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Rio Tinto

Rio Tinto chairman bullish on Mongolian copper story – by Brad Thompson (Australian Financial Review – July 10, 2023)

https://www.afr.com/

Rio Tinto chairman Dominic Barton says the mining giant is committed to building its footprint in Mongolia, even as capital gets more expensive, and intense competition fuels high prices in the critical minerals mergers and acquisitions space.

Mr Barton also acknowledged that Rio had not always lived up to expectations in Mongolia, where it is counting on Oyu Tolgoi to become the world’s fourth-largest copper mine by 2030. “We are committed to learning from that,” he told the Mongolia Economic Forum in Ulaanbaatar on Monday.

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Mining association launches regulations to diversify mostly ‘male and white’ industry – by Naimul Karim (Financial Post – June 22, 2023)

https://financialpost.com/

Protocol hopes to attract more women, newcomers and minorities

Canada’s largest mining association has announced new regulations that its members must follow to tackle issues such as sexual harassment, bullying and gender discrimination at a time when the industry is finding it difficult to attract workers.

Through its equity, diversity and inclusion protocol, the Mining Association of Canada, whose nearly 60 members including Barrick Gold Corp. and Teck Resources Ltd., hopes to attract more women, newcomers and minorities in a sector that’s “male dominated” and “homogeneously white,” the association said.

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Rio Tinto invests $1.4-billion to expand Quebec aluminum manufacturing operations – by Nicolas Van Praet (Globe and Mail – June 13, 2023)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Rio Tinto PLC is investing $1.4-billion to expand its aluminum manufacturing operations in Saguenay, Que., breathing new life into the industrial centre after years of uncertainty.

The Anglo-Australian mining giant said Monday it will build out a smelter that uses lower-carbon AP60 technology at its Complexe Jonquière site, adding 96 new pots to the existing 38 and increasing capacity to about 220,000 metric tonnes of primary aluminum per year. Pots are deep shells lined with carbon and insulating bricks in which aluminum is made through electrolysis.

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Bougainville leaders call on mining giant Rio Tinto to assist communities – by APR editor (Asia Pacific Report – June 7, 2023)

News

Community leaders around Panguna mine in the autonomous Papua New Guinea region of Bougainville want mining giant Rio Tinto to help out following recent flooding. Rio Tinto was the owner/operator of the mine which has laid derelict for more than 30 years.

Fears of the threat from flooding in the river system near the mine have increased in recent years. Recent heavy rain has choked rivers with mine tailings waste, resulting in several communities being swamped.

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Federal court allows international mining giant to oppose tribes in Oak Flat lawsuit – by Debra Utacia Krol (Arizona Republic – May 31, 2023)

https://www.azcentral.com/

The U.S. District Court in Arizona granted mining giant Resolution Copper permission on Monday to join the U.S. government as a defendant in a lawsuit brought by grassroots group Apache Stronghold.

The Native organization has been fighting to prevent Resolution from building a huge copper mining operation that would obliterate Oak Flat, one of the Apaches peoples’ most sacred sites. Oak Flat, or Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, “the place where the Emory oak grows,” is also culturally important to other Southwestern tribes, and is one of Arizona’s remaining riparian zones and a popular site for recreational users.

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Top Stock Fund Wagers BHP, Rio Tinto Will Weather Iron-Ore Slump – by Georgina McKay (Bloomberg News – May 17, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — A top equities fund manager is backing BHP Group Ltd. and Rio Tinto Ltd., betting they can withstand softer iron-ore prices and will benefit as China’s reopening boosts demand for the commodity.

Australian producers are attractive as they have relatively low operating costs and high exposure to the mainland, the world’s largest consumer of the steel-making ingredient, according to David Wilson, who oversees the equivalent of $5.3 billion at Australia-focused First Sentier Wholesale Geared Share Fund. The fund has returned 10% this year, beating more than 90% of its peers.

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Rio Tinto Cautions Against Takeover Fever After Lithium’s Dramatic Price Slump – by Annie Lee and James Fernyhough (Bloomberg News – May 5, 2023)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Lithium’s dramatic price slump has mining heavyweights chasing takeovers of companies with early stage or pre-production projects. But one giant is warning that offering high premiums for smaller miners comes with risks.

Rio Tinto Group Chief Executive Officer Jakob Stausholm said he’s “cautious” about acquisitions at current valuations, despite the world’s second-biggest miner wanting to grow its nascent lithium business.

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UPDATE 1-Rio Tinto under ‘immense pressure’ to develop US copper project (Reuters – May 4, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE, May 4 (Reuters) – Rio Tinto Ltd is under “immense pressure” from the U.S. government to develop its Resolution copper project in the United States, given the copper it holds accounts for a quarter of all U.S. reserves, its chair Dominic Barton said on Thursday.

Copper is vital for the transition to green energy but the project in Arizona is opposed by all of the state’s tribal councils, including the San Carlos Apache because it would destroy a heritage site of religious significance.

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Copper Mine Flashes Warning of ‘Huge Crisis’ for World Supply – by James Fernyhough (Bloomberg News – May 2, 2023)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The transition to clean energy depends on copper, but a vast Mongolian mining project offers a glimpse of the metal’s troubled future.

Accompanied by tinny taped music and overall-clad workers, Rio Tinto Group executives and Mongolian officials gathered a kilometer beneath the freezing Gobi Desert earlier this year to open one of the world’s richest underground copper mines. It was a celebration four decades in the making.

Oyu Tolgoi, in southern Mongolia just north of the Chinese border, is key to Rio’s efforts to move beyond its dependence on iron ore and expand in copper, the metal that underpins the clean energy transition. It’s also a vast deposit whose corporate, political and technical vicissitudes offer a glimpse of the red metal’s troubled future.

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Rio buys scandium project – by Esmarie Iannucci (MiningWeekly.com – April 28,2023)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Diversified miner Rio Tinto has struck a $14-million deal with ASX-listed Platina Resources to acquire its Platina scandium project, in New South Wales. The project comprises a long-life, high-grade scalable resource that could produce up to 40 t/y of scandium oxide, for an estimated period of 30 years.

Rio currently produces scandium oxide from titanium dioxide production waste streams at Sorel-Tracy in Quebec. Once operational, the Platina scandium project will enable Rio Tinto to more than double its yearly scandium production.

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Mining giant hunts copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium in Neebing – by Gary Rinne (TBnewswatch.com – April 13, 2023)

https://www.tbnewswatch.com/

Global mining giant RioTinto has partnered with KoBold Metals to search a site near the Pine River and Crystal Lake

The multi-national mining company Rio Tinto is searching a property near Thunder Bay for copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium — metals that are increasingly in demand as the world ramps up the production of batteries to power vehicles.

Rio Tinto has partnered with California-based mining startup KoBold Metals to explore in the Pine River and Crystal Lake area of the Municipality of Neebing, about 40 km from the city, just west of Highway 61 and just north of the U.S. border.

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Rio Tinto’s Ivan Vella on why Canada needs to get its act together on regulation — fast – by Kevin Carmichael (Prince George Post – April 2023)

https://www.princegeorgepost.com/

Kevin Carmichael’s Conversations: New urgency is about climate change, not about maximizing profit for shareholders

Check your priors, economists say. Facts change. You’re asking for trouble if you assume the “laws” John Maynard Keynes set out in the 1930s, and the ones Milton Friedman devised in the 1970s, still apply today. It’s a good rule for writing, too. “We’ve got to go fast,” said Ivan Vella, who runs Rio Tinto Ltd.’s aluminum business out of Montreal. “I feel it every day when I get up. There’s a huge amount of pressure on us.”

We’d been talking about growth, one of Vella’s three primary objectives. That dialogue — as it tends to when you ask an executive about the obstacles to growing a business in Canada — had arrived at a critique of the country’s disinterest in doing anything about the thicket of federal, provincial and local regulation that keeps big things from getting done.

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Rio Tinto keeps working to build Indigenous support for Resolution mine – by Ernest Scheyder (Reuters – March 7, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

HOUSTON, March 7 (Reuters) – Rio Tinto Plc (RIO.AX)(RIO.L) said it remains committed to building more support from an Indigenous group that opposes its Resolution mine project in Arizona, which could supply a quarter of America’s copper needs depending on the outcome of a court case.

Resolution is key to the Anglo-Australian mining giant’s future as the project would produce more than 40 billion pounds of copper for the green energy transition. But that copper sits below the federally owned Oak Flat Campground, a place some Apache consider home to deities.

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Rio Tinto apologises for losing radioactive capsule in Australia – by Monica Miller, Lucy Hooker & Phil Mercer (BBC News – January 30, 2023)

https://www.bbc.com/

Mining giant Rio Tinto has apologised for losing a tiny radioactive capsule that went missing as it was being transported across Western Australia. An emergency hunt for the device, which is about the size of a pea, is under way along the 1,400km (870 mile) route.

The capsule contains a small quantity of radioactive Caesium-137, which could cause serious illness to anyone who comes into contact with it. That could include skin damage, burns or radiation sickness.

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A Copper Mine Could Advance Green Energy but Scar Sacred Land – by Clifford Krauss (New York Times – January 27, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Tribal groups are fighting an Arizona project whose backers say increasing the supply of copper, crucial to batteries, would reduce fossil-fuel use.

SUPERIOR, Ariz. — As Wendsler Nosie finished his evening prayers sitting before a mesquite fire, a ceremonial yucca staff festooned with eagle feathers by his side, he gazed sternly toward a distant mesa where mining companies hope to extract more than a billion tons of copper.

That mine could help address climate change by helping the United States replace fossil fuels and combustion engines with renewable energy and electric cars. But to Mr. Nosie, a former chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, it’s the latest insult in a bitter history.

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