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Saskatchewan Mining

Resources, Empire & Labour: Crisis, Lessons & Alternatives – Edited by David Leadbeater

To order a copy of Resources, Empire & Labour: Crisis, Lessons & Alternatives, click here: http://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/resources-empire-and-labour

The interconnections of natural resources, empire and labour run through the most central and conflict-ridden crises of our times: war, environmental degradation, impoverishment and plutocracy. Crucial to understand and to change the conditions that give rise to these crises is the critical study of resource development and, more broadly, the resources question, which is the subject of this volume. Intended for researchers, students and activists, the chapters in Resources, Empire and Labour illuminate key aspects of the resources question from a variety of angles through concrete analyses and histories focused on the extractive industries of mining, oil and gas.

Saskatchewan: Social Democracy in a Resource Hinterland – by John W. Warnock

Saskatchewan has always been seen as a hinterland area and economy within the Canadian territorial state. Geographically, it is part of the interior plains of the North American continent. Prior to the European colonial invasion it was the home to Indigenous Peoples who had adapted to the local ecology and survived mainly as hunter-gatherer communities. The colonial settlement of the region expanded in the late nineteenth century under the National Policy of John A. Macdonald’s Conservative government. Across the prairie grain belt, land taken from the Indigenous Peoples was declared state land and then distributed to white settlers through the Homestead Acts.

The National Policy was a capital accumulation project: the creation of a national market, the population of the west by white settlers from Europe and the United States, the development of the wheat economy for export and the protection of industrial capitalism in central Canada.Behind a tariff wall, an economic surplus could be extracted from independent commodity producers via banking and finance and the monopoly power of the farm supply industry and the downstream processing and distribution industries. As I have argued and referenced elsewhere (Warnock 2004), this system of political economy became a major Canadian example ofmetropolitan domination of hinterland areas.

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NEWS RELEASE: First Uranium Concentrate Produced from Ore Mined at Cigar Lake

SASKATOON, SASKATCHEWAN–(Marketwired – Oct. 8, 2014) – ALL AMOUNTS ARE STATED IN CDN $ (UNLESS NOTED)

Cameco (TSX:CCO) (NYSE:CCJ) announced today that the McClean Lake mill has started producing uranium concentrate from ore mined at the Cigar Lake operation in northern Saskatchewan.

The McClean Lake mill, operated by AREVA Resources Canada Inc., recently completed modifications required to safely process the high-grade ore from the Cigar Lake mine. Cigar Lake ore is transported by truck to the McClean Lake mill located 70 kilometres northeast of the minesite for processing.

Mining at Cigar Lake began in March 2014. To date, Cameco has delivered about 1,400 tonnes of ore to McClean Lake. Mining was suspended in July 2014 to allow the orebody to freeze more thoroughly. Mining resumed in the first week of September and ore deliveries to the mill are ongoing. The mill is expected to produce up to 1 million pounds of uranium concentrate from Cigar Lake ore in 2014 and ramp up to its full production rate of 18 million pounds by 2018 (Cameco’s share 9 million pounds).

“Cigar Lake is among the world’s richest and most technically challenging orebodies and I congratulate all of the people who helped to bring it into production,” said Cameco president and CEO Tim Gitzel. “It provides Cameco with a large-scale, low-cost production centre and positions us to take full advantage of the long-term growth we see coming in our industry.”

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SPECIAL REPORT: Evangelist Len Lindstrom’s African gold mining venture fails – by Geoff Leo (CBC News Saskatchewan – October 09, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan

700 Canadians, including Saskatoon’s Dean Britton, lose money in ‘God’s business’

A Saskatoon man who invested his life savings in an African gold mining company run by a globe-trotting Canadian televangelist is worried the entire project may have collapsed.

Dean Britton said for the past several years, evangelist-turned-CEO Len Lindstrom has virtually cut off contact with many of the 700 Canadians who invested at least $18 million in Liberty International Mineral Corporation.

And so Britton has taken it upon himself to research the company and communicate with as many of Lindstrom’s investors as possible. “He is such an expert at only telling his half of the story,” Britton said of Lindstrom. “I’m going to show the other half.”

Mining venture seemed like ‘God’s business’

A decade ago, Britton was tantalized by Lindstrom’s investment pitch of an African gold mine. Lindstrom explained he had licenced 21,000 square kilometres of potentially gold-rich land in Liberia.

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BHP Billiton Dispatches Top Manager to Much-Watched Potash Project – by ALISTAIR MACDONALD, RHIANNON HOYLE and ELENA CHERNEY (Wall Street Journal – September 29, 2014)

http://online.wsj.com/home-page

Industry Will Watch Closely for Clues to Company’s Next Move for Massive Mine

BHP Billiton BLT.LN -0.32% PLC. has sent its top project manager to run the giant Jansen potash development in western Canada, a move the potash market will scrutinize for clues to BHP’s plans for its Canadian mine. BHP Billiton’s Phil Montgomery, its head of group project management, last month arrived in Saskatchewan from Australia, a spokeswoman said.

At stake is a mine that—if producing today—would increase global supply of the key fertilizer ingredient by almost 15% according to Scotiabank. That would worsen an oversupply problem for potash. The price of potash, which is fixed through long-term contracts, has rallied by as much as 17% this year on better-than-expected demand, according to analysts. Analysts, though, and some BHP executives, believe that this rally will fade as the increase in demand fizzles.

BHP has already committed some $3.8 billion to a project that it says has no fixed completion date. Last December, work was halted for several months amid technical trouble.

“Jansen has become almost mythological in the industry,” said Matthew Korn, an analyst at Barclays, BARC.LN +0.64% said of the project and the prospects of it being finished. “We know it is there, we know it represents a load of volume, but in terms of timing I don’t think anyone believes this will happen before 2020, if at all,” Mr. Korn added.

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Time to buy uranium? The best ways to play it – by Brenda Bouw (Globe and Mail – September 29, 2014)

The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.

Patience could finally start to pay off for investors waiting for a revival of the uranium market that imploded in the aftermath of Japan’s nuclear disaster in 2011.

After the spot price hit a nine-year low of $28 (U.S.) this spring on oversupply concerns, dragging uranium equities down with it, many investors believe the commodity used to fuel nuclear power plants has finally hit bottom, as the demand picture brightens.

The price has risen about 30 per cent in recent weeks, to $36.50, driven by additional U.S. and European sanctions against Russia, a major uranium supplier, in its conflict with Ukraine. That threatens to put pressure on the global uranium supply, alongside a recent two-week strike at Cameco Corp.’s McArthur River and Key Lake operations in Saskatchewan.

Meantime, Japan is readying the restart of its nuclear program, while China continues its aggressive nuclear plant build-out as part of its strategy to cut pollution by developing cleaner energy sources.

“I think the worst is behind us in the uranium space,” said BMO Nesbitt Burns analyst Edward Sterck. While he doesn’t expect a big rally in uranium and is neutral on the overall sector right now, Mr. Sterck sees investors slowly returning to the space.

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Canada’s small fertilizer companies shuffle ranks, search for capital – by Rod Nickel (Reuters India – September 17, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Capital-strapped small fertilizer companies in Canada are shuffling their senior executive ranks to draw investors in a period of weak prices.

Stonegate Agricom Ltd, which is developing a phosphate mine in Idaho, said on Tuesday that Chief Executive Mark Ashcroft resigned, the latest change at the top among small players in the sector. Others that have installed new senior executives this year include Canada’s Arianne Phosphate and Karnalyte Resources Inc.

Fertilizer values are rising off the floor prices reached earlier this year, but their upside looks limited, Rabobank said in a report on Monday.

Stonegate’s parting with its CEO was mutual, said co-chairman Ian McDonald, who will carry out CEO duties on an interim basis with co-chairman Kerry Knoll. He declined to give further details.

“Nobody’s having any parties, because nobody’s happy, but there’s been no pressure here based on Mark’s performance,” McDonald said.

Stonegate shares dropped 3 Canadian cents, or about 19 percent, to 13 cents in Toronto. For the year, the stock is down nearly one-third.

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Northern companies establish Saskatchewan mining presence – by Lindsay Kelly (Northern Ontario Business – September 16, 2014)

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.

It was during a trip to Toronto about a year ago that Wayne Ablitt and Don Croteau realized they were both thinking of expanding into Western Canada with their respective companies, Jannatec Technologies and Schauenburg Industries Ltd. But with expansion comes considerable expense, not to mention the challenges of breaking into a new market.

“We stopped and looked at each other and said, ‘Why not do something together rather than duplicate things?’” recalled Croteau, managing director of Schauenburg’s North Bay office.

So Croteau and Ablitt devised a plan to bring the two companies together, sharing costs and resources, and a year later, D3 Mining Solutions is ready to debut from its Saskatoon office.

Joining the partnership are suppliers Porcupine Canvas out of Timmins and Maslack Supply out of Sudbury, along with a Winnipeg-based dome manufacturer. The companies will retain their individual identities and home locations, but will operate in Saskatchewan together under the umbrella company D3 Mining Solutions.

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Allan potash mine: All trapped workers returned to surface, some ‘grouchy and hungry’ (CBC News Saskatoon – September 11, 2014)


 

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon

All miners returned to surface, some after more than 24 hours underground

Miners who spent some 24 hours trapped underground at PotashCorp’s Allan mine east of Saskatoon have made their way to the surface, after a fire forced dozens of workers to seek shelter in safety stations on Wednesday.

Around 8:30 p.m. CST Thursday, the last three workers who were in safe spaces below ground were up and out. Earlier in the day, 51 of their co-workers returned to the surface.

A union leader said he was able to speak to some of the workers who were brought up and reported they were safe, but some were “grouchy and hungry”. Mike Belyk was one of the workers who returned to the surface Thursday afternoon.

“[I’m] just relieved to be back up, to get home see your family,” he said. “Other than that it wasn’t too, too bad.” Belyk said miners were in contact with rescue teams and people found ways to pass the time. “We had communication. Played cards. Played a lot of cards.”

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Potash Corp. Veteran Challenges Uralkali With Russian Mines – by Yuliya Fedorinova (Bloomberg News – September 8, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

OAO EuroChem, a Russian fertilizer maker building $7.4 billion of potash projects, is gearing up to challenge the dominance of OAO Uralkali with production from its two mines reaching the market in five years.

“We expect we’ll be able to mine the first potash at both mines in late 2017,” Clark Bailey, EuroChem’s mining head, said in an interview. About two more years will be needed to start shipments to external customers, he said.

EuroChem is developing an annual capacity of 8.3 million metric tons of potash, a form of potassium that strengthens plant roots, in two phases at the Verkhnekamskoe deposit in the Perm region and in another two at the Gremyachinskoe deposit in the Volgograd region in western Russia. The company controlled by billionaire Andrey Melnichenko kept its pace even as Uralkali plunged the $20 billion market into turmoil in July last year by ending a marketing venture with Belarus that accounted for 40 percent of worldwide potash exports.

EuroChem, which already produces nitrogen and phosphate nutrients, plans to consume a portion of the potash itself to boost its output of complex fertilizers. Even as it bets on cost advantages such as proximity to a port to take on market leaders, the key to EuroChem’s success in potash could lie in the efficiency of suppliers such as K+S AG (SDF), Europe’s largest.

“While EuroChem’s projects are the only ones at an advanced stage in the industry globally, they’re more likely to take market share from high-cost producers like K+S than from low-cost producers like Uralkali,” ZAO Raiffeisenbank analyst Konstantin Yuminov said by phone.

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Potash miners face over-supply threat of their own making – by Rod Nickel (Reuters U.S. – September 4, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

WINNIPEG Manitoba – (Reuters) – A pickup in fertilizer demand has brightened the outlook for North American potash companies who suffered through plunging prices and profits after a European trading consortium collapsed in 2013.

But any celebration among investors may be premature.

A surplus of potash mining capacity is set to grow even larger in coming years, weighing down the global industry while favoring low-cost eastern European producers over North American miners, who are sticking to a marketing strategy that risks falling behind the times.

And the times are changing. Belarusian Potash Company (BPC), the counterpart to North America’s potash trading consortium Canpotex Ltd, collapsed a year ago, with one partner looking to increase volumes rather than limit output and hope for higher prices.

The first new mines in Western Canada in four decades are also under construction and would be fierce rivals to Canpotex partners Potash Corp of Saskatchewan, Mosaic Co and Agrium Inc.

This year, global capacity will hit 82 million tonnes, but demand will fall well short, even at a record-high level of 57 million tonnes, according to London-based commodity research firm CRU. That gap is set to widen slightly by 2020, when capacity looks to reach 99 million tonnes, far more than is needed to meet demand of only 73 million.

CRU’s demand forecast is based on an assumption that demand will grow faster than it has in the last seven years. If it does not, the supply-demand gulf will grow even wider.

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Tough conditions for cleanup 50 years later of former Saskatchewan uranium mill – by Rob Drinkwater (Lethbridge Herald – August 31, 2014)

http://lethbridgeherald.com/

Edmonton – CANADIAN PRESS – More than 50 years after a Saskatchewan uranium mill that is a key part of Canada’s nuclear history closed, heavy machinery is once again rumbling across the remote northern corner of the province.

But this time workers at the former Lorado mill are cleaning up a massive pile of radioactive, acidic tailings that has poisoned a lake and threatened the health of wildlife and hunters for decades.

“I think we’re a lot more environmentally aware than we were 40 or 50 years ago,” said Ian Wilson with the Saskatchewan Research Council, which is the Crown-owned company that’s carrying out the cleanup.

The Lorado mill is near Uranium City, less than 50 kilometres from the Northwest Territories boundary. It’s where uranium mining once supported a community of up to 5,000 people.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says the town was one of several in Canada to rise following the Second World War and during a boom in uranium demand that was driven by military needs.

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After 33 years, uranium riches finally in sight for Cameco at Cigar Lake – by Peter Koven (National Post – September 2, 2014)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Stepping out of the shaft and into the underground workings at Cigar Lake, it is hard to believe that anything ever went wrong here.

The Northern Saskatchewan mine looks pristine and ready to go. A massive jet boring system 480 metres below the surface has begun extracting uranium ore from the deposit by pumping water upward at supersonic speed. Other tunnels are filled with a dizzying network of storage, piping and processing infrastructure to handle the incredibly rich ore and deal with the incredibly poor ground conditions.

Along with the nearby McArthur River mine, this is easily the richest uranium operation in the world, with grades that are more than 100 times the world average. In terms of complexity, it’s roughly a million times the world average. It took 33 years of work to move Cigar Lake from discovery to production. The very fact it exists is a credit to human technology and engineering.

But until recently, it didn’t feel like such a triumph. When a crew tried to step out of that same underground shaft in February 2010, they could barely take a step.

“They found a metre of mud right through the mine. Just complete mud,” recalls Tim Gitzel, the chief executive of Cameco Corp., which built the mine and owns half of it. “They couldn’t even get the cage down because there was so much mud.”

The crew was the first one to enter the mine after a devastating flood in 2008, that that came on the heels of one in 2006. The two disasters cast a black cloud over Cameco and made a lot of people wonder if the Saskatoon-based company could ever get this mine working properly.

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Nuclear watchdog requests safety checks after B.C. mine breach – by Dene Moore (CTV News/Canadian Press – August 19, 2014)

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

VANCOUVER — A toxic spill from a British Columbia mine has prompted the country’s nuclear watchdog to request a series of checks at uranium facilities. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission will discuss the failure of the tailings pond at the Mount Polley gold and copper mine during a meeting Wednesday.

In the interim, the commission has asked the uranium mining and milling operations it oversees to ensure that all necessary inspections and monitoring are in compliance with licence conditions.

“The recent tailings dam breach that occurred at the Mount Polley mine in British Columbia on Aug. 4, 2014, has raised awareness of issues associated with tailings impoundments,” said a letter sent to Areva Resources, Cameco Corp. , Rio Algom, Willet Green Miller, P.J. Brugger and Associates, EWL Management Ltd. and Denison Mines Inc.

“This is a reminder that vigilance must be maintained by ensuring that tailings dams continue to be properly designed, constructed, operated, maintained and monitored to prevent such occurrences.”

The companies were asked to confirm that mitigation measures are in place in the event of a tailings breach. They’re also asked to confirm the safety of tailings facilities and report any identified gaps to the commission by Sept. 15.

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First Nations youth mining camp expands – by Scott Larson (Saskatoon Star Phoenix – August 8, 2014)

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

When Reneya Lemaigre arrived last year at the inaugural Mining Matters Mining Rocks Earth Sciences Camp she didn’t know anyone and didn’t know what to expect.

But it didn’t take long for the teenager from Clearwater River Dene Nation to shrug off her fears and have a great time at Christopher Lake’s The Quest camp.

“The staff were really nice and comforted me,” Reneya said. “After the first day I was fine for the rest of the week.” “She started meeting new friends and when the day came for her to go home, she didn’t want to go,” added her mother, Rana Janvier.

The pair are once again making the six-hour drive this weekend from Clearwater River to Christopher Lake to attend the mining camp that will have about 30 teens attend this year.

The camp is put on with the sponsorship of six junior mining companies – Foran Mining Corp., Masuparia Gold Corp., NexGen Energy Inc., Alpha Exploration Inc., Fission Uranium Corp. and North Arrow Minerals – and PDAC Mining Matters. “The program is expanding,” said Barbara Green Parker, PDAC’s manager of Aboriginal Education and Outreach Programs.

They had 18 kids attend last year and expect about 30 this year – from Amisk (Denare Beach), Pelican Narrows, Buffalo Narrows, Clearwater River Dene Nation and Deschambault.

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Group calls for government inspections of Sask. mine ponds (CBC News Saskatchewan – August 07, 2014)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan

Mining companies currently hire independent consultants and present those reports to government

On the heels of one the the worst spill disasters in Canadian history, some people in Saskatchewan are worried about how this province protects and regulates tailings ponds.

It comes after the Mount Polley Mine tailings pond wall collapsed in B.C. Water, contaminated from years of mining, is flowing into nearby lakes and rivers.

In Saskatchewan, mining companies hire consultants for tailings pond inspections. Those reports are passed on to the Ministry of Environment for review.

Peter Prebble of the Saskatchewan Environmental Society said he would prefer the government do its own inspections of the tailings ponds and not rely solely on the company’s reports.

“There’s been a real tendency in Saskatchewan to encourage self regulation by companies, in other words, to encourage them to take more responsibility for ensuring that regulations are met. I’m worried that we’re moving too far in that direction,” he said.

In B.C., a total of 10 billion litres of water and 4.5 million cubic metres of metal-laden sand has leaked out of the tailings ponds.

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