Editorial: Suppliers booming, juniors hunker down

While continued anxiety over the U. S. banking crisis dominated the headlines around the world during the week ended Sept. 27, the 39th trading week of 2008, there were still plenty of new developments in the mining sector.

• In stark contrast to the thin crowds and gloom at junior mining investment conventions in the past few months, the supplier-oriented MINExpo International convention in Las Vegas was over the top with bustling crowds, lavish booths and intense deal making.

Sponsored by the National Mining Association and held once every four years in Vegas, this year’s event saw single-day attendance peaking above a record 41,000 people, and after-hours shmoozers pondering whether to take in a private concert by Lionel Richie or Joe Cocker. Floor space was 30% larger this year, and the first exhibitors showed up two months ago to start assembling the huge mining machinery.

• One supplier on a roll is Sweden’s Atlas Copco, which officially opened a major new manufacturing plant in North Bay, Ont., on Sept. 25. A part of Atlas Copco’s Geotechnical Drilling and Exploration division, the state-of-the-art operation employs 130 people and will produce exploration products and rock reinforcement consumables, including a new production line for Swellex rock bolts.

• On Canada’s West Coast, aspiring miners in B. C.’s remote northwest were heartened by news that the provincial government is recommitting itself to advancing a key electrical transmission line along Highway 37. It’s envisaged that a $400-million, 287-kilovolt line will extend 335 km from Terrace to Meziadin Junction and north to Bob Quinn Lake.

The provincial government is getting the ball rolling again on the stalled power initiative by committing $10 million immediately toward the environmental assessment process and First Nations consultations.

The Mining Association of British Columbia did a good job for its members by releasing a study earlier in the week that emphasized the positive economic spinoffs that a transmission line would bring to the region.

• While Teck Cominco’s management has been skilled in raising money over the years, that talent grew in importance this month in light of the tightening global lending markets.

In late September, the diversified miner was able to snag US$9.8 billion in loans, which it will use to fund the cash portion of its US$14.1-billion takeover of Western Canadian coal miner Fording Canadian Coal Trust.

The bid was unveiled in July but some doubts arose in mid-September as to whether Teck could close it. Fording’s shares tumbled 30% before rebounding quickly as investors regained confidence in Teck’s ability to seal the deal.

• South of the border, the coal industry got some heat from high-profile Democrats who have fallen sway to the global warming hoax.

Speaking at a Clinton Global Initiative event with Bono and others in New York City, Al Gore stepped deeper into the depravity with new marching orders for his acolytes: “If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration.” For good measure, he added that “clean coal does not exist.”

We’d love to hear Gore’s personal plans for carrying out civil disobedience at coal plants in China, which is building 250% of America’s entire coal-power capacity in the next eight years.

Meanwhile vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden told a woman attending a campaign rally that “we’re not supporting clean coal,” and that there should be “no coal plants here in America. . . if they are going to build them over there, make them clean, because they are killing you.”

We’re no experts in U. S. politics, but it seems a lousy way to win votes in the key coal-producing swing-state of Pennsylvania, among others.

Coal power now provides about half of America’s electrical needs, but more than 60 planned coal-fired power plants have been cancelled in the past year owing to opposition from environmentalists.

Send your Letters-to-the-Editor and other op-ed submissions to the Editor at: tnm@northernminer.com, fax: (416) 510-5137, or 12 Concorde Pl., Suite 800, Toronto, ON M3C 4J2.