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A London-based steel group is planning to unload an 85 percent stake in its interest in South Africa, according to a published report.

The price tag for Evraz' sale of the interest in Evraz Highveld is $320 million, Mining Weekly reports. The consortium, known as Nemascore, signed a non-binding term sheet but minimal information was released about those documents.

"Our future growth in vanadium is based on an integrated business model that involves our assets in Russia, the US, Europe and our remaining operations in South Africa," chief executive officer Alexander Frolov with Evraz said in a press release, noting the company does not anticipate that its top standing with the global vanadium market will change. "We plan to continue close collaboration with the future owners of the mill with respect to the vanadium business in South Africa."

The size of the offer as well as the latent information about the geology consultants with the consortium was curious to market observers.

The deal is forecast to be finalized sometime between April and June of this year, Mining Weekly reports.

Abundant inventories of platinum will be dealt with by the two largest generators of that metal, a high-level official with one nation said late last month.

Reuters reports Russia and South Africa are poised to merge efforts to handle the surplus of platinum, according to a South African minister. The two countries account for roughly four-fifths of worldwide reserves of the platinum group metals.

Both countries signed a memorandum of understanding at a summit last week that focused on several nations that are emerging powers. The fifth annual summit was in Durban last Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the meeting's website.

"With platinum prices depressed, what is it that we need to do to deal with the oversupply of platinum in the market? What does it mean for us? In South Africa it's a threat to the industry, to jobs," minerals resource minister Susan Shabangu with South Africa told the news source during an interview at the summit for leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. "The issue of pricing has not been discussed."

Those emerging national powers are known as the BRICS countries.

Manufacturers of platinum and mining consultants have confronted a dangerous witch's brew of increasing costs and expenses as well as lower market prices during the past several years for the mineral due to poor demand.

That poor demand primarily is from the industry for the manufacture of automobiles, which is the primary consumer.

"I don't think we need to look at it from the point of control. We have not spoken about controlling the markets. We've spoken about balancing the market," the South African minerals resource minister told the news source.

Sharing information, technology and further data about developmental markets all are part of the agreement, according to Russian officials.

"We do not plan to influence prices. We do everything in line with WTO," natural resources minister Sergey Donskoy in Russia told the news source, referring to World Trade Organization rules.

Platinum and palladium primarily are used for tempering pollution as they are installed in converters in cars.

The Durban International Convention Centre hosted the summit that aims to provide a venue to discuss issues of importance for the emerging economic powers, according to the summit's web site.

Member nations cite prospects for business development and areas where they may be able to emphasize and reap the benefits of cooperation, the website states.

A brighter outlook is growing for geology services firms that deal in uranium, according to a published report.

As the two-year anniversary of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear meltdown in Japan approaches early next week, junior miners have become intriguing purchases for investors who view an uplifting horizon, Reuters reports.

On March 11, 2011, Japan endured a magnitude 8.9 earthquake that spurred a tsunami. Following extensive damage and a nuclear meltdown at a nuclear reactor in the Pacific Rim nation, stock prices have primarily fallen for uranium in Japan and in Germany as well. Demand also has slipped and its price presently stands at roughly $42 per pound. The high price for uranium was $73 in 2011.

But uranium appears to be making a comeback as lower prices attract buyers, according to analyst Rob Chang with Cantor Fitzgerald.

He noted an assortment of small companies' being attractive investments, which includes Uranium Participation Corporation, Kivalliq Energy Energy Fuels and Uranerz Energy.

"Uranium is an area of focus as it is one of the few commodities with a price that is not above its long-term average," states a recent client note penned by Chang. Uranium also is equipped with "an excellent supply and demand backdrop."

As many as 64 worldwide nuclear reactors are under construction, which is forecast to strengthen demand for uranium as well. Cameco is forecast to see the construction of 91 net new reactors by 2022, which will drive up consumption of uranium by one-third to 220 million pounds per year.

The firm presently is worth more than $21 per share in Canadian currency, which is less than half its value roughly one month prior to earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan.

Potential investors "look at the downdraft that there's been in the industry and say, 'we're fine with the fundamentals. It will rebound but it's the timing of the rebound that we're going to watch,'" chief executive officer Richard Spencer with U308 told the news source, noting he believes the remainder of this year will see additional deals among junior miners as they merge efforts to keep operations moving.

The Japan Times reports the nation's Meteorological Agency will see the implementation of a stronger tsunami warning system beginning later this week.

The new system will be implemented this Thursday, which comes just before the two-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that killed as many as 19,000 people when it struck on March 11, 2011.

The lady who organizes, manages, and dominates my opera and movie life called this morning and said:  “I am not working today.  There is a ballet at the Coquitlam movie house.  I have never seen it, but it might be fun.”  Reluctantly, for the sun was shining and my bike beckoned, I took myself off to the ballet.

Now I do not normally like ballet.  I keep wondering when they will open their mouths and sing us a decent song. If only those beautiful dancers would bash out an aria or a chorus of rousing emotion!  Instead they keep their feet moving in intricate patterns and keep their mouths shut.  Such a pity!

OK.  I like Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.  Even my karate grandson likes the sword fights.  He once got into trouble for emulating the violence of the ballet at school.  The principle berated my daughter for letting him watch ballet with grandfather.  She had never had to deal with a bully prompted to rough play by ballet.  My daughter told her to shake awake and shut up.

The lady in question has a job at the Vancouver Port.  She is a quality control officer.  She make sure the sulfur, coal, and other mined products from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba that are shipped off-shore meet specs.  Means long nights and long days at the port taking samples, filling in forms, and ……oh well, whatever QA/QC people do.   But an unsual job that stems from mining nonetheless.

So I betook me to ballet instead of the bike.  We saw Esmerelda.  It is the story of Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame, after the story by Alexander Dumas.   Actually more of Esmeralda than Quasimodo.  First performed in 1844, this is not the Disney version.  It is from the Russian Bolshoi and lush and sensual as you would expect.

It is amazing.  Color; great music; incredible gymnastics;  profound emotion; and superb dancing.  A great mix of intimate love; crowd scenes; the joyous; the macabre; and sensuality.

Can’t find the DVD.  Hope it is available soon.  For I shall buy it to watch again with one of the granddaughters who loves the loud sound and visceral movement of vigorous ballet. 

The ballet was first performed in 1844 in London and then took off in Moscow.  A nasty central character is the priest.  He lust after Esmeralda; stabs he lover; and lies.  Thank goodness, as befits an Easter Sunday, he is killed by Quasimodo.  Probably the Roman Catholic Church bans this ballet.

Thus comes to an end a long weekend.  Tomorrow to work to sort out travel to a mine in Brazil. 

This article is provided by Jack Caldwell .

On the mines of South Africa, a long time ago, Easter was a special occasion.  It was the end of summer and the beginning of autumn; it was a long weekend when even the miners did not work; it was a family time;  and we went to Church to pray for lives lost and redeemed.  For through the year, there were always deaths and distress.  After Lent, this seemed an appropriate time to reminisce. 

Today, Easter is North American commercialism.  No holidays at all in the USA.  Canada, compromising as always, takes Friday but not Monday as a holiday–or should it be indeed holy-day?

The suns has shone in Vancouver this past week.  If this is global warming, let it proceed apace.  I have been able to ride to work each work day.  Friday and today, long rides on my road bike up the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve—the best ride in all the world when the sun shines.  Some fourteen kilometers uphill as the legs groan and the heart & lungs pump.  I am passed by fat old men on cross-county bikes.  I am passed by slim young ladies on small bikes that are propelled by their tiny legs.  I am passed by the muscled legs of young men and their equally fit female lovers who speed by on expensive  road bikes. 

But cycling is a personal equation: you ride only against yourself and what you want to do versus what you can do.  You push your own body to the limit and revel in the pain that is pleasure.  You coast downhill, only to change gears and push up yet another hill with the determination that old age grants.  Then the grade changes and you fly.  You are ageless and limitless.  The sun flitters in the trees and the asphalt skims by as the slightest pressure on the handle-bars swerves the bike hither and thither through shadow, shade, and brilliant light.

You forget your disastrous loss at poker last night;  only one hand in twenty produced the right sequence of cards and the chips steadily diminished until drunk and befuddled you drank yet another brandy, ate a disgusting desert of gluten-free stuff covered with sugarless chocolate and went home to sleep, exhausted from riding. 

Tonight I watched two versions of what must surely be one of the most beautiful operas ever written:  I speak of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice.   The story is ageless: Euridice dies; Orfoe grieves; he goes deep into the underground; see the gods and Euridice;  the gods, persuaded by his music, let Euridice return to the world with him; but he looks back and she is gone.    Lot and his salt lot, I suppose.

The first was from Festival Castell de Peralda: over-the-top with too much visual confusion and lack of grace.  The second is presented as a dance-opera by Pina Bausch from the Ballet de l’Opera, national de Paris.  Dancers enact the emotion, while shadow figures sing the gorgeous songs.  All enough to make you cry for Opheus (this one is titled Orpheus und Eurydike.)

I emailed with a colleague in South Africa who was working in spite of the long weekend.  We conversed of great inflows of water from the lake into the underground workings.  He is confident it is under control—he is thus informed by the minions on the mine.  I am less so:  I heard them talk; they are terrified of an impending disaster; their words and gestures signified fear and doubt.  They will tell the higher-ups what they want to hear;  they will say what is politically correct; they will quote impressive statistics.  Yet they, and the equally young regulator who sat next to me and talked in the dark of a wet mine, trembled and doubted. 

This is mining: just like opera: a profusion of truth interspersed with doubt.  A mix of fantasy echoing reality.  The surpression of fact in pursuit of beauty and pleasure.  The fascination of survival in the face of the wrath of the gods.

What we see in the underground, in the dark depth of the mine, Erudice or vast inflow of water,  we cannot bring to the surface and the light filtering in the trees as we strive to record the truth—or at least insight into the human heart and the vengeance of the gods.  For opera and the love of fantasy will overwhelm us.   We cannot tell the future.  We can only love, fear, seek, and grieve. 

Cerberus is implacable!

This article is provided by Jack Caldwell .

A reader of this blog sent me this link.  It is a 2011 report on the economic benefits of the Fort Knox mine in Alaska.  Although the report is from 2011, it still presents some statistics worthy of note.  Here are some:

Fort Knox Mine employs an annual average of 502 workers in 2010, making it the fifth largest private sector employer in the Fairbanks North Star Borough (FNSB) and the tenth largest employer overall.

Total 2010 payroll for mine employees was $45.3 million, averaging $90,280 per employee. On average, Fort Knox Mine employees have wages approximately 2.1 times higher than the 2010 average income of private sector workers in the FNSB.

Fort Knox spent $171.4 million with approximately 400 private sector vendors in Alaska, representing 62 percent of its total spending on goods and services (both in and outside Alaska) in 2010. 32 percent ($55.6 million) of the mine’s Alaska spending went to wholesale and retail businesses located in Alaska.

21 percent went to Alaska utilities, including $35.8 million spent on power from Golden Valley Electric Association and other utilities.  21 percent ($35.6 million) was spent with Alaska fuel suppliers. 16 percent ($28.2 million) was spent with Alaska construction firms.

Fort Knox Mine paid FNSB $4.7 million in real property and business property taxes in 2010, making the mine the largest taxpayer in FNSB.

The State of Alaska received $11.1 million in taxes and fees from Fort Knox, including $5.7 million in mining license tax. Multiplier effects, including indirect and induced impacts related to Fort Knox Mine included 450 jobs in the FNSB and an additional 100 jobs elsewhere in Alaska.

Indirect and induced payroll totaled $31.7 million in the FNSB and an additional $9 million elsewhere in Alaska.  Fort Knox Mine-related direct and indirect employment statewide totaled 1,050 jobs in 2010 with a total payroll of $86 million.  Mine-related direct and indirect employment in the FNSB totaled 950 jobs in 2010 with a total payroll of $77 million.

Dozens of Alaska nonprofit organizations received a combined total of $145,900 in contributions from Fort Knox Mine. These organizations represented membership groups, as well as charitable programs, such as youth sports, public safety support, social assistance, and civic organizations.

Nearly two out of three Fort Knox employee households (63 percent) made cash contributions, 29 percent volunteered and 44 percent donated material goods to more than 130 charitable organizations, largely in the Fairbanks area.  Fort Knox Mine employee households gave an average of $582 to charitable organizations. Those households that contributed their time to non-profit organizations provided 158 hours of volunteerism to their community in 2010.

 Fairbanks Schools: Approximately 260 of the 325 school age children belonging to Fort Knox Mine employee households attend public schools in the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District.

Based on the State Aid Entitlement Funding figure of $5,680 per student, mine-related enrollment represented approximately $1.5 million in state education funding to the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District in 2010.

There are many more impressive statistics in the report–more than a blog can record.  The point is clear:  the mine makes the economics of the community.

This report reminds us of why, once a mine is established, nobody wants it to close.  Like military bases, the local economy becomes dependant on its continued success.  There are too many people whose lives and livelihood depend on the mine’s success. 

That is how it was for my family in South Africa.  Had East Geduld ( the mine on which I grew up) not existed, I would not today be blogging or consulting.  My kids would not be civil engineers and naval officers.  My grandkids would not have a future of their choice including fisherman, artist, architect, public relations officer, maths professor, farmer, bully/CEO, housewife & mother.  (I halt to note the none are over 13, and so this list of futures is my guess based on my guess.  No doubt they will surprise the world and, like all their ancestors, solve problems we do yet even know of.)  

It has cost me a lot to get the family to this point of success and ability to contribute to the benefit of society as part of their own success and seeking of a happy life.  But mining made it possible.

That is why I support mining well done.  As I have often written, mining done responsibly, is good for us all, and particularly us as family pater familiae. 

The blogger in me is tempted to ask how this case history will work out in the long term.  I recall that Daryl Hockley of SRK once wrote a paper on closure of the Fort Knox Mine.  I cannot immediately find it.  But I respect and trust Daryl, and thus must believe sufficient and adequate provision has been made to close the mine someday.

The community of whom we now read will collapse; the people will disperse; the mine will need perpetual care; and the story will be less upbeat than we read now.  Yet miners, their children, and their grandchildren will move, spread, go other places, do other things, solve other problems, create other great works, and be good mothers & fathers.  Some may become miners; some may become artists; some may marry same-sex lovers.  It matters not what the details are.  If only we support this mine, responsible mining, planned closure, fiscal decency, and the freedom of the individual to do what is in their heart and mind,  the current Fort Know miners and the progeny will make the world a better place.

This article is provided by Jack Caldwell .

I cannot resist reposting the following.  I came across it while idly browsing Google Blogs on mining.  I do not know any of the players involved or even the background.  But it all sounds so heated and it presents so bizarre a picture of the Austrian mining scene, that I repeat it for your edificantion and enjoyment–here is the link to the complete piece.

Yesterday the AFR ran an astonishing op-ed by Richard Denniss. Basically putting the boot into Martin Ferguson.

Read the whole thing if you can stomach it – I’ll just extract a section:

“Martin Ferguson’s legacy is a budget short of revenue amid a mining boom. That’s quite an achievement. But it’s not just lack of tax revenue flowing from the mining boom that is of macro-economic concern, it’s the way the mining industry’s hell-for-leather expansion is not just strangling manufacturing and tourism but driving up the cost of mining itself.

There is no doubt that if a monopolist owned Australia’s resources they would manage them quite differently than they have been managed in recent times. A monopolist wouldn’t drive up the cost of building and running mines by trying to build hundreds at once. And a monopolist wouldn’t drive down the price of their own resources by building hundreds at once.

Of course, Australian mines are not owned by a monopolist, but they are supposed to be managed in the national interest by the federal minister for resources. Unfortunately for Australian taxpayers, that minister has, to date, systematically conflated the interests of foreign miners with those of citizens.”

I managed to knock out a quick reply yesterday and the AFR have run it today. A short précis appears in the print version of the paper with a link to the full version online.

I first make the point that the mining industry pays a lot of tax and then:

So the notion that Ferguson’s legacy is a budget shortfall during a mining boom is somewhat misleading. True, he was a cabinet minister at a time when the government proved incapable of balancing its budget but the blame must be shared around.

The expansion of the mining industry and the resources that are being attracted to the industry are a capitalist economy at work. We are seeing exactly what should happen under specialisation and the division of labour. Those industries where Australia has less of a comparative advantage are shedding resources to the mining industry. This works through increased prices and wages. It is remarkable that Denniss is able to portray this process as being some sort of anomaly or mistake.

The most frightening aspect of Denniss’ anti-mining screed is his view that a ‘monopolist’ would manage the Australian mining sector differently to how it is currently managed, as if that were a good thing. Denniss suggests that the resources minister should act as that monopolist would. Here Denniss is criticising Ferguson for not being a communist!

As I say the Denniss piece was simply astonishing.

This article is provided by Jack Caldwell .

A South African platinum firm last year reversed losses from the year prior to notch a consolidated profit of 9.7 million rand, according to a published report.

Wesizwe Platinum recorded losses of 3.6 million rand in 2011, Mining Weekly reports. The stronger numbers from the next year are linked with gains to interest income of 56.6 rand earned on cash balances, which helped the basic earnings.

By the end of the financial year, the firm's cash balance was about 1.4 billion rand.

The firm also received support from China Development Bank, which nodded to the mining consultants by approving a loan for $650 million to be directed to the Bakubung mine. The firm noted that working out the final measures of the project funding was in the process of being completed.

"The confirmation of our funding arrangements for our flagship project represented just one of several important milestones reached during the year under review and served to demonstrate the level of confidence in the project, the future and the perspectives held by our Chinese shareholders on the South African mining industry," chief executive officer Jianke Gaosaid said.

It also noted that the Chinese bank was set to move forward with helping bridge two loans of $100 million apiece.

The Bakubung mine is on a drive toward productivity based on the several achievements that it has marked thus far, the firm's top official said.

"Our Bakubung platinum mine project continues to make significant progress, on schedule and within budget, with several major milestones scheduled to be reached in the year ahead," the chief executive officer said.

During 2012, Wesizwe devoted more than 779 million rand to expenses and costs associated with projects. By the end of the financial year, the firm committed 1.4 billion to the cause.

Of those two loans, the first manifested in December and holds a cash balance of 1.4 billion rand by the end of the year. The second loan is set to be drawn sometime during the remainder of this year. But that will depend on the firm's needs.

Located directly due south of the Pilanesberg site, the Bakubung Platinum Mine has a main shaft that is forecast to hold a 230,000-ton hoisting capacity, according to the company's website.

It also is set to generate waste per month amounting to 40,000 tons, the website states.