Republic of Mining

Soviet uranium legacy blights eastern EU – by Adrian Mogos and Michael Bird (Euobserver.com – March 14, 2016)

March 16, 2016

ROMANIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, GERMANY – The Soviet Union mined uranium across its empire for decades, leaving a legacy of environmental damage, social breakdown and widespread health issues. In the first of a two-part investigation, we reveal how the devastating effects are still being felt in Germany, Romania and the Czech Republic.

“We live here, with radon [radioactive gas] across the road and with chalk dust from down in the valley – God damn it – it will kill us all,” says 53-year-old Vasile Mocanu, a former miner.

He is describing how his life has been trapped between two sources of pollution – a uranium mine and a chalk mine. Baita Plai, an ex-Communist workers’ colony built by the Soviets in the 1950s, lies on the edge of the Transylvanian countryside, 500km north-west of Bucharest.

Surging Demand For Rechargeable Batteries Is Driving Business To South America – by Rosalba O’Brien and Rod Nickel (Huffington Post – March 15, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Lithium is an essential component of many consumer tech products.

SANTIAGO/TORONTO, March 15 (Reuters) – Far from the soy and cattle that dominate its vast fertile pampas, Argentina harbors another valuable commodity that is rocketing in price and demand and luring newly welcomed foreign investors.

Lithium, the so-called “white petroleum,” drives much of the modern world. It forms a small but essentially irreplaceable component of rechargeable batteries, used in consumer devices like mobile phones and electric cars. It also has pharmaceutical and other applications.

Over half of the earth’s identified resources of the mineral are found in South America’s “lithium triangle,” an otherworldly landscape of high-altitude lakes and bright white salt flats that straddles Chile, Argentina and Bolivia.

South African Mines-Dispute Case Starts With Third-Party Bid – by Andre Janse Van Vuuren (Bloomberg News – March 14, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://www.bloomberg.com/

A court dispute between South Africa’s Chamber of Mines and the Department of Mineral Resources about black shareholdings in mining companies started on Tuesday with arguments by a third party that seeks to set aside the country’s Mining Charter.

Malan Scholes Inc., a Johannesburg-based legal firm, is asking the High Court in Pretoria to be allowed to consolidate its case with that of the chamber, arguing there are similarities between its application and that of the mines lobby.

The chamber, which represents South Africa’s largest mining companies including Anglo American Plc and Glencore Plc, and the department are opposing Malan Scholes’ bid for a joint hearing.

HD Mining’s contentious Murray River coal project put on hold – by Wendy Stueck (Globe and Mail – March 14, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

VANCOUVER — A B.C. coal project that generated controversy over its plans to hire temporary foreign workers is being mothballed at least temporarily, with future operations hinging on test drilling results, environmental approvals and market conditions.

That means the 51 temporary foreign workers hired for HD Mining’s Murray River project over the past couple of years have left Tumbler Ridge and returned to China, marking the end of a journey that launched a federal court case and helped spur reforms to Canada’s temporary foreign worker program.

HD Mining has completed a bulk sample program and the extracted coal sample “is being tested for coal quality and marketability,” Jody Shimkus, HD Mining’s vice-president of environment and regulatory affairs, said Monday in an e-mail.

Plans move forward for rare earth elements mine on Labrador coast (CBC News Newfoundland and Labrador – March 14, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/

Search Minerals, a mining and exploration company, is making plans for a rare earth elements mine on the southeast coast of Labrador.

The company, based in both British Columbia and Labrador, discovered the Port Hope Simpson Rare Earth Element District, a belt in the area about 70 kilometres long and up to eight kilometres wide.

are earth elements are used to make such things as batteries, electronics and magnets. Search Minerals president Greg Andrews said the company has received a preliminary economic assessment on its “Foxtrot” project, in the Fox Harbour area, to see if it’s economic to move into production.

Distressed asset buyers see silver lining as miners languish – by Melanie Burton and Swati Pandey (Reuters India – March 15, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://in.reuters.com/

After years on the sidelines, funds specializing in troubled assets are set to take center stage in the mining industry, driving deals in a sector where the top players alone plan to raise more than $30 billion through sales to cut debt.

Overall deal volume in mining and metals last year sank to its lowest level globally since 2003, according to Thomson Reuters data, as the industry’s sellers, crippled by more than $1 trillion in debt, crowded a market with very few buyers.

Bankers, funds and investors, however, say that could change in 2016, as specialist buyers rethink a market where prices are languishing, mines are losing money and the traditional competition is weak.

End of Eden? Mining push in Philippines ends isolation of islanders – by Ralph Jennings (Christian Science Monitor – March 14, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://www.csmonitor.com/

PUERTO GALERA, PHILIPPINES — A path cut through a forest hillside outside this resort town is no ordinary road. It will soon connect the modern world to an indigenous tribal group that until now has lived mostly in pre-modern isolation.

Does this road represent the end of a lifestyle and of farming and food sources that villagers have relied on for millennia?

Ask Gabayno Uybad. He grew up in a typical indigenous Mangyan village on Mindoro Island, far from the developed coastline. The community, where people farm both for themselves and the collective, lies seven miles from a modern highway.

Profile: Eira Thomas, president and CEO, Kaminak Gold – by Nelson Bennett (Business Vancouver – March 15, 2016)

March 15, 2016

https://www.biv.com/

Diamond hunter’s golden rule: Exploration is the key

Eira Thomas still isn’t quite sure what she plans to do with the new diamond she ordered from Lucara Diamond Corp. (TSX:LUC).

That’s the Vancouver diamond mining company that, in November, announced it had unearthed the second-largest diamond ever mined – a company that she co-founded and which bears two letters from her name.

But if she decides to have it set in a gold ring, she might be able to use the gold from her latest mining venture – the Kaminak Gold Corp. (TSX-V:KAM) Coffee project in the Yukon.

Tougher pollution laws put forward in wake of Palmer Queensland Nickel saga – by Joshua Robertson (The Guardian – March 15, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://www.theguardian.com/

Clive Palmer could be forced to shoulder the $100m cost of cleaning up his Queensland Nickel operation under proposed state laws that would expand the chain of corporate responsibility for pollution.

The Palaszczuk government has introduced a bill that would let environmental authorities pursue parent companies, executives or ultimate owners for the cost of rehabilitating industrial sites after the operator collapsed.

The environment minister, Steven Miles, in a speech to parliament on Tuesday, made clear the draft laws – which would apply retrospectively – were prompted by the “unacceptable prospect of the taxpayer being left to clean up after the owner of the Yabulu Nickel refinery”.

Two Coal Barons, One Overdue Bond Payment and the End of an Era – by Jodi Xu Klein and Tim Loh (Bloomberg News – March 14, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Both men worked down in the mines, in helmet and headlamp, digging out the coal that would one day make them piles of money. As early as Tuesday, the mining empires the two men built from scratch could start to crumble.

Billionaire Christopher Cline, 57, hailed as the savior of the Illinois coal industry, is the founder of Foresight Energy LP, which has until March 15 to pay $23.6 million of overdue bond interest.

Industry champion Robert E. Murray, 76, would suffer with him. The company he created, Murray Energy Corp., paid $1.4 billion in April for a 50 percent stake in Foresight. A default would wipe out that investment.

Materializing Sheffield: Steel City – An Archaeology of Sheffield’s Industrial Past – by James Symonds

March 15, 2016

http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/matshef/index.html

On a summer’s day in 1800, King George III was taking the sea airs on the south coast near Brighton. When one of his party announced that they would soon be leaving for Sheffield the King’s face fell and he is reputed to have bellowed:

“Sheffield? Damn’d bad place, Sheffield!”

We will of course never know whether this forcefully expressed opinion was a symptom of the King’s celebrated madness, or was uttered in a moment of lucidity.

The perception that Sheffield is a rather grim northern industrial city, however, persists to this day, at least in the minds of those living further south. Why should this be?

Steel industry suffers new blow with more job cuts in Sheffield – by Alan Tovey (The Telegraph – March 14, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

The steel crisis is continuing to claim jobs in UK industry, with a round of redundancies at Sheffield-based Outokumpu and a warning from its parent company that the UK operations could be closed down.

The Finnish-owned business is consulting with staff about cutting 50 of its almost 600 staff as the steel sector battles lower global demand for the metal in the face of a global slowdown.

Steelmakers in Britain have been particularly hard hit by the crisis, as a flood of imports of cheap Chinese steel arrives in the UK attracted by the pound’s relative strength. Domestic steel-makers also face high energy bills.

Brazilian town devastated by dam burst wants mine reopened – by Marta Nogueira (Reuters U.K. – March 15, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://uk.reuters.com/

MARIANA, BRAZIL – In November, Marcos de Freitas lost his home and everything he owned when a dam burst at a nearby mine released a flow of mud that buried his village.

Now, sitting in a house paid for by the company responsible, he wants the mine to reopen.

“I have nothing to complain about,” said the heavy set 55-year-old retired miner who fled his house, one of the oldest in the destroyed village of Bento Rodrigues, when the mud was up to his ankles.

“Samarco has to start producing again in order to create jobs,” he said. Samarco, which is jointly owned by Vale SA and BHP Billiton, is the mine operator.

The shifting sands of history: Just as the words we use to describe our past change, so too does our understanding – by Robert Fulford (National Post – March 15, 2016)

March 15, 2016

http://news.nationalpost.com/

Word has seeped out of Ottawa that the citizenship guide for new Canadians, Discover Canada, will soon be rewritten by the still newish Liberal government.

With education mainly in the hands of the provinces, this is a rare chance for the federal government to express itself on the nature of Canada and its history. There’s no doubt our past as seen by the Liberals will turn out to be subtly different from the version the Conservatives published.

You may find this process scandalous, politics intruding where it shouldn’t, but experienced readers of history will see it as the normal evolution of opinion. The past has a way of changing. Annoyingly, it won’t stay past. We constantly re-examine it, adjusting our views in the light of newly acquired data and newly adopted passions.