June 14, 2013

http://www.miningwatch.ca/

On Wednesday, US mining company Cliffs Natural Resources announced that it was ceasing work on the environmental assessment process for its high profile chromite project in the area of northern Ontario dubbed the “Ring of Fire”.

Cliffs’ announcement poutedly pointed the finger at the province for not approving the terms of reference the company drafted for its environmental assessment and for not coming to unspecified agreements “critical to the projects economic viability”, i.e. hydro and infrastructure subsidies. The blame was shared with First Nations who are pursuing a legal challenge to the project’s federal environmental assessment and the provincial Mining Land Commissioner for not issuing a decision over a land rights dispute with fellow would-be Ring of Fire mining company KWG.

While the announcement got a fair bit of press including coverage by the Globe and Mail, Financial Post, Star, CBC and Sudbury Star none of the news reports that I’ve seen pointed to Cliffs’ own role in creating these delays.

Back when the project was entering into the environmental review process, Cliffs doggedly refused to support the reasonable and routine call (for a project of this size and complexity) of First Nations and NGOs (MiningWatch included) for a joint review panel assessment process.

B.C. Liberals accused of breaking election promise over Klappan open-pit coal mine – by Larry Pynn (Vancouver Sun – June 10, 2013)

June 14, 2013

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

Tahltan First Nation objects to environmental ‘fast-tracking’ of project

The B.C. Liberals risk breaking an important election promise by “fast-tracking” an environmental assessment of an open-pit coal mine in the so-called Sacred Headwaters of the Klappan in northwest B.C., Tahltan First Nation charged Friday.

“There has been opposition and resistance by our people,” said Tahltan Central Council president Annita McPhee said in an interview.

“To have an open-pit coal mine right in the headwaters … our people are opposed to development there. We want to see long-term protection that excludes having a coal mine in that area.”

The planned Arctos Anthracite Project would have a footprint of about 4,000 hectares, not including a railway line, and would produce an estimated three million tonnes per year of anthracite coal over the mine’s 25-year life span. Anthracite coal has a high carbon content and burns with a clean flame. It is primarily used in steel and metal making.

The project is a joint venture of Fortune Coal Ltd. and POSCO Klappan Coal Ltd., whose parent company is a South Korean steel giant.

Ernst & Young Press Release: Capital allocation risk threatens miners’ future growth Sydney, 12 June 2013

June 13, 2013

Click here for the PDF document: Business risks facing mining and metals 2013–2014

Capital allocation and access to capital have rocketed to the top of the business risk list for mining and metals companies globally, up from number eight in 2012, in Ernst & Young’s annual Business risks facing mining and metals 2013-2014 report released today.

Ernst & Young’s Global Mining and Metals Leader Mike Elliott says these “capital dilemmas” threaten the long-term growth prospects of the larger miners at one end of the sector, and the short-term survival of cash-strapped juniors at the other end.

Margin protection and productivity improvement (two, up from number four) and resource nationalism (three, down from one) round out the top three risks, while the threat of substitutes is a new entry in the rankings at number 10.

“The rising business risks that are top of mind with mining and metals CEOs and Boards today are being driven by the need to protect returns and manage the interests of varied and often competing stakeholders. This is in stark contrast to just 12-18 months ago when fast-tracking production was still top of the agenda and capacity constraints defined the key business risks,” says Elliott.

For larger miners, the rapid decline in commodity prices in 2012, rampant cost inflation and falling returns have created a mismatch between miners’ long-term investment horizons and the short-term return horizon of new yield-hungry shareholders in the sector.

UPDATE 2-S.Africa’s Zuma talks tough against mining unrest – by Wendell Roelf (Reuters India – June 12, 2013)

June 12, 2013

http://in.reuters.com/

World’s top platinum producer rocked by unrest

CAPE TOWN, June 12 (Reuters) – South African President Jacob Zuma vowed on Wednesday to take a hard line against labour unrest in the mining sector, which has been rocked by 18 months of killings and wildcat strikes that have threatened to destabilise Africa’s biggest economy.

Zuma’s decisive comments helped lift the rand about 8 cents to 9.94 per dollar, a stark contrast to last month, when the currency sank to four-year lows after he held a news conference to try and stem its slide.

“Our law enforcement agencies have been instructed not to tolerate those who commit crime in the name of labour relations. They will face the full might of the law,” he told parliament.

He also said his government would remain impartial in a turf war between the upstart Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and the National Union of Mineworkers, a long-standing ally of the ruling ANC.

“Government does not take sides and does not favour any labour union over others in the mining industry. Our interest is in finding solutions,” he said.

Canadian Company: EPA is Evil, Let Us Create Giant Alaska Mine – by Hal Herring (Field and Stream – June 10, 2013)

June 11, 2013

http://www.fieldandstream.com/

There is nothing like a good anti-federal-government advertising campaign to rally support for, well, almost anything. In this time of Internal Revenue Service scandals and accusations that the Environmental Protection Agency has charged so-called “conservative” groups for Freedom of Information Act requests that they handed over to environmental groups for free, the time was ripe for a smart advertising professional to tap in to the zeitgeist and try, yet again, to sell a highly skeptical American public on the Pebble Project—a huge proposed gold and copper mine proposed by two foreign mining corporations to be built on public lands in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, Alaska.

On June 4, Northern Dynasty Minerals, Limited, a Vancouver, Canada-based corporation that owns 50 percent of the Pebble Project, ran an ad in the Washington Post and on various political websites that demands an end to what it calls EPA’s “black box bias” against the mine. The ad also claims that the EPA is manipulating public opinion and denying science in response the results of the EPA’s 14 month-long comprehensive Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment (BBWA) show that the Pebble Project does indeed threaten the greatest salmon fishery on earth (a $500 million industry annually) and the estimated 14,000 jobs that depend upon it, thus industrializing one of America’s wildest and most pristine expanses of public land, which would forever change the culture and economy of the 7,500 people, mostly Native Americans, who now call it home.

I’m not sure what the Canadian mining executives thought the report should have said. Perhaps that Pebble Project would build the first road, first power-generating facility, and first deep-water port in the region to open up mining on tens of thousands of acres of public land in the trackless headwaters of the Nushagak and Kvichak Rivers.

Why a Canadian Mining Executive Is Trapped in Colombia’s War – by Sebastian Salamanca (TheTyee.ca – June 8, 2013)

June 10, 2013

http://thetyee.ca/

Kidnapped in January, Gernot Wober is now a pawn in a long fight over resource rights.

Gernot Wober was a long way from his Canadian home when, on Jan. 18, he was taken captive by Marxist guerrillas in the town of Norosí, Colombia.

The reasons Wober is still being held are deeply entwined in a long-running war between rebels and the Colombian government. It’s a five-decade struggle to control the country’s northern region, which is called the South of Bolívar. At stake is a bounty of gold — and who gets to mine it. Multinational mining companies, as one might imagine, are lined up to exploit the resource. But the region is also home to so-called “traditional miners” — home-grown, low-tech operators who scrape out a living sifting gravel, sand and dirt for the precious ore.

Wober, a vice-president of exploration at the Toronto-based Braeval Mining Corp., is a pawn in that war over who gets the gold. And his captors, the National Liberation Army (ELN), are not likely to let him go without a bloody fight or something very valuable in return.

The ELN is the second largest guerrilla group in Colombia with roughly 2,500 armed members and a long historical presence in the South of Bolívar. On the day the ELN invaded a mining camp and took Wober, they also took hostage two Peruvians and three Colombian nationals.

WORLD VISION NEWS RELEASE: More Canadians would pay extra for products free of child labour, shows poll

June 10, 2013

Image with caption: "Mining is one of the worst forms of child labour. The heavy work can permanently damage a growing child's bones and muscles. Minerals mined are often hazardous and exposure to uranium and mercury can have profound health effects. Falling down open mine shafts, being trapped or injured by collapsing tunnels, or drowning while mining underwater are all serious threats. (CNW Group/World Vision Canada)". — “Mining is one of the worst forms of child labour. The heavy work can permanently damage a growing child’s bones and muscles. Minerals mined are often hazardous and exposure to uranium and mercury can have profound health effects. Falling down open mine shafts, being trapped or injured by collapsing tunnels, or drowning while mining underwater are all serious threats. (CNW Group/World Vision Canada)”.

June 10, 2013 – World Vision launches #nochildforsale campaign across Canada

MISSISSAUGA, ON, June 10, 2013 /CNW/ – Growing numbers of Canadians are willing to pay more for products that are free of child labour, according to a poll released just prior to the World Day Against Child Labour (June 12). Eighty-nine per cent of Canadians said they would pay more, up from 68 per cent last year. Canadians said they would pay on average 23 percent more to guarantee a purchase is child-labour free—this is double the amount they said a year ago.

International development organization World Vision commissioned the national Ipsos Reid poll a few weeks after the Bangladesh factory disaster which killed more than 1,100 textile workers. The incident sparked debate about retail supply chains and ethical consumerism.

Civil War Pretty Much Declared in Ely over [Minnesota Twin Metals] Sulfide Mining – by Bill Hanna Executive Editor (Mesabi Daily News – June 8, 2013)

June 19, 2013June 10, 2013

http://www.virginiamn.com/

ELY — A well-known self-described “612-er” pretty much issued a declaration of civil war in Ely over copper/nickel/precious metals mining on a cloudy and misty Saturday afternoon a week ago.

In combative remarks during an event to officially open the “Sustainable Ely” storefront in a house on the city’s main drag of Sheridan Street, former WCCO Twin Cities TV reporter/personality Don Shelby issued some marching orders directed against the proposed Twin Metals Minnesota nonferrous project near Ely and Babbitt.

Meanwhile, Twin Metals continues its work and involvement in the community, with one of its headquarters in Ely, while planning and setting the stage for a major project that will create more than 1,000 long-term jobs.

A group of more than 100 anti-sulfide mining supporters packed inside the house’s lower level were more than receptive to his comments, nodding in agreement and clapping in support. They embraced the hard-line message, many of them with stern facial expressions.

Shelby, who is also a board member of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, which is headquartered in St. Paul, told the faithful that they won’t have to just fight the mining companies over proposed nonferrous projects in the area.