Ontario, Canada's second largest province, has become one of the of the country's main mining districts where it takes the longest to obtain exploration permits, a new report released Tuesday shows.According to a survey of mining executives by the Fraser Institute, growing wait times for permits across Canada, and particularly in Ontario, add to the cost of exploration and may ultimately hinder t...Read More
BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP) cut its dividend for the first time since 1988 years on Tuesday, becoming the latest company to do so in a sector struggling with the worst slump in commodity prices in a decade and high debt loads.In a statement, the world's biggest mining company saw its first-half underlying profits tumble 92% coming in way below expectations at $412 million for the 6 months to end Dece...Read More
Investors piled into to the metals and mining sector in a big way on Monday after a strong start to the Chinese new year commodities demand and a rally on the country's stock markets.On the Comex market in New York copper for delivery in May climbed 2.5% to $2.1325 a pound or $4,700 a tonne. The red metal is up more than 10% from a six-year low hit mid-December. Other industrial metals also ga...Read More
Like his father before him, Alberto Carrizo has worked in Chile's copper mines since he was a teenager, supporting his family as prices for the metal boomed in recent decades.But as copper prices have slid to a more than six-year low, Carrizo and his colleagues laboring away at the countless smaller mines that pock mark the Atacama desert are finding the buckets of ore they spend all day digging f...Read More
The Casino project in the Canadian Yukon Territory passed a major milestone last Thursday with the announcement that the project will move to a higher level of environmental assessment.In a press conference, Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board (YESAB) said it will send the copper-gold project, considered to be Yukon's largest mine, for its highest level of review. It's the fi...Read More
Ratings agency's have got it in for the mining sector where all companies are struggling with low commodity prices and many have to cope with high debt loads.Within the last few weeks Moody's Investor Services cut the ratings of seven large miners. Two majors - Anglo American and Freeport McMoRan - were cut to below investment grade for the first time.Moody's took Freeport McMoRan down a full fo...Read More
When the worst collapse of commodity prices in nearly two decades finally ends, mining companies left standing probably will have more robots on their side.Automated drills and driver-less trucks are among the new technology already employed by some of top mining companies, including BHP Billiton (ASX:BHP) and Rio Tinto (LON:RIO). But a new study by BMI Research says that miners, big and small, ar...Read More
Dramatic daily moves in the U.S. dollar, gold prices and the larger markets are pointing to a global banking collapse that will send resource prices higher in 2016, according to 321gold.com founder Bob Moriarty. In this interview with The Gold Report, he shares his insights on how mining equities will react and five names he is watching.The Gold Report: Last year at this time we talked about the S...Read More
Mining scene newcomer and BHP spin-off South32 (ASX, LON, JSE:S32) may soon make an offer for Anglo American's (LON:AAL) stake in their manganese joint venture, if the price was right.South32 indicated negotiations had already started. "We have a good relationship with our joint venture partner and they've communicated their intentions," the company said in a statement sent to Reuters.Samancor...Read More
Since its peak in 2012, mining capital expenditures has decreased almost 25%. Greenfield and brownfield development has decreased in aggregate by 43%, while sustaining capex has gone down 34%. Intuitively, the decline is more prominent in growth spending, as companies are simply just trying to survive, resulting in major project delays and deferrals across the globe.During the last major bear ma...Read More
On Wednesday another ratings agency downgraded Anglo American's credit to junk status. Fitch Ratings follows Moody's rating and also believe the outlook for the company is negative.Yesterday the London-listed miner said it's exiting the coal sector by selling its remaining operations in Australia, South Africa and Colombia. Anglo also said it would extract itself, over time, from its iron ore busi...Read More
Increased Chinese mineral production is just as much a cause for the slide in prices as the aggressive expansions by western mining companies, says Investec's global mining strategist Jeremy Wrathall.The difference in this dramatic downswing in global mineral prices compared to other troughs in the cycle was the enormous amount of debt firms took on to build new mines and processing capacity afte...Read More
You've heard the story before. The one about that promising mine project that was supposed to become the investment of the decade, or a prime producing mine. But it wasn't.Several projects end up disappointing hopeful investors not only due to community opposition or legal hurdles, but because they were not properly evaluated by the so-called experts.Project evaluation experts require an understan...Read More
The government of Indonesia will relax next year its ban on partially processed minerals exports, including copper, nickel, zinc and bauxite ore order to prop up its economy.According to the country's mining minister Sudirman Said, the review of the metal exports rule is part of a wider revision of the 2009 mining law that led to the export edicts and other regulations, Reuters reports.Indonesia...Read More
Anglo American's overhaul reflects the dire straits the global mining industry is in these days. (Image: Screenshot from Anglo American video via YouTube)After weeks of speculation, battered mining giant Anglo American (LON:AAL) has finally revealed details of its radical "portfolio restructuring,"announced in December, in response to a global rout in commodity prices that punished the costly mine...Read More
Ratings agency Moody's on Monday downgraded Anglo American's credit rating to below investment grade, saying the world's fifth largest diversified miner "now faces a higher business risk due to deterioration in commodities market conditions and a longer and more uncertain deleveraging period than previously expected."After the downgrade to junk status Moody's also maintains a negative outlook on t...Read More
Newcrest Mining rung in US$81 million profit in its half year financial result update, US$117 million lower than the corresponding prior period.The company says it was adversely impacted primarily by lower realised US dollar gold and copper prices and lower copper sales volumes. There was also an extended production outage atCadia following the failure of the main SAG mill motor also adversely imp...Read More
Freeport-McMoRan (NYSE:FCX) is selling a 13 percent ownership interest in its Morenci Mine to Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Ltd. (SMM) for $1.0 billion in cash.Morenci is an open-pit, copper mine located in Arizona.The Morenci unincorporated joint venture is currently owned 85 percent by FCX and 15 percent by Sumitomo Metal Mining Arizona Inc. (SMMAz is owned 80 percent by SMM and 20 percent by Sumi...Read More
Taseko Mines Ltd. (TSX: TKO) is suing the federal government in B.C. Supreme Court and seeking unspecified compensation for a 2014 decision that blocked development of a proposed $1.5 billion gold and copper deposit.The Vancouver-based company claims that the government and its agents - including the environment minister at the time - failed to meet their legal duties to Taseko when they blocked t...Read More
Rio Tinto Group should focus on buying floundering rivals to secure copper mines instead of building new ones, according to Sanford C. Bernstein Ltd."The decision should be a no-brainer," Paul Gait, an analyst at Bernstein in London, said in a note Friday. "Building a new ton of supply costs significantly more than buying an existing one."Rio said Thursday it plans to cut its dividend by as much a...Read More