Mining Breaks

The Australian government will provide new educational and research aid to support the growth of the mineral and energy sector in Mozambique.
A memorandum of understanding signed ahead of this week’s International Mining for Development conference in Sydney aims to improve local business and worker participation in the mining industry and help improve planning and coordination of developments.
The agreement follows a recent visit to Mozambique by Prof Steve Hall, director of the WA School of Mines, to explore strategies for mining education support.
The Afghanistan government, another attendee at this week’s conference, is also seeking Australia’s help to developing its fledgling mining industry.
More than 600 delegates will attend the conference, which will focus on economic and social issues of mining for sustainable benefits across the developing world.

Global mining giant Rio Tinto is the only Australian-domiciled miner to escape censure in a new report tracking the mining sector’s worldwide recognition of the rights of indigenous people.
In a report released ahead of this week’s international Mining for Development Conference in Sydney, aid agency Oxfam says no other Australian miner has a clear public commitment to gaining the consent of indigenous peoples before commencing projects on their land.
The Oxfam report reviewed 53 mining and oil & gas companies in the ASX 200 list.
Oxfam Australia’s chief executive Dr Helen says some companies are improving their policies and disclosure standards, much more is needed.
The mining sector in Australia and globally is facing growing calls to recognise the rights of indigenous landholders.
“Without the consent of affected people, mining companies will find it more and more difficult to access land for mine development and operation,” she said.

Sierra Leone’s efforts to open up mining opportunities have been offered a $US6B boost with the signing of a memorandum of understanding with China Kingho Energy Group.
The privately owned group, which is exploring for iron ore in Sierra Leone’s northern Tonkolil group, proposes to build a 250km railway, deepwater port, smelter and power station in the country.
The agreement envisages completion of the projects in 2017.
Sierra Leone’s ambassador to China, Victor Foh, says the $6B figure is the group’s minimum investment and it could go as high as $10B.
Renewed interest in its largely untapped mineral resources has sparked an economic revival in Sierra Leone a decade after the end of a devastating 1991-2002 civil war. Reuters

Japan will provide $US2B worth of financial support over five years to back Japanese firms' resources development projects in Africa, media reported.
Trade minister Toshimitsu Motegi made the announcement at the Africa-Japan Ministerial Meeting for Resources Development held in Tokyo on Saturday, Japanese news agencies Kyodo and Jiji said.
The financial support will be channelled through state-run Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp, reports said.
Japanese firms participating in resources projects in Africa include Mitsui & Co's LNG project in Mozambique and Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp's coking coal project also in Mozambique. Reuters

Operations at a chrome mine in South Africa owned by chemicals group LANXESS have been suspended since Thursday after workers started an illegal strike over bonus payments.
The dispute at the mine in Rustenburg, 120km NW of Johannesburg, adds to growing labour tensions around South Africa's platinum belt, which are set to intensify over looming job cuts and wage talks in the sector.
"The strike is still ongoing, although we are trying to persuade workers to go back," said Mxhasi Sithethi, regional coordinator for the National Union of Mineworkers.
"The company issued a court injunction yesterday calling the workers to go back to work, but the employees reacted angrily."
The union will be in talks with the workers and the company's management on Monday to find a solution to the dispute. The company could not be reached for comment. Reuters

Operations at a chrome mine in South Africa owned by chemicals group LANXESS have been suspended since Thursday after workers started an illegal strike over bonus payments.
The dispute at the mine in Rustenburg, 120km NW of Johannesburg, adds to growing labour tensions around South Africa's platinum belt, which are set to intensify over looming job cuts and wage talks in the sector.
"The strike is still ongoing, although we are trying to persuade workers to go back," said Mxhasi Sithethi, regional coordinator for the National Union of Mineworkers.
"The company issued a court injunction yesterday calling the workers to go back to work, but the employees reacted angrily."
The union will be in talks with the workers and the company's management on Monday to find a solution to the dispute. The company could not be reached for comment. Reuters

Rockfalls are hampering rescue efforts at the giant Grasberg copper-gold mine in Indonesia’s West Papua province, with hopes fading of finding alive any of the 23 miners still trapped inside a tunnel that collapsed early on May 14.
The bodies of five miners have been recovered since the tunnel fell on 38 workers who were undergoing training at the Freeport McMoRan mine. Another 10 have been rescued, although several are still in hospital.
Freeport Indonesia's mine general manager Nurhadi Sabirin says the rescue effort is continuing 24 hours a day, as quickly as can be done safely. “As more time passes, the possibility of there being any survivors becomes less likely."
A detection device has recorded vibrations that could be consistent with a human heartbeat, but Sabarin says it is not conclusive. "We have not detected any other potential signs of life in the past 72 hours." Reuters

Laos is seeking help from the Chinese Govt to carry out a detailed survey of its mineral wealth so it can better regulate and benefit from its mining industry, according to a senior govt official.
And the communist govt has served a clear warning to current and future mining aspirants, saying that less than 5% of the 355 mining projects that have been granted mining licences have met their contractual exploration commitments.
Deputy Energy and Mines Minister Somboun Rasasombath has already discussed the resources audit with Chinese Deputy Land and Resources Minister Wang Min at the recent China-ASEAN Mining Co-operation Forum in China that resulted in 7 mining co-operation agreements being signed worth about $US2.59B.

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South African mining companies fear the potential for more strikes as they embark on wage talks with a new radical union at a time when they are hurting from a nearly 20% drop in platinum prices in the last two years.
“I just know from the mines' point of view that any kind of increase is going to be difficult to afford," Impala group executive marketing Derek Engelbrecht said.
"I think there certainly is potential for further industrial action in the form of strikes."
The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union has achieved dominance after poaching tens of thousands of members from the once dominant National Union of Mineworkers.
"We are now going into uncharted territory," Engelbrecht said. "We are going to negotiate with a new union that we have never dealt with before on wages, so trying to predict the outcome would be foolhardy." Reuters

Martin Shefsky will resume his former role as president and CEO of Canadian explorer Northern Gold Mining following the resignation of Greg Gibson from both positions.
Shefsky held the same positions from 2006 to July last year, and remained as a director.
A founder of Regis Resources, he has extensive experience in development, sales and marketing in commercial areas from resource exploration, financial consulting, stock trading and portfolio management.
Gibson will now remain a director and will provide consulting services for 90 days.

Brazilian global mining giant Vale has cut its 2013 export target for its Mozambique coal mine by nearly a third after heavy floods temporarily shut a railway line.
Vale now sees exports at 3.4Mt for the year, down from its previous estimate of 4.9Mt, a company official told reporters during a visit to the Moatize mine in north-central Tete province. Reuters

Foran Mining hopes to identify its pathway to development of its 100% owned McIlvenna Bay deposit in Saskatchewan, Canada late this year after it receives a report on engineering studies by JDS Energy and Mining.
Foran appointed JDS to carry out high-level engineering and development studies including mine planning and scheduling, mineral processing and flow-sheet design, operating and capital cost analysis.
CEO Patrick Soares says the JDS work, due for completion in the second half of 2013, will provide recommendations for the path going forward at McIlvenna Bay.
The project 65km west of Flin Flon, Manitoba has mineral resources of 13.9Mt at 1.96% copper equivalent indicated and 11.3Mt at 2.01% inferred.

Canadian company Candente Copper has shut down development work on its large Cañariaco copper project in northern Peru while it evaluates the downturn in economic conditions for mineral exploration and development.
Candente, having completed the exploration and  metallurgical components of a drilling program that began in late December, is reducing spending to a minimum while it evaluates results and costs to date.
Drilling has been suspended, but the company says sustainable development programs, environmental and social impact studies and the reclamation of drill platforms continues.
Candente says its drilling confirmed a second significant porphyry copper-gold-silver system at Cañariaco Sur. The mineralisation extends 700x500m and is open in all directions.

An 11-day strike by workers on strike at Bolivia's state-run Huanuni tin mine has cost the mine $US5M in lost output, the government said.
Miners at Huanuni, Bolivia’s largest tin mine, joined a general strike by teachers and health workers to demand better pension benefits.
The protest is the biggest since Bolivia renationalised the Huanuni mine in 2006, and is affecting production at the Vinto smelter.
President Evo Morales warned the mine – which produces about half of Bolivia’s total tin production – has been operating at a loss since the beginning of the year and could go bankrupt. Reuters

The leader of South Africa's biggest platinum mining union has threatened to bring the economy "to a standstill" as the rhetoric ramped up in an 18-month labour crisis.
Joseph Mathunjwa, head of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, says the government is ignoring violence against its members in the platinum belt near Rustenburg.
Mathunjwa demanded a meeting with president Jacob Zuma to talk about the violence.
"This is the show of AMCU's commitment to peace," he said. "We said we are going to bring the economy to a standstill."
An AMCU organiser was shot dead at the weekend in Marikana, just miles from Rustenburg where 34 AMCU-linked Lonmin workers were killed last August.
AMCU members have also been implicated in the violence, including the killing with machetes of security guards and police last year. Reuters

Kazakhstan miner Eurasian Natural Resources has finally received the takeover proposal that was foreshadowed nearly a month ago from a group of key shareholders led by billionaire Alexander Machkevitch.
After their wait, ENRC’s independent directors wasted no time in declaring the offer materially undervalues the company.
The company says the offer from the “oligarchs” group including three founders of ENRC – Machkevitch, Alijan Ibragimov and Patokh Chodiev – in a consortium with the Kazakh government and JSC Sovereign Wealth Fund is highly conditional and indicative only.
The consortium has until June 3 to announce its firm intention to make an offer or withdraw.

Platinum miner Lonmin has triggered a transition in South African mining sector labour relations, moving to replace the long-established National Union of Mineworkers with the new Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union as the recognised representative of the workforce at its Bushveld Complex mines.
Workers at the Lonmin mines returned to work Thursday after a 2-day illegal strike demanding recognition for the AMCU.
Lonmin says it’s decided to make the change of recognition to avoid the risk of escalating disputes and any risk to the safety of employees, property and the community.
The company says it will accelerate the de-recognition of NUM as category 4-9 bargaining unit, and has begun talks with the AMCU and the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration on a new recognition agreement. The AMCU now represents 70% of Lonmin category 4-9 employees.

At least 20 people were killed when a mine collapsed in mineral-rich but conflict-plagued eastern Democratic Republic of Congo following heavy rains.
Local officials were still attempting to recover buried victims a day after the collapse in a mine near the village of Rubaye in the country's North Kivu province.
"We're still digging at the site, so the death toll could rise,” government spokesman Lambert Mende said.
Congo's eastern borderlands have some of the world's largest deposits of tin ore and coltan (niobium and tantalum), which is used in electronic devices like mobile phones and video game consoles.
Rampant poverty has pushed hundreds of thousands of Congolese to work in unregulated mines, often controlled by armed groups. Reuters

Alcyone Resources has signed a proposed metal stream agreement worth $US10M, to support a turn around in the company’s operations.
The agreement allows for the purchase of 15% of life of mine silver production from Alcyone’s Texas, Twin Hills and Mt Gunyan operations in Queensland, Australia.
It also provides for future investment through the issue of 200M options to purchase shares at a 50% premium to the 30 day VWAP at the time of the issue.
Chairman Dr Paul Sylva said the agreement was the first step in Alcyone’s strategy to simplify its financial structure, with the aim of supporting future production.

Miners at South Africa's Anglo American Platinum reported for work on Friday despite earlier calls for a strike by some union leaders, the company said.
Amplats spokeswoman Mpumi Sithole said all workers had reported for the morning shift. "Everything is normal at Amplats this morning,” she said.
“Workers are going underground and there have been no incidents."
Unions and worker committees had threatened to strike in protest at Amplats' plans to cut as many as 6,000 jobs to try to restore the company to profitability.
The threats of industrial action sent the company's shares to an eight year low of R286 on Thursday, close to half the 2003 high of R508.99 in January. Reuters