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Ontario Mining

Northern Development and Mines minister takes issue with NDP advisor’s Ring of Fire comments – by Leith Dunick (tbnewswatch.com – March 13, 2015)

http://www.tbnewswatch.com/default.aspx

Ontario’s Minister of Northern Development and Mines on Friday slammed comments made Thursday by former NDP leader Howard Hampton on what he said was a lack of progress developing the Ring of Fire.

Michael Gravelle said he was startled and offended by how “flippant and dismissive” Hampton was in saying the province has done nothing in a decade to move the multi-billion-dollar project forward.

“I had to ask myself the question, ‘Has he actually looked at the regional framework agreement that we have signed and negotiated with the Mattawa First Nations?’”

Calling the framework historic and unprecedented, Gravelle on Friday said the process is anything but superficial and certainly more than just firing off occasional press releases, as Hampton, now a paid Ring of Fire advisor of the federal NDP, intonated a day earlier.

The minister said the Ring of Fire isn’t going to happen overnight and the right steps are being taken. The framework sets in place guidelines for regional infrastructure and takes into consideration enhanced environmental monitory, socio-economic issues and supports and resource revenue sharing.

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Government failing to fuel Ring of Fire, says Ontario Chamber of Commerce – by Mark Sabourin (EcoLog.com – March 13, 2015)

http://www.ecolog.com/default.asp

The stink of the Cliffs mining debacle has soured the air around Ontario’s Ring of Fire and has slowed pace of development in the remote but mineral-rich area. Ontario should kick-start development afresh by fast-tracking the most promising proposal on the table and moving aggressively on an infrastructure plan. If it does, dollars will flow into the region from the federal government and the private sector.

So says the Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC) in its just-released report card on the Ring of Fire. In 2014, it outlined the potential the region holds and laid out a path to further development. This year’s 2015 report card evaluates the provincial government’s progress against that plan and gives it a failing grade.

Stan Sudol, communications consultant, mining columnist and owner/editor of RepublicOfMining.com, calls it “a stunning indictment of government incompetence, both provincial and federal.”

The OCC conservatively estimates that the first 10 years of development of the Ring of Fire will add up to $9.4 billion to the GDP, sustain up to 5,500 jobs annually, and generate $2 billion in government revenue.

The Ring of Fire is everything it’s cracked up to be, Sudol told EcoLog News, and likely more. Once more of the region becomes road-accessible — inevitable once development gets underway — geologists are confident that even more discoveries will follow. If northwestern Ontario is a mineral-rich iceberg, the Ring of Fire may be only its visible tip.

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Kirkland Lake mounts a comeback on the Southern Abitibi (Northern Miner – March 12, 2015)

The Northern Miner, first published in 1915, during the Cobalt Silver Rush, is considered Canada’s leading authority on the mining industry.

VANCOUVER — The past two years have been a story of redemption for producer Kirkland Lake Gold (TSX: KGI; US-OTC: KGILF) at its Macassa and South Mine complex in the prolific the Southern Abitibi gold belt 46 km due southeast of Timmins, Ont. The company just wrapped up its third consecutive quarter of positive earnings and free cash flow, and looks poised to hit the upper end of its annual production guidance.

On March 11 Kirkland reported that it sold 39,700 oz. of gold last quarter at an average realized price of US$1,371 per oz., which resulted in cash flow from operations of $23.7 million. Over the past nine months the company has cranked out around 162,000 oz. of gold at all-in sustaining cash costs of US$1,289 per oz., which marks a material improvement over the 131,000 oz. it produced in 2014 at all-in costs of US$2,054 per oz.

The main driver for Kirkland has been higher grades encountered at the South Mine Complex (SMC), which has also resulted in improved throughput rates at the Macassa mill.

Average production rates last quarter were around 934 tonnes per day, which marks a 3% quarter-on-quarter increase. The good news for Kirkland is that it managed a further improvement in January, when throughput averaged 1,107 tonnes per day resulting in the delivery of around 34,500 tonnes of ore to the mill.

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Lake Shore’s potential new ore – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – March 13, 2015)

http://www.mineweb.com/

We take a look at what’s driving reserve and resource growth at Lake Shore Gold.

Lake Shore Gold, an Ontario miner, issued a good gold reserve update on Thursday: by key analyst measures it beat expectations. The headline was 29% reserve growth, after depletion.

It was impressive, albeit growth on top of already short-lived reserves. Lake Shore has only about five years of minelife, though, it must be said, it has pushed that minelife out consistently with reserve additions over the years. The grade dropped, slightly, in its reserve update, but ounces grew: to 773,000 ounces gold @ 4.4 g/t Au from 598,000 @ 4.6 g/t Au.

For it, on a day that the spot price of gold was bouncing off $1,150/oz, Lake Shore did well in trading, gaining as much as 1.2% during the day.

But if the reserve growth surprised, a little, the real meat is yet to come. Much more interesting still, at this point, is what Lake Shore can bring in its relatively new 144 Gap discovery, 500 metres from its mining operations at Thunder Creek.

In drilling 144 Gap this and last year, Lake Shore caught some attention and for good reason: The hits have been high grade and broad. Late last year Lake Shore reported as much as 7.18 g/t Au over 24 metres among a number of other strong hits. More recently it has highlighted as much as 5.36 g/t Au over 47 metres. The intercepts have put the discovery at the forefront of Lake Shore’s drilling plans.

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AUDIO: Chambers’ Ring of Fire report card ‘not applicable’ to the north (CBC News Sudbury – March 12, 2015)

http://www.cbc.ca/news

A professor at Laurentian University calls a new report card on the Ring of Fire unfair. The report released this week by the Greater Sudbury and Ontario Chambers of Commerce gives the project a failing grade for development.

The report cites the absence of an agreement with First Nations, problems with permits and a lack of federal funding as the most significant barriers to development.

But David Pearson said the expectations for the project are too great and it’s unreasonable to think that all First Nation communities in the far north can speak to the project with one voice.

“I think the standards that you’ve used to put your F’s on and your C’s and your D’s and so forth are not standards that are applicable to the far north,” he said. Some industry experts have defended the findings, saying the point of the report is to draw a sense of urgency to the project.

A panel discussion on the subject was held in Sudbury Wednesday night at Dynamic Earth. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce’s Josh Hjartarson said he wants to talk about the project, but government officials aren’t returning his phone calls.

He’s said he’s trying to pressure the government to take action. “What I’m trying to say is that we’re spending some political capital,” he continued.

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Ring of Fire producing mostly press releases, says federal NDP advisor – by Jamie Smith (tbnewswatch.com – March 12, 2015)

http://www.tbnewswatch.com/default.aspx

THUNDER BAY — Nothing has happened in the Ring of Fire in nearly a decade and nothing will until the federal and provincial governments manage and make decisions with First Nations. That’s according Howard Hampton, former Ontario NDP leader and current paid adviser on the Ring of Fire for the federal New Democratic Party.

Hampton, during an interview with tbnewswatch.com Thursday, said both levels of government have completely missed what First Nations have been saying all along, that all three need to co-manage the development and make decisions together.

“We’ve had about eight year about press releases about the Ring of Fire,” Hampton said in Thunder Bay Thursday after returning from a trip to several Matawa communities.

“But if you look at the situation not much has happened.” Announcements like the development corporation and Cliffs’ one-time plan to put a processor near Sudbury were done unilaterally, without any consultation with First Nations Hampton said.

The $1 billion for infrastructure was nothing more than a nice pre-election promise while a recent plan to get Matawa a feasibility study for an all-weather road is actually a re-announcement from 1999 when the federal government outlined a plan to build all-weather routes to several Northern communities. Both levels of government to this point have handled the Ring of Fire badly.

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Poor grades for Ring of Fire don’t surprise key players – by Jonathan Migneault (Sudbury Northern Life – March 11, 2015)

http://www.northernlife.ca/

Panelists say little progress made after years of work

Key industry players in the Ring of Fire mineral deposit said they were not surprised by an Ontario Chamber of Commerce report card that criticized the glacial pace of progress in the region.

During a panel discussion the chamber organized in Sudbury Wednesday, Paul Semple, the chief operating officer with Noront Resources, a junior miner that owns stakes in the Ring of Fire, said the failing “F” grade for the development of the Ring of Fire was warranted.

“We’ve done some good things, there has been a framework agreement with the province for $1 billion, but you don’t win a hockey game with a couple of good shifts,” Semple said. “We haven’t really done anything with that billion dollars, we haven’t done anything with the development corporation, and the framework hasn’t honestly given any benefits to the First Nations.”

George Darling, the mine technical services director with engineering firm SNC-Lavalin, who also sat on the panel, said he was disappointed by the speed at which the project has progressed.

Darling said a “huge smelter” his company is building in Madagascar – a project worth $2.5 billion – took only two years to get going. “What I’m very nervous about is the amount of time it takes in North America to develop project, compared to countries like Madagascar that are really developing right now,” he said.

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Sudbury’s Environmental Revival – by Boghos Ghougassian (Arab Forum for Environment & Development – December 1, 2012)

http://www.afedonline.org/en/

The Greater Sudbury area in Ontario Province, Canada, 400 km north of Toronto city, was one of the earliest regions of the world to feel the harmful impact of unsustainable industrial development. It was also one of the first to recognize the mistakes and determined to correct them.

For nearly a century, mining and logging activities had converted the Greater Sudbury area into an inhospitable land. It had been dubbed as moonscape, its blackened scar visible from outer space. Even the Apollo 16 astronauts have done their exercises in here in 1971, before landing on the moon surface.
Greater Sudbury encompasses one of the largest known nickel ore bodies on Earth, with an area of more than 60 km2. This has earned Sudbury international recognition as “the Nickel Capital of the World”.

Sudbury was found in 1883 as a railway station town. So dominant were the trees, the Jesuits called their parish “Ste. Anne of the pines”. The trees also caught the attention of wood logging companies who clear cut the area leading to loss of biologic diversity, erosion of soils and other environmental impacts. Records indicate that Sudbury’s forests have been swarmed with some 11,000 loggers during the late 1880s.

With the discovery of nickel, early mining and smelting processes in 1886 to 1929 delivered another devastating blow to the environment. The metal rich rock was ignited in open “roast beds” cloaking the area in dense clouds of sulfur dioxide’s acidic smoke, which devastated the remaining green vegetation and acidified the freshwater of many lakes of the region, killing fishes and many other aquatic species.

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Ring of Fire: Turning an ‘F’ into an ‘A’ – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – March 12, 2015)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The Canadian government has a history of investing in “transformational projects” such as the Alberta oil sands and the Churchill Falls hydroelectric project, says an Ontario Chamber of Commerce spokesman.

It should now provide a “hard commitment” to develop Ontario’s Ring of Fire chromite deposits, says Josh Hjartarson, vice-president of policy and government relations for the Ontario chamber. “Northern Ontario is just in demanding a similar level of investment,” Hjartarson told 150 people at the Ring of Fire Report Card launch Wednesday at Dynamic Earth.

The report card, “Where Are We Now?” graded the federal and provincial governments on the action they have taken — or not taken — since the Ontario Chamber of Commerce’s first report last year on the economic benefit of developing the Ring of Fire.

The federal government received an F for not making the Ring of Fire a national priority, and that has generated headlines this week, said Hjartarson. The report was presented to business leaders in Toronto on Tuesday.

While the intent of the report was not to blame the federal government, the chamber is acting in its capacity as an advocacy group to ensure there are “political costs” to ignoring the issue, he said.

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Northwestern Ontario’s Resourceful Economy [Ring of Fire Episode] (The Agenda with Steve Paikin – March 10, 2015)

http://theagenda.tvo.org/ Northwestern Ontario’s resource economy seemed poised for a game-changing resurgence with the “Ring of Fire” multi-billion dollar mining find. But after a few key delays and departures, the rapid expansion in other mining deposits, including gold, may hold the most immediate promise. The Agenda with Steve Paikin stops into Thunder Bay to survey the …

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Watertight is the word as crews work to restore salt mine’s old shaft liners – by D’Arcy Jenish (Canadian Mining Journal – February/March 2015)

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Cementation Canada Ltd. of North Bay, Ont. bills itself as “one of the premier shaft sinking companies in the world,” and it has the track record to back up that claim.

With some 20 projects on the go in Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, Cementation is also on record for having sunk the deepest shaft in Canada at the Kidd Creek Mine in Timmins, the deepest single lift shaft in the U.S. at the Resolution Copper Project in Superior, Arizona, and the deepest single lift shaft in the world at the South Deep Gold Mine in South Africa.

But by the end of March, Cementation crews will start a completely different sort of project at the Sifto Canada salt mine in Goderich, Ont., on the shore of Lake Huron. They will begin refurbishing the liners inside two of the mine’s three shafts, which will take almost four years, and rank among the most challenging work the company has taken on in recent years.

“Technically, this is a very different project,” says President and Chief Executive Officer Roy Slack. “It’s not like designing a shaft or shaft liner from scratch. We have to adapt to what’s there.”

In both cases, what’s there is a concrete liner that has deteriorated and sprung leaks. In some places water is seeping in. Elsewhere, it is surging through the concrete as though driven from a garden hose.

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College celebrates mining program, strikes new one at PDAC – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – March 10, 2015)

Established in 1980, Northern Ontario Business provides Canadians and international investors with relevant, current and insightful editorial content and business news information about Ontario’s vibrant and resource-rich North.

Thunder Bay’s Confederation College celebrated a successful mining industry training alliance at the recent Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) Convention and confirmed a new one.

Its industry partner, Noront Resources, received the PDAC’s Environmental and Social Responsibility Award for its work with the Ring of Fire Aboriginal Training Alliance (RoFATA), along with other community initiatives with remote First Nation communities.

The award recognizes outstanding leadership in environmental protection and/or good community relations.

“We celebrate this incredible achievement of our community partner and are proud to have played a small part in their success,” said Confederation president Jim Madder in a March 9 news release. “Noront Resources has provided extensive support and leadership within the RoFATA program and has consistently demonstrated its commitment to education and providing pathways to employment in the mining industry.”

Launched in October 2013, RoFATA is training partnership between the college; Matawa First Nations and its training agreement holder, Kiikenomaga Kikenjigewen Employment and Training Services; and Noront.

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Future Fumes?: Will Sudbury super stack be needed by Vale after retrofit project? (Canadian Mining Journal – February/March 2015)

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

At more than 388m high and just over 36m wide at base, Vale’s “Super Stack” in Sudbury is unquestionably the city’s most outstanding feature.

In fact, it’s also one of Northern Ontario’s more outstanding features because it’s literally the tallest structure in the north and can be seen for miles from every direction as it towers over the city.

Even Sudbury’s world-renown “Big Nickel” pales by comparison when it comes to size and impressive landmarks. Built from almost 16,500m3 of concrete and strengthened with nearly 956 tonnes of 38mm and 13mm re-bar, the stack is a solid monument that has withstood the harshest of conditions that Mother Nature could throw at it.

Extreme cold and blowing snow, fierce winds and driving rain, heat and lightning, and even ground-shaking tremours, have barely made a mark on the stack. And, the fact that it’s also lined from top to bottom with 6.4mm nickel stainless steel and that its walls are 1.1m thick at the base and 267mm at the top, have all added to make the stack almost indestructible.

It was clearly built to last and since it started rising on the horizon in 1970, and subsequently going into service on August 21, 1972, the stack has performed as planned by safely carrying sulphur dioxide from INCO’s (now Vale’s) Copper Cliff smelter high into the atmosphere and away from the city.

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Chamber report slams government inaction on Ring – by Carol Mulligan (Sudbury Star – March 10, 2015)

The Sudbury Star is the City of Greater Sudbury’s daily newspaper.

The Ontario Chamber of Commerce has given the federal government a failing grade — an F — for not recognizing that the Ring of Fire should be a national economic opportunity.

The Ontario umbrella group and the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce coreleased a report today saying little progress has been made in the year since they issued a first report, “Beneath the Surface: Uncovering the Economic Potential of the Ring of Fire.”

That report said the Ring of Fire would generate $25 billion in economic activity and create thousands of jobs in Ontario in its first 32 years.

The report is being presented this afternoon in Toronto to movers and shakers whom the Ontario Chamber of Commerce is trying to interest in development of the vast chromite deposits in the James Bay Lowlands.

The new report, “Where Are We Now? A Report Card on the Ring of Fire,” concludes permitting delays, a lack of infrastructure and “intergovernmental quarrelling” have stalled development in the Ring.

The report evaluates progress in seven key barriers to developing the region and concludes it will be years before a first mine is opened in the Ring.

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