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I THINK MINING is atMost underground mines involve ventilation systems. You need to push cool surface air down into those hot, deep workings to keep them cool. The right temperature in underground mine workings is not only a matter of pleasant surroundings. I recall reading that the accident rate jumps as the temperature increases: at about seventy degrees things are optimally safe, at eighty degrees the accident rate soars. Ventilation systems are needed because the rocks are hot from the heat generated by radioactive processes deep in the earth’s interior. Now professors from the University of British Columbia (UBC) are looking at tapping into the heat from closed underground mines. They reckon this is a cheap source of energy for those dwellings and businesses that remain behind after the mine is shut down. Now that is sustainable development for you: first a mine and then a solarium, or should we call it a heatarium or mine-arium?
No recommendations or endorsements implied in this posting. But it is information that attracts my attention and it is information that may benefit a mine somewhere, so I pass it on. Keep in mind I am a semi-retired professional engineer and produce this blog on the basis that I write what interests me, not what may be of commercial benefit. But I am human and cannot be interested in something if it does not come to my attention; the service I write of here came via an unsolicited e-mail.
I do not thinks there is anything wrong or inappropriate about the facts I cite in this article. My Canadian friends bewail the fact that the United States is an imperial power, colonizing smaller nations and exploiting their resources. They deny that Canada is as imperial a colonizer as any. Consider Canadian ownership of United States mines.
In the early 1960s in South Africa my parents moved to Evander, a mining town in sight of Sasol where coal was turned into petrol or gas as we term it in the Untied States. The plant was built in response to international sanctions over apartheid. If I recall correctly, Fluor designed and built the plant. So it should not take Congressional hearings to establish that the technology exists. We all know that the United States has plenty of coal–last time I wrote about the issue, I quoted a talk at the SME meeting in Denver where somebody said at least 200 years worth.
But it may well take Congresional action to bring sanity to the mining that will be required to provide the coal. I refer to recent reports on fights about valley fills at coal mines. Everybody wants their car, but nobody wants topographic change to make the car possible. Consider the civil war that will be needed to tear up the landscape of the west to get the coal required to move all those SUVs around California and keep the lights on in the Las Vegas casinos.
It is hard to believe that a 23-meter high wall of an open pit coal mine in Maryland can just fail and “cover” two miners. Is this another instance of human hubris? I know the old adage that a slope is stable on the morning of the day it fails. But was there no monitoring of slope conditions, no sign of faults and joints that could form a failure plane, no monitoring of groundwater that might have reduced the factor of safety? Did the mine just work on the assumption that no failures had occurred before and thus conclude that no failure could occur in future. We await the news of the safety of the “covered” miner, but in the meantime we must ask these questions and wonder if it will take another round of resolute legal action to deal with complacency in the coal mines.
Nothing about mining, just a brief report on personal doings. I have just arrived in Cedar Rapids after a flight from Las Vegas where I spent two days . We did the Strip in the best tradition: one thing I miss is the ability to pop a 25 cent piece into a machine. Now the least you can feed into a machine is a dollar bill. It seems so extravagant. I visited my favorite store in all the world: FOA Schwartz with three floors of toys for all ages. Truly the place for people like me who need absolutely nothing more–except more toys. So I bought a chess set of Disney characters: on side is all the villains (and villainesses, if there is such a word) and one side is all the heros and heroines. The fields are all ploughed here in the midwest and the seed planted, but as yet there is no sign of the new corn. So tomorrow I will venture to the farm and return to regular grandkid doings. Thanks for the patience as you kept visiting this blog to read items that are not directly derived from the latest news. I will do that tomorrow as well, for it looks like the villains and heroes of mining have been as busy as ever while I fought Orange Alerts in airport.
Is it fair to brand carbon sequestration as a mining activity? It is sort of mining in reverse: putting something into the ground instead of taking it out. Taken to its logical extreme, we could brand putting high-level radioactive waste into Yucca Mountain as reverse-mining, and even filling of open pits with household solid waste as reverse-mining. Or are these activities simply a manifestation of sustainable mine development and de-development?
My two older kids did their undergraduate studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. I recall the old town, its beauty, its quaintness, and the many wooden boxes I found in the second-hand stores that line the streets. I recall average food, carelessly served by students, in old, bare-brick wall buildings. I recall cold winters and steaming summers as we blundered through Wal-Mart to get that which was constantly needed to feed and clothe them.
I do not recall any mines in the area that we drove through so often. I do not recall any talk of mining. I knew there were many excavations into the limestone and these now housed cold-storage and safe-storage companies. My daughter, who studied civil engineering, says that in class the civil engineers talked only of tractors, pigs, and corn. My son, studying political science, talked about those things that young men with ROTC scholarships talk about—and it is best I do not mention them here.
Now I have found a site put up by the Lawrence Journal, LJWorkd.com that has a long spread on mining in southeast Kansas, a part of the state I never visited. Go take a look at the site, as much for the stories it tells, as for the layout and graphics and utility of the site. It is worth a visit, regardless of your mining affiliations and afflictions.
The California State Water Resources Control Board by Resolution 92-49 adopted a policy that an area of contaminated groundwater where cleanup cannot be achieved may be designated a Containment Zone. To date no mine in the state has been designated a containment zone, but such a designation would bring clarity and closure to many of the vexing and contentious issue surrounding mine closure in California. This is why.
A conference was planned, people were writing and organizing, and then thing went awry. Here is what I wrote on the topic of Mining Research and Education in anticipation of the now postponed conference. I post these writings now, rather than hide them for a year or more, in the hope that controversial as they are, they may contribute to argument and discussion—hence the formulation of answers by those more knowledgeable than I am. The first question posed by the conference organizers was: What are the best steps to take to promote the essential need for R&D in the Mining Industry? Here is my answer:
Sunday is a time for reading. Actually, I spent yesterday kind-of sailing, as described in a separate piece below. I also cleaned out the attic and found some of my old text books on groundwater. Last evening I reread them, and here is a review of some classics that reward attention:
Wandering the by-ways of the Internet, this news release caught my eye: More than 12 million tons of radioactive waste will be moved away from the Colorado River, which provides drinking water for more than 25 million people across the West. The Department of Energy said the radioactive tailings about 750 feet from the river near Moab in southeastern Utah will be moved, predominantly by rail, to a proposed holding site at Crescent Junction, Utah, about 30 miles from the Colorado River.
The weekend was an orgy of hedonistic southern California pleasure: expensive coffee in the sun; a bike ride along the nine-mile beach; sandcastles besides the incoming waves; wonder at the ski kites that dominate Belmont Shores; and then to San Pedro harbor where we took off on my daughter’s 28-ft long Westsail. I first saw this yacht six years ago sitting high and dry on a dusty back lot east of Palm Springs. Years later and many hours and dollars of work, it now floats proud in the slip, a brilliant blue hull with red trim. We pottered about Los Angeles harbor, engrossed by the big ships and the tankers and the hoards of small boats that ply the calm waters inside the breakwater. We too stayed behind the protection of the breakwater, for beyond the waves were crashing on the rocks and there was news of coast guard action to help sailors in distress. The wind was blowing hard, very hard, all up and down the coast. And the conversation turned to the way the inland desert is heating up and sucking in cool air from the ocean causing the very winds we enjoy and/or fear.
Stuck in the warm sun besides the beach in southern California this week, I still had time to look up some papers on mine open pit lakes. This was done a part of an ongoing debate about sustainable development. I debate as follows: obey the law in spirit and verse–and if the jurisdiction is too corrupt to do it correctly, practice responsible mining; drop the concept of sustainable development in the context of mining–the words have too long being incorrectly used to promote irrational ideas to be of much value any more; rather talk about responsible mining–a broader and more ethical approach that incorporates the sensible parts of sustainable development; and finally make sure that when the mine is worked out, people can continue to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in, around, and in spite of the mine. Spook is a good example of what I mean. No chance for China here though.
This blog has just received the ultimate accolade. My technical editor informs me that China has blocked access to this blog. I know I say a few things that are not totally nice about everybody. But I never imagined that what I write could pose a threat to the stability of so great a nation as China. Maybe my comments about the number of accidents in their mines set them off. Or maybe it was my statement that if Chinese miners belonged to trade unions maybe fewer would die. Oh well, it is always easier to censor, than to change a system, or save a life. The good part about this ban of my blog in China is that I never have to be polite to those who urge on me “understanding” of the greatness of socialism, the Chinese culture, or of Castro and his antique buddies.
PS. After first posting the above, I was told that all of WordPress is blocked by China. Now I am even prouder to be part of a free community feared by oppressors.
How can you not love a city where you can do the following? Down the hill from home beneath a weak sun and through pusillanimous snow, tossed around like confetti at a desultory wedding, to an ugly shopping center. You know the type: cheap concrete bricks bespattered by beautiful graffiti, and down ill-formed stairs of dirty tile to a library of grubby-fingered books. Hence to a back room called, grandly, Meeting Room 191.
After setting out old metal & plastic chairs & tables, we settled down with a pile of colored paper in front of us. A fat lady (and most Canadians are not fat, so she sort of sticks out) announces that for the next hour we will have an origami lesson.
Here is a story that hit my e-mail inbox sent by somebody from somewhere. The publisher is AAP NewsWire. The publication is AAP Australian Sport. The author is John Coomber, Senior Sports Writer. I confess I do not know the places or the people of whom he writes. But the story is interesting and there is in it my favorite sting-in-the-scopion’s-tail: for who is to say that sport is less “dangerous” than mining? Here is the story as written by John Coomber:
A road that winds so much and goes up and down so many steep grades could have be built for one reason only: to provide access to mines. And indeed that is the case, although today the road provides access to beautiful scenery, quaint towns, and expensive properties. I refer to California Route 299. It erratically traverses three mountain passes in north west California linking the coast and the inland Central Valley by a route no sane engineer would choose if efficiency were the first consideration.
I add Route 299 to Colorado Route 141 as being amongst the most spectacular and beautiful roads to travel. Why fly to Australia or New Zealand for scenery when these routes are right at hand? I selected this route by chance. I had spent the Easter weekend in Newport, Oregon marvelling at how different the United States is to Canada: TV shows from CNN asking what Jesus would do about global warming (I did not watch the show, so I do not know what the final verdict is); talk-show hosts making comments about sports teams using words I have never heard before and the meaning of which I have no clue; and nice warm California weather made hotter by a non-functioning car air conditioner.
I am tempted to pontificate about the sustainability of a region after the cessation of mining when I traverse routes like 299 and 141. Here is tangible, living proof that we can mine and then turn the area into a high-priced, livable environment. I refrain from saying the obvious, which is probably too much, for there surely are downsides to my admiration for these areas and I do not want to rouse sleeping emotions. All I ask is that you go take a look and then get back to us with your counter arguments.
In South Africa at the start of my consulting career, I was called in to limit erosion from an old sandy pile of tailings close to the city. Vegetation would not grow in the acid materials that were cemented by negative pore pressures to a hard crust. We read all the literature of the seventies but found no answer. The gut feel solution was to cut a series of benches, one-foot high by one-foot wide, with vertical and slightly inward-sloping near-horizontal surfaces. Rain fell on the near-horizontal benches, ponded, and seeped into the tailings. Nothing ran off and erosion was controlled.
When the Columbia River was dammed by glacial ice, sediments deposited in the deep valleys of northern Washington State. Amax sought to develop a molybdenum mine just off the Columbia in the Colville Tribe reserve. I was brought across to design the tailings impoundment at the selected site. I was brought across because preliminary surveys had revealed up to 30 meters of soft, unconsolidated mud filling the selected valley, and after all, I had just succeeded with a similar soil deposit in South Africa.
To contain the calculated volume of tailings from the proposed mine, the impoundment would have to be 1,000-ft high, an unprecedented height in 1980, but more common now. A quick calculation revealed that the rate of rise was so fast that no amount of expedited drainage of excess pore pressure would yield a fast enough gain of strength to provide the required stability. We had to find another way.
The Iowa land is changed in every way from what it was before the coming of the farmers. Is this a lesson in sustainable development for modern mining companies? They came and cut the trees, ploughed the grasses under, fertilized the soil, dammed the creeks, and built houses. They established their farms that now produce corn and soya bean which in turn feeds pigs and chickens and ethanol plants.
Here is more on the Iowa farm house. It is early morning. The tulips outside my study window are white and pink awaiting the sun to open to their full glory. The birds are chirping and the geese are already fretting over their two new eggs. The dog, a small mongrel jack-russell terrier, is flashing around the lawn sniffing for signs of the feral cat and maybe the coyotes that visit in the night.
On the kitchen table built by me from old cedar planks pulled from the 1920s corn crib is a pile of fresh wild asparagus picked from the ditches at sunset; we will cut them and lightly cook them with cream for lunch.
Spring is coming and I go south and to Iowa to a farm. I will post less on this blog. Here is a description of what awaits me and why my writing and posting rate will decline.
Two and a half miles north-east of Belle Plaine along gravel roads is the farm: 160 acres of sodden land, ploughed and awaiting the spring planting of corn and soya beans. The natural grasses are green, the trees still bare, and the bird flock around the barns for last-years droppings. The pond embankment is falling in, a victim of winter’s freeze and the subsequent thaw. Pieces of the garage roof blown off by the winter winds litter the gravel drive and pieces of wood from the corners of the house lie amidst the sprouting bulbs soon to burst into yellow and purple.
In the April 2, 2007 New Yorker Jeffrey Goldberg writes of the trials and tribulations of working for Wal-Mart. He notes the chain’s claim that there are more people applying for jobs with Wal-Mart than there are jobs available. Keep in mind there still seem to be more jobs than people applying in the mining industry.
The good news is that the Canadian Press reports that cleanup of abandoned uranium mines is about to begin in northern Saskatchewan. Apparently $25 million has been budgeted to “control the radiation risk.” Here is more from the relevant report:
Most of the mines operated briefly near Uranium City a half a century ago, during the Cold War era. Following the completion of their operations, the mines were abandoned at a time when environmental standards were limited or non-existent. Since the companies that operated the mines no longer exist, the responsibility for the cleanup has fallen on governments. The management of the project has been contracted to the Saskatchewan Research Council.
Who can resist the human story that shines through the screen of a well compiled website? I cannot, so here is one site that epitomizes the human story and that is thankfully free of the guff that too often spoils things. What follows is a cut & paste with heavy edit from their site to tell you the story that fascinated me. This is, however, still Mr. Skinner’s voice.
I’ve been in mining since I was 12 years old pushing ore carts in my father’s mine. I learned the mining industry from the ground up. After high school I graduated from the Mackay School of Mines. I have nospent over 50 years in the industry.
Here is a brief survey of wages - are you earning enoughand salaries in Canadian mines in 2006. Hope this helps you in getting the 2007 remuneration you deserve and merit. The information comes via kind favor of Jennifer Leinart of Cost Mine whose compilation Canadian Mine Salaries, Wages & Benefits 2006 Survey Results provides all the data you could ever need.
Surface mine electricians are doing best. Their salary range is $22.50 to $41.35. Mechanics do pretty well with a range of $14.70 to $41.35. And so do heavy equipment operators who start at $13.50 but can also earn as much as the top-paid electrician and mechanic. One almost begins to pity the drill operators with an average hourly wage of $24.84, the truck driver at $21.61, and particularly the laborer who starts at $8.50 and can earn upto $24.58 for an average of $18.07. I mean, $8.50 is probably a lot less than the average grocery store shelf stocker. No wonder the mines say they cannot find workers.
The most interesting question asked of me regarding global warming is: As a consultant, how can I make money providing advice to the mining industry relevant to global warming? Here is my simple mining answer.
The troglobite will soon be a common mining word, or at least a swear word. Rio Tinto is seeking to expand iron ore mining near Pannawonica in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. They want to develop a new mine to replace the existing mine that will be worked out in the next decade or so. At the site of the new mine they have found troglobites. These are described as four millimeter subterranean creatures related to spiders. Apparently if this new mine does not go ahead, they local town will have to be deserted. So here we have to decide between:
- Extinction of a species
- Extinction of a town (should I call it a community or culture?).
Are you being paid as much for working in a mine as you are worth? Bet somebody, somewhere, doing the same job as you, is earning more. The question is, are you prepared to move to that other place to get a higher salary? Is more money worth the family disruption and settling in to a new and maybe less nice place? To help you decide whether to stay put or to pull up and go, here is a summary of 2006 mining salaries. The salary numbers come from the three books Jennifer Leinart of CostMine sent me yesterday:
How the world has changed. Can you imagine this: China is letting the United Nations in to launch a project to improve safety for Chinese coal miners. Here are extracts from the Canadian Press report:
The United Nations launched a project Tuesday to improve safety for Chinese coal miners, who average 13 deaths a day [there are more than five million Chinese coal miners.]. The US$14.42 million plan will train and educate miners in five provinces where numerous fires, floods and other disasters strike mines every year despite repeated government promises to improve safety.
Here is one of those reports on mining that infuriates the reader because of incompetent brevity and hints of worse to come: AAP reports re the Tolukuma Gold Mine in Papua New Guinea that the mine “dumps its mining residue into the river system…[but]..blood test data ….from village communities [downstream of the mine]…did not show evidence of anything other than normal ranges of chemical traces within human blood.” The mine management disputes the findings of high toxic heavy metal blood levels by a fellow who says he worked for Australian hospitals, which deny that he worked for them. If you are now as confused as I am, here is the full report:
Just added to the Blogroll is a new blog The Bottom Line by Michael Assouline CFA. There are but three posts and no comments. These are the posts:
- Substance behind the uranium hype.
- Getting technical with copper
- To beat the market, stick to the basics.
Good luck to him. Good luck to you investing on his advice. And good luck to the mines invested in.
The conclusions from the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada are pretty obvious: (1) not many blogs have ads, yet; (2) 52% of readers say they trust blogs; (3) blogs could eat into paper and online newspaper ad revenue; and (4) there is still much opportunity to create branded, credible blogs.
How can mines benefit from global warming? Greg Easterbrook, in the April 2007 Atlantic Monthly notes that in economics there are no zero-sum games; somebody will benefit from global warming. His top nominees are the Inuit who rule Nunavut, a place that will change from a frozen waste land to a nice warm place. Then there is Greenland waiting to be clear of the ice. Both places probably contain ore bodies just waiting to be mined. Is the mining industry ready? The obvious action is to go exploring and stake claims. This all seems like trivial, trash-press talk. But just maybe it is not, and global warming may just be for real. Rationale people might as well discuss how we are going to benefit from the inevitable.
Technorati claims to give you a Technorati Profile and link your blog into the wider world on blogs. I am trying that right now so we can get more exposure. Also maybe I can get hold of more blogs on mining. Stay tuned and I will expand this piece on the larger world of blogs, mining, and opnions & news about world mining. One example: Philippine Mining News. And another: Tim’s El Salvador Blog.
Browsing websites can be fun. They open your eyes to details of the familiar that you had not previously noticed. And they can set you off thinking of family and fear. These trivial observations are occasioned by looking at the Firwin site. They make removable insulation systems. Not being sure what a removable insulation system is, I went deeper into the site. Here is what I found.
First to the military applications ( my son is right now floating around Iran as part of the US Navy presence that may yet free fifteen British sailors, or at the very least, contain crazy Iranian ambitions.) Do they supply the US Navy, and how is their product used? Maybe I should look more carefully at the Marine section.
There are, or at some time in the past have been, at least 270 mines in Jackson County, Oregon (Mindat) In the Jacksonville District there are the Grace Diggings, Jacksonville Placer, Norlin Mine, Opp Mine, Opp Placer, Town Mine, Williamson Mine, Winchester Housten Placer Mine, and Yellow King Mine. Gold mining in Oregon had its beginnings in Jackson County. Gold was discovered in 1852 on Jackson Creek. Here are some of the places from which 500,000 ounces of gold have been mined—and where today you can go and try your luck at finding more gold:
Mining news from Cuba and Bolivia does not normally make headlines. Over the weekend this piece appeared on one of those sites devoted to “cooperation against bilateral trade and investment agreement that are opening countries to the deepest forms of penetration by transnational corporations.” If this kind of post-commie rhetoric makes you cross, avoid this report:
The most interesting site to pop up over the weekend is Inclinometer et al. The site is run by Skip Gosnell, Marketing Director for Reiker Inc. They apparently design and manufacture inclinometers that are used on almost every type of mining equiment and in almost any mining slope application. This site is no doubt supported by the folk who make the equipment and is intended to promote their product. But that is no matter. At least we have a human voice writing about technology from a personal perspective. That makes the site valuable and one that I wish more of those companies that put out bland, uniformative, marketing, non-information would replicate. In addition to his comments, the site has a great list of links. My recommendation for the week. I have added it to the Blogroll so you can find the site quickly in future.
A while ago I wrote about the BC Minister of Mines who resigned over a “nasty” e-mail. At the time I could not find the e-mail. Now I have from another blooger more resourceful than me. Here it is, and all I can say is WOW!:
It is hard to imagine there is any link between mining and dancing. I grew up in the 1950s on a mine in South Africa. A favorite passtime was to go to the mine dances. On hot Sunday afternoons we would gather in the arena of the mine compound and watch in fascination as the black miners did their traditional dances. My favorite was the gumboot dance: a stomp in four-time. Then there were the wild gyrations of the Zulus in vivid headgear. Or the shimmer of the Shona as they slide to and fro to a wild drum beat.
I wonder if these traditions continue? Are they now outmoded and improper? I make no excuses for a time when I was innocent of pubity and all that follows, when I was innocent of politics and racialism, and ethnicism, and all those terrible things that drove us from our homeland. The memories are good and the pleasure of dance remains. Here in Vancouver I still go out to dance twice a week, and this is a brief description of just one evening.
Dorothy Kosich writes in Mineweb that the Colorado appeals court has ruled that Colorado counties may ban the use of cyanide in mining within the county. Five Colorado counties have such regulations. The Colorado Mining Association sued Summit County asserting that state law, which permits the use of cyanide in mining, pre-empts county regulations. Not so, said the appeals court, ruling that the Colorado Mined Reclamation Act “specifically requires that mining operators comply with zoning and land use regulations adopted by political subdivisions.”
Is this a sad story, or is it a story of human ability and success? Persist a little while, for the story starts out sad, and you wonder if there is light at the end of the tunnel. I think it is a story of the human spirit and the opportunities that mining brings. The story comes to us via a letter in the January 2007 Canadian Mining Journal. I quote, and liberally edit to get to the point of the tale.
“I am the wife of a geologist…..entering the mining field means constantly uprooting the family and often living in remote communities, or always traveling and usually absent from important family celebrations…..this is an unstable profession and you could be without work in the blink of an eye if the markets fall….I recall many of my husband’s colleagues—bright, hard-working geologist—desperately seeking work in the early 1908s….and finally changing careers.
OptimiZ Consulting is Kay Sever. I have never met her. I have exchanged many an e-mail with her. I have read much of what she has written on the topic of improving quality in the mining industry. Now let me introduce you to her writings. Here are the papers she has sent to me and which I have featured on TechnoMine and keep in the InfoMine library:
Everybody likes to go to a conference. The further away the conference, the better. The more exotic the locale of the conference, the better. Las Vegas, Honolulu, and San Diego are my picks for conferences. In the last year I succeeded in going to conferences in St Louis and Denver; so in retrospect I failed. But regardless of how cold and dreary those cities were, there was still benefit in being at a conference.
The obvious advantages of conferences are the chance to escape routine, to meet old friends, to see new places, and to gather information about one’s profession. In particular, the chance to attend talks and presentations by experts is a central part of any conference. There is no substitute for a live presentation of work done, ideas generated, and doubts expressed. We are creatures of a tribal past; I suspect our instincts are honed to sitting, talking, and listening as a way of exchanging information, making value judgments, and picking up scraps of useful information from even the most inarticulate.
Alister MacLeod is a Canadian author. In his collection of short stories, Island, he writes of a miner, on a beach, dreaming beside the sea. I quote from The Closing Down of Summer:
“We are perhaps the best crew of shaft and development miners in the world and we are due in South Africa on the seventh of July.
I have always wished that my children could see me at my work. That they might journey down with me in the dripping cage to the shaft’s bottom or walk the eerie tunnels of the drifts that end in walls of staring stone. And that they might see how articulate we are in the accomplishment of what we do. That they might appreciate the perfection of our drilling and the calculation of our angles and the measuring of our powder, and that they might understand that what we know through eye and ear and touch is of a finer quality than any information garnered by the most sophisticated of mining engineers with all their elaborate equipment.
If only real-world mining were as simple as those incredibly complicated games played on the internet. Here is my take on two. I have sent this piece to my grandkids who will likely enjoy the games more than I do.
First there is one of those dark sites that look like a bad Hobbit’s dream; or a Hobbit’s bad dream; it amounts to much the same. You know the sort: mostly black with misty blue hills enmassed in smoke and mist. There is a baroque castle and a wicked-looking fellow resembling the offspring of an angel and Osama Ben Laden. The pusillanimity of the world they inhabit is well captured by the idiotic simplicity of the actions they scurry around performing. For example, here are two Q&As re mining—something pretty essential to building castles, fighting dragons, and rescuing maidens.
Cameco has issued updates on progress at their Cigar Lake property. For basic information on the mine and its flooding take a look at the Cameco site itself. (I particularly recommend the diagram of the underground mine workings.) The most informative information I found regarding current conditions is at this site. The share price increased on issue of the news release. I may be a pessimist, or worse a cynic, but I see little in the report to justify an increase in the share price. There are more cautionary statements and there is more wriggle room in the reports I read than there is solid technical information justifying paying more for a future promise. Let us examine some technical uncertainties.
Both the Pebble Mine and the Kensington Mine in Alaska promise to redefine the way we think about mining and the way mines in the United States are permitted and operated. The questions is, however, do these two mines represent instances of objective democratic debate or are they gladiatorial contests between rich and opinionated men? Will the ultimate outcome at these two mines represent the rule of law dispensed by a blind-folded lady holding scales, or will the outcome be dictated by a public-caesar’s thumb up or down. And will the thumb go the way the battle goes?
Today we read that “A perceived end run by Coeur d’AleneMines and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers against a federal court injunction may have cost Coeur Alaska the ability to dispose of the Kensington gold into a nearby freshwater lake.” This statement is a follow up to the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in the Kensington gold mine (Coeur d’AleneMines) permit challenge. The court reversed a lower federal court decision and vacated the permits associated with a tailings facility at the Kensington gold mine in Alaska. Coeur Alaska had obtained its Section 404 Army Corps of Engineers permit in 2005 for the placement of fill material at the mine, which is currently under construction.
If you are intrigued by the continuing saga of news about Vatukoula, Fiji, here is an (edited) extract from a report about the company, Westech that is buying the mine (The link to this report is broken. Here is what I edited when I was able to access the site.):
Run by Brian and Amelia Wesson, Westech International Pty Ltd is a resource and energy company based in Sydney. Brian Wesson said the company designs mines and power stations. “It is a small company; we have about 20 employees dotted around the country. We take on a lot of contracts for various jobs. We also have interest in other mining companies, such as Queensland Mining Corporation.”
Here is my simple investment advice for the week: If the news announcement dances around the technical facts, sell. Here are egregious examples to illustrate my thesis. Keep in mind, this is my opinion. The following does not constitute valid investment opinions or advice.
The speed of light brings us this immediate riposte from John Chadwick, who responds to my comments about his International Mining editorial. As with all John’s writing, there is news and insight, so I share what he wrote by repeating most of what he sent me. (My ambition is to get him to write his own blog—I will read that daily.)
John Chadwick has turned International Mining into a visual delight, like the National Geographic, which I received for thirty years, looking at the pictures and never reading the text. I then decided to read the editorial in March’s International Mining. Here is my critique of John’s opinion, another gloomy piece that ignores the reality of America. Let me put the Englishman right by reminding him of the strengths and spirit of the average American and the common sense that rules the U.S.A. in spite of foreign criticism and national self-interested groups.
John writes of a study being undertaken by the National Academies on factors influencing the supply of minerals critical to the United States’ economy. It seems that while the U.S. consumes most of the world’s minerals, it does not produce many, and certainly the U.S. is not spending nearly enough on exploration to find the supply needed in the future. The really bad-sounding news, which will no doubt be used to justify the funding of a study, is that in 2006, the U.S. imported over fifty percent of the top 45 minerals consumed and relied one-hundred-percent on imports for 17 of the top minerals it consumed.