We can celebrate the inanities of American patriotism and elections.  Like the flags that appear as adverts; the news that Cindy McCain charged $500,000 in one month to her American Express Platinum card; the fact that off-limits is a remark that being shot down in a plane hardly constitutes good experience in negotiating wars and the end to wars; that Obama decries attempts to overturn California’s Supreme Court on gay marriage;  that at the end of the day Obama is clearly more “religious” (whatever that means) than McCain who can’t quite recall his religious affiliation— but who could, trying to keep track of a wife spending half a million a month on family goodies?

 As I said we can celebrate these inanities, for at the end of the day, the election will be won or lost clearly—or decided by the US Supreme Court and carefully picked judges.  And there will be no riots and deaths and miscarriages of justice that negatively impact honest miners. 

Regardless of how much Cindy spends of her own fortune, we won’t have the turmoil that plagues mining prospects such as is occurring right now in Mongolia.  Or is even worse in Zimbabwe.  Silliness and excess are such small prices to pay for an honest and decisive election, that I vote for American silliness every time. 

I do not really know or understand the ins and outs of the Mongolian election.  To be entirely honest, I do not care about the ins and outs of the Mongolian election.  I am convinced that in the end it is just another of those systems where one tribe is trying to get the better of another tribe so that they can get their hands on the levers of power and the taps of dollars.  And they will then suppress the opposition. 

I also confess I have no sympathy for the mining companies trying to make a buck in this political turmoil or for the shareholders trying to ride to profits on the slippery slope of another primitive society of robber barons.   They know, or should know, the risks of operating in such places.  There is plenty written about the impact of political risk on mining.  They take it all into account in setting the budgets and the timetable for success. 

So let the Mongolian party steal the election or loose it.  Let the mines come or go as the taps sprout money for the winners.  Maybe put a few loose dollars of your investment money into the mines shares—afterall we all gamble a  little when we go to Vegas?   They may pay out with the same ratio of luck as the average slot machine.  No harm in trying.  No harm in a small flutter.

But spare us the sanctimonious financial analysis, the profound political analysis, the “bright”  predictions of success or failure.  This is gambling, plain and simple.  This is not investing, careful or prudent.  This is not saving the world or changing one desperately poor society.  This is a gamble that you bet on the robber baron who is going to win and will let you keep at least some of the take.  There is no ethics here.  This is not even an ethical issue.  This is just like putting your money in a slot machine and pulling one of those fake levers they all have now.  Good luck.  Good 4th July.  Good elections.  And good mining.

I once took my family out into the beautiful desert for a picnic.  Disaster hardly describes the bugs and the heat and the dirty sand.  We should have guessed: we were the only people in the picnic area parking lot.  From then on it was to the Desert Museum or Old Tucson where corporate control produces a semblance of shade and entertainment. 

These crass Disney-appreciation-like thoughts are prompted by a report in today’s news of protests over a new mine south of Tucson.  My recollection of that area is a huge airfield and more old planes than than you can count and then industrial sprawl and then nothing.  Maybe I just never got past the industrial sprawl.

In the best American fashion those without jobs are supporting the proposed Rosemont mine, and those with jobs are protesting the mine.   And in the best American tradition we have the silliest of reasons given for not building the mine.  One that comes up every time people protest development is the impact of more traffic on the Interstate:

But for Mylan Webb, a junior at Cienega High School, the mine would make a safety hazard on Interstate 10 where her parents drive to work each day.   “My dad drives 100 miles round-trip to work and uses vegetable oil for fuel — he uses the same interstate that will be used to haul copper,” she said.

Chuck Hammond of the Sonoita area held up a copper-laden cell phone and a plastic bottle of water to illustrate what he saw as a stark choice.  “There’s simply not enough water left in the West for us to be able to continue to have both of these things. We will have to give up one or the other. Now I can live without the cell phone. But this I can’t live without,” he said, holding the water bottle.

I can see his point about needing water, but in a place that has already mined groundwater so much that half the countryside is subsiding?  Yet I cannot envisage him, or anybody else, happily giving up their “copper-laden” cell phone.   Personally I have given up water from plastic bottles, as I believe that is a terrible waste of resources.  I take the radical approach of using a glass filled from a tap.  Kind of novel, I know. 

Another old mining community split between those with and without jobs is Cripple Creek in Colorado.  The report summarizes their dilemma: 

Owners of Colorado’s largest gold mine are getting opposition to a $200 million plan to extend operations for four more years from an unexpected source - Cripple Creek, which was founded as a home for miners more than a century ago.  That’s because the plan would extend open-pit mining into areas that would remove trees from a ridge just east of Cripple Creek, which now depends more on gamblers than miners for its economic fortunes.

I do not know Cripple Creek.  Its pictures hardly shows beauty.  But you have to hand it to the city folk though.  As potential victims of foreign mining interests, they are prepared to get their pound of flesh to let the mine proceed.  Those folk down in Peru would be impressed. 

The city wants Cripple Creek & Victor Gold Mining Co., owned by South African mining giant AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., to provide easements to extend a former tourist railroad from Cripple Creek to Victor, donate matching funds to build a recreation center for the two towns, design and build a historic site for century-old mining head frames and other equipment and ban its trucks from traveling through Cripple Creek, among other conditions.

I like old mining head frames as much as any and promise to go to the museum if it is ever built.  I bet it will be far more interesting than that fake Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas.  Building a museum for mining equipment in a gambling town seems such a worthy act, and such a small price to get out of South African mining, that I support the request to AngloGold. 

Fun and instructive as it is too read these reports by earnest young reporters unschooled in the ways of the world,  it is depressing to see the same tired old fights ever ongoing.   It is scary to think that major issues like resource development and economic development and environmental protection depend on who can more effectively wave a phone and a water bottle, and on who can more effectively conjure up images of more trucks on already over-crowded interstates. 

In reality, these fights occur in other arenas that we do not see that easily:  the environmental impact statements, the lobbing in Washington, the politics of presidential elections, and the fights in the courts going all the way to the Supreme Court.  

Yet these two instances of proposed mines and mine extensions represent the real issues of mining in the United States.  The place is crowded.  There is a shortage of water in the west.  There is little enough attractive open public land.  There is unemployment.  There are gamblers who value their views.  Foreigners do want to invest in a safe haven.  And people want their cell phones and maybe someday hybrid cars all laden with copper. 

 

Now we will never have to remain polite when somebody tells us the problems of Africa are a legacy of colonialism.  Mugabe’s actions and his welcoming by the rest of Africa are not colonialism.  This is simply a case of a bunch of vicious bullies who have grabbed power and care not a whit for those they bully. 

We may feel for those who are bullied, but there is little we can do to help them when the whole continent is gripped in bully-worship and the perpetration of one horror after another. 

We can applaud efforts by the United States and the United Kingdom to bring pressure to bear on a whole continent in the grip of medieval robber barons.  But once the barons band together to congratulate one another on their venality, decency does not stand a chance.

Clearly for mining the repercussions are significant.  Hale and hearty Brits can no longer go to make a pound and swill away the sunset over gin and tonic.  London-based journalists may still travel in small planes to savage bush camps and write glowing reports of mining successes, but we need give them no credence nor admiration.  They too are simply hangers-on in this ghastly macabre dance of spoliation.

We can barely stand to read the effusions of sober reporting on mining activities coming out of Africa these days.  It is almost as though the writers are head-buried in sand and the toes are the text tappers.  Their ability to ignore the nastiness around them while singing the praises of mines border on the comical if it did not border on the obscene.

So my advice is this:  if you have mines or shares in mines in Africa, sell them before the local robber baron takes them.   For this is clearly not a nice place, a transparent place, a decent place.  Leave it to the Chinese, for they may just have a constitution that we do not or should not have. 

Live on the spirit of the King of Belgium. 

Some countries just do not get it.  Zimbabwe is the most egregious example affecting honest mining.   But on a much lesser scale, take a look at the Education News Site in India.  Here is how they describe mining engineering:

Mining Engineers

Mining Engineers are responsible for locating natural reserves of minerals, petroleum and other useful natural substances, and then to lay out plans, devices shafts, inclines or quarries for the safe extraction of these resources, whether they be coal, petroleum, metallic or non-metallic minerals, from under the earth. The safety measures needed to be taken have to be carefully chalked out, keeping in mind the workers health, welfare and safety.” A degree in mining engineering and a certificate from the Director General of Mines and Safety, Dhanbad, is a must.

Job Opportunities

Most jobs for mining engineers are with the government and public sector organizations such as the Indian Bureau of Mines, Geological Survey of India, and mining companies such as CIL (Coal India Ltd.), IPCL, HCL, Neyvelli Lignite Corporation, etc.  Mining engineers can also find work with some private sector mining companies, or in teaching and research.

Leaving aside the wonky language—some of the best writers of clear English prose I know are from India—I am amazed and distressed by the Job Opportunities.   India will not pose much of a threat as long as they view jobs with the government as the first and best opportunity even for mining engineers. 

Of course they have the brain drain problem to deal with.  Examples include the writer of clear prose I admire and now Lakshmi Mittal from India and based in London is contemplating getting involved in the BHP takeover of Rio TInto. 

This takeover battle seems to be generating more journalism than financial or takeover action.  This battle is like a second-rate dance:  the main partners are incompatible and only potential suitors, from China and India, seem willing to dance.  Or one of those operas where we delight in watching the stupidity of the gods destroy the world. 

I ate lunch last week with a friend from Arizona who told me of the prevailing opinion of a mine development there:  pity Rio TInto seems to have handed the reins to BHP; pity for Rio seems to do things right; but BHP, well it makes you wonder.   Of course he said other things, but blog civility has its uses.  So we refrain from full opinion about Zimbabwe, large takeovers, and other things that simply reintroduce us to the workweek but do not elucidate or inform. 

And we encourage Indian mining engineers to avoid the obvious and set out to reform mining in there own country and elsewhere; they have good examples. 

Grand Canyon and uranium:  a majority of democrats used an obscure provision of the law to try to stop the staking of new mining claims for uranium near the  Grand Canyon—leaving in place about 10,000 claims staked before the politicians got around to acting. 

Alaska Lake Tailings Disposal:  The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal from a ruling by the Ninth Circuit court which essentially stopped plans to dispose of tailings in a lake off Juneau, Alaksa by Coeur d’Alene mines.  

In the first case there is a clear statement that mining uranium adjacent to the Grand Canyon should not occur.  Personally I would like to know who the mining companies are that have staked 10,000 claims in the area.  Are any of them majors or is this a case of thousands of juniors seeking an ephemeral dream?  

No doubt uranium prices are high and likely to increase.  But there is surely lots of uranium in other deposits in the south west in areas where mining is likely to be easier and more profitable.  There is just something wrong with this story and we do not have the complete story yet.  This fight is far from over, but it will take a lot more clear-headed information and analysis before we see resolution. 

The second case hinges on the right of federal agencies to exercise their discretionary powers regarding permit granting.   I doubt we will see the Supreme Court get into the merits of lake disposal of tailings.  Rather, very much like that Canadian case of the Red Chris mine, they will rule on the narrow legal issue of whether the US Forest Service and the Corp of Engineers correctly exercised their right to make certain administrative decisions.  And then send the case back to lower courts to decide if the right was appropriately exercised.  This mining fight is far from over and it is not yet time to bid up the price of shares. 

In the old  days of mining in South Africa, Anglo American was the revered giant.  From those mighty lion-statue-defended doors of their downtown Johannesburg offices they ruled the South African mining industry.  I vaguely recall they also controlled something like sixty percent or more of all the companies on the local stock exchange.  They may still do for all I know.  Now they seek to be the same dominating presence from Alaska to Zimbabwe. 

My father worked for Union Corporation, now long disappeared into other mining entities.  But big as Union Corporation was, we still shivered in awe of Anglo.  They were know as the progressive ones.  They even asked the government once if they could treat their Black employees nicely.  That was courage in those days. 

At university a friend took me to his father’s office in the Anglo building.  His father was a civil engineer with Anglo.  That was like approaching the inner sanctum. 

As a post-graduate, my masters thesis was supervised by a fellow who became chief civil engineer for Anglo.  I have not seen him since, although last year entertained his son and wife in Vancouver.  Thus my instinct is that the people who work for Anglo are good people and fine engineers. 

In the evenings after five-o’clock tea in the university residence common room, we would head up through the grand mansions of Parktown and run around the parks and past the house where the Oppenheimers lived.  This clearly was power and luxury beyond our first imagination. 

By then politics was rough.  Some mornings a fellow student would simply not be there: the security police had picked him up over night for protesting apartheid.  My girlfriend had a visit from the security police warning her to desist from church work in the local township least her father, a military man, were to find his career in jepardy.  We secretly circulated and read banned books including Black Beauty and Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  And went to banned screenings of movies like Guess Who Is Coming to Dinner.  None, incidently, risque, but considered a threat to white supremacy nevertheless.

And maybe it was a threat to white supremacy for the government changed, but by then we had left, for that is not a place or a way of life in which to bring up children or even to try to live comfortably with yourself if you are lucky enough to be able to go elsewhere.  Only two of my old university friends are still in South Africa.  The rest are scattered around Canada, the United States, and Australia. 

This personal reverie is prompted by reports that Anglo American is dithering about continuing to develop a platinum mine in Zimbabwe.

Mining giant Anglo American has defended its controversial decision to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in a platinum mine in Zimbabwe, after being widely criticised for the plan.  After being accused of defying international opinion by making the $400m (£202m) investment while the crisis in Zimbabwe keeps escalating, Anglo American claimed the mine would actually benefit the country’s population in the long term.

For as long as I can remember, Anglo American has mined in repressive places and has tried to use its mining and financial clout to improve the lot of the country’s dispossessed.  I recall they were always at the forefront in South Africa of bold and brave calls for better treatment of the Blacks, for opening the economy to others, and to development to benefit the masses—and themselves of course. 

Is their Zimbabawe venture just a fall back to a deeply ingrained corporate culture?  Maybe if South Africa can be made to go better, so too one day can Zimbabwe.  If the Afrikaners can eventually be made to toe the line of decency, can we do the same to Mugabe?  And in the long run profit from mining?

There is no question that Zimbabwe never has been a land of democracy or decency.  Those who built the famous ruins from which the country takes its name, were no doubt brutal overlords who scoured the land for gold to send to the east coast and up the trade routes.  Chaka sent the Matabele fleeing into the southern part of the country and set the stage for past and current black-on-black violence.  The whites came and fed the original four million to increase the population to forty million.  So now from Mugabe and his supporters’ perspective if a few of the other tribe die or are killed, who cares.   This is just a continuation of the struggle for power and possession at the death of others, not like us, that is Zimbabwe. 

The question though is, is Anglo right or wrong in continuing to operate and plan to develop there?  No doubt their hope is the passing of the Mugabes and the coming of a semblance of decency in government.  Anglo has sweated it out successfully in the past, maybe they can do it again in this dark African place.

Anglo America under its Canadian leader, Cynthia Carrol, certainly is bold these days—or maybe it has not changed at all?. Consider both this Zimbabwe investment and its massive investment in an entirely different place: the Pebble Mine in Alaska.  The investment in Alaska strikes me as a hearkening back to the same corporate culture that persisted through the bad days in South Africa and now the continued push in Zimbabwe.  I am surely wrong, but it is tempting to speculate that in the minds of the corporate-culture gurus of Anglo, Alaska is just another dark place of people who have to be persuaded that mining is right for them and for their land if only they will let Anglo do it. 

And for sure, Anglo is committed to doing the mining right—for as I have already said, I believe in the engineering ethics of Anglo’s engineers.  Only problem is I have studied with them and know we are still learning.  As this very piece proves.

I never have invested in Anglo and never will.  It strikes me as too conflicted an organization.  Still family bound, internationally muddled, alternatively hard-headed commercially, but with an inner core of instinct to social responsibility which may be right, but maybe a long time in comming. 

I will follow the story of Anglo America in Zimbabwe and Alaska, for in both places they are defying conventional wisdom and prudence.  In both places they are seeking to mine as a way to improve with the most noble sentiments.  And in both places they are fighting forces stronger than them; but the people they are fighting have less time, less money, and less perspective.   In both places we see again the presence of Anglo American at the center of the debates that will shape the world of mining for decades to come. 

Thus I was neither surprised nor distressed to see no mention on the Republic of Mining about the city manager of Sudbury demanding more money from the province and the feds for Sudbury.  The report reads: 

A passionate presentation before North Bay city council, Sudbury mayor John Rodriguez explained how his city and many other northern communities are not getting their fair share of resource revenue sharing from the federal and provincial governments. He says it’s essential and urgent to get a funding framework in place so that more tax revenue from the mining sector flows back to municipalities such as Sudbury, Timmins and Kirkland Lake. He says in the last ten year Sudbury has seen a half a billion dollars of deficit in infrastructure. To put is simply says Rodriguez, “They’re not sharing in the wealth”.

This plea is particularly interesting coming as it does from a civilized place in a civilized nation.  All too often one reads similar pleas from local communities in far-away uncivilized places and it is too easy to brush them off with a wave as locals greedy for more money from the good people who invest in mining companies and who live in civilized places like Toronto, Vancouver, or London. 

Somehow this plea, coming from people you probably voted for (or would if you could,) makes all the more real the reality of the need of local people to get some of the benefits of mining-generated income to make local communities work. 

Thus we await with great interest the analysis by the Republic of Mining of this “greed” by local people demanding a greater share of the money derived from mining.  And we await with interest the outcome: will the province and/or the feds cough up more—or do they, and the mining companies in cahoots, feel they are already paying enough to those greedy locals who should be grateful, not greedy, that fine foreigners are investing in their backward and deprived areas. 

W.R. Grace and asbestos:  “The U.S. Supreme Court Monday refused to hear an appeal by W.R. Grace & Co. in a case that involves criminal charges brought by the government against the company and six of its executives for Clean Air Act violations in the release of asbestos from a vermiculite mine in Libby, Montana.”

MSHA Acts:  “Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration officials said Thursday they told 16 U.S. mining companies they have patterns of violating health and safety rules and warned them to clean up their acts or face heightened enforcement.   All but two of the companies operate coal mines or processing plants, the majority of them in Kentucky and West Virginia, MSHA said. Also receiving warnings were a Kentucky limestone operation and a Michigan iron ore mine.

In the W.R. Grace case “The defendants were charged with knowingly combining, conspiring and agreeing among themselves and others to release asbestos into the air, defrauding the U.S. government and agencies responsible for administering laws to protect public health and safety, and conspiring “to conceal and misrepresent the hazardous nature of the tremolite asbestos contaminated vermiculite, thereby enriching defendants and others.”

In the case of the MSHA actions, “The federal action comes as coal mining fatalities are increasing in the United States. As of June 16, 15 coal miners had died in 2008, compared with six by the same time last year.”

Granted all are trying to improve, or at least that is how the average mine communications officer and the average gulible reporter would have us believe.   How else to credit these statements: 

The trend prompted MSHA, the National Mining Association, the Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association and the United Mine Workers union to send a safety letter to mine operators, miners and contractors Thursday.

“With a joint effort by all to refocus on safety, a repeat of these accidents could be prevented,” the letter said. “We are urging everyone to maintain a focus on safety by trying to anticipate hazards and, most importantly, thinking before acting and avoiding shortcuts.”

While the W.R. Grace acts occurred many years ago, the MSHA acts are current.  It leaves you with no other conclusion but that in the absence of informed unioins and vigerous independent regulators, there will always be people in mining and every other industry who will break the law, skirt the law, do unsafe things in the name of profits, and put workers at risk for personal benefit. 

Altruism may be in our genes as an ordinary outcome of group or societal evolution.  But there is also the “me-first” instinct that seeks opportunities even to the detriment of others. 

Religion clearly is no help in enforcing human decency.  It is generally used only to control people who think differently, not necessarily correctly or incorrectly and generally correctly.   

So we are left with unions and regulators. 

And as we have seen so dramatically when political considerations come first, even regulators are reduced to impotence in saving miner’s lives.  It is no monument to those already dead to see MSHA roused from its political stupor now acting proactively.  We are glad they are, but all this action tells us is that we must be ever vigilant to see a backsliding, political interference, and personal interest transcending the miners’ safety. 

And to my friends who told me so many years ago that the Clean Air Act would destroy the American economy, and who now tell me that carbon emissions control will do the same, I reply:  stay in your university office and be quiet, for us bloggers generate more ideas than ever you do, and yours are likely to be self-serving, not miner serving.   And if you stay quiet, we will not drag up the W.R. Grace affair or any of your other academic failures to see the signs, to warn, or to act with the independence society affords you. 

Now Obama is on record as opposing NAFTA and Canadian mining.  Will Canadians soon be e-mailing their American cousins asking them to support McCain.  That will be a hard sell:  the weekend Los Angeles Times reports on Cindy McCain and her running of a company that opposes efforts by Mothers Against Drunk Driving.  Not to speak of her extensive drug use.  But I suppose she will be the first lady, not the president, and she will probably not seek the nomination any time soon, so leave her and Mrs. Obama alone. 

What a choice for president?  Maybe we can elect McCain and get Cindy to Vancouver to change the way booze is sold in that repressive system.  I bought drinkable wine in California for less than $3 a bottle this weekend to drink to drown the sorrow of Cindy.  Try doing that in Vancouver; I have to make my own at a neighborhood store to get that price to drink to Canadian mining. 

Monday also brings a slew of new mining-related newsletters and promotional literature.  That from The International Council of Mining and Metals is worth reading—and comment.  This issue deals with the usual: responsible mining and sustainability.  There are, however, some interesting points, including:

In Ghana: a workshop agreement between ICMM and the government to: develop new District Development funds to build local capacity; sharing of good practice; improved transparency to the local level; standard model for sharing compensation programs; sharing of experience between mining areas.  [I am not sure what all this means or implies, but it sounds good.]

From Teck Cominco:  the need for improved resource productivity based on a concern for increased demand on finite natural resources—hence the need to reduce, reuse, and recycle.  [This appears to be a mantra of Teck and I applaud them for it; it will be difficult to achieve, but why not the best from Vancouver?]

Vale:  now the second largest mining company, Vale in 2007 established a Sustainable Development Division, intends to produce a report on its practices, and has a in-house university to train staff in the right way to do thing so they can be proud to work for the company. [It is encouraging to see these initiatives and we hope they achieve their goal of attracting the best and brightest on the basis of these commitments.]

AngloGold Ashanti: is committed to implement the soon-to-be-published ICMM Plan for Integrated Mine Closure which is based on three steps:  (1) develop a Conceptual Closure Plan; (2) develop and implement a Detailed Closure Plan; and (3) advance to an efficient transition to closure based on a Decommissioning and Post-Closure Plan.  [Nothing really new here, but we are encouraged by the continued restatement of the obvious and necessary---I wonder if it will be integrated into the new Acid Mine Drainage management wiki being developed by others in Canada?]

Tony Hodge late of Vancouver Island and a consulting practice, then last year professor of sustainable mining at Queens, now takes over as head of ICMM.  It is not made clear in the report if he will give up his position as professor at Queens or take on this new duty in addition to being a professor.  I certainly hope he is not going to try to do both jobs simultaneously; for you can be sure that neither will benefit.  Nevertheless good wishes to him on his new appointment.  Does this mean they are looking for a new professor?  It will not be a sinecure given the contentious issues regarding First Nations in that part of the mining world. 

Now the grass cutting is done; the clogged bins of plastic and paper on their way to be recycled; and the heat increases; so too I am done, leaving you with a small-slice picture of the mining industry on a random Monday morning.