More than 50 feared killed in landslide at Myanmar jade mine

More than 50 people were feared dead after a landslide in northern Myanmar engulfed jade miners while they were sleeping, local police said Tuesday, the latest deadly accident in a notoriously dangerous industry.

Dozens die each year in landslides caused by jade mining, a poorly regulated industry rife with corruption and sandwiched between the country's borders with China and India.

Local police described a freak accident in Kachin state on Monday night so big it created a huge "mud lake" that buried the miners as well as some 40 vehicles.

"Fifty-four people are missing in the mud," a duty officer from Hpakant township police station told AFP, asking not to be named.

"There's no way they (the missing) could have survived."

Only 2 bodies had been recovered so far.

The Ministry of Information confirmed the accident and number of missing, adding that the area was mined by Myanmar Thura Gems and Shwe Nagar Koe Kaung companies.

Myanmar Thura Gems director Hla Soe Oo told AFP by phone he was on his way to the site and had no further details. 

Local media shared images, unverified by AFP, that showed the walls of a mine stretching vertically a couple of hundred meters above a vast pool of mud, revealing only the tops of 2 yellow excavation vehicles.

Hundreds of onlookers gathered nearby, staring at the site and taking photos with their phones.

PRIZED IN CHINA 

The open jade mines in Kachin's Hpakant township have turned the remote area into a vast moonscape-like terrain.

Fatal landslides in the area are common with victims often from impoverished ethnic communities looking for scraps left behind by big firms.

A major collapse in November 2015 left more than 100 dead.

In July last year, the bodies of 23 landslide victims were recovered after a days-long search hampered by heavy monsoon rains.

The jade industry is largely driven by insatiable demand from neighboring China, where the translucent green gemstone has long been prized.

Watchdog Global Witness estimated that the industry was worth some $31 billion in 2014, although very little reaches state coffers.

Northern Myanmar's abundant natural resources -- including jade, timber, gold and amber -- help finance both sides of a decades-long civil war between ethnic Kachin insurgents and the military.

The fight to control the mines and the revenues they bring frequently traps local civilians in the middle.

A 17-year ceasefire broke down in 2011, and since then more than 100,000 people have been displaced by fighting -- some of them multiple times.

On coming to power in 2016, civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi promised to make the peace process with the country's myriad armed groups her top priority -- a pledge that has yet to yield significant results.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Brazil mine disaster

Members of a rescue team search for victims on Monday after a tailings dam owned by Brazilian mining company Vale SA collapsed, in Brumadinho, Brazil. At least 60 people were killed with more than 300 still missing after the dam collapsed last Friday. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Mining bitcoin uses more energy than Denmark: study

PARIS -- Extracting a dollar's worth of cryptocurrency such as bitcoin from the deep Web consumes 3 times more energy than digging up a dollar's worth of gold, researchers said Monday.

There are now hundreds of virtual currencies and an unknown number of server farms around the world running around the clock to unearth them, more than half of them in China, according to a recent report from the University of Cambridge.

Mining virtual currencies with a real-world value, in other words, carries a hidden environmental cost that is rarely measured or taken into account.

"We now have an entirely new industry that is consuming more energy per year than many countries," said Max Krause, a researcher at the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education and lead author of a study in the journal Nature Sustainability.

"In 2018, bitcoin is on track to consume more energy than Denmark," he told AFP.

Denmark consumed 31.4 billion kilowatt hours in electricity in 2015. As of July 1 of this year, Bitcoin mining used up approximately 30.1 billion kilowatt hours, according to the study.

The highly competitive practice of mining cryptocurrencies requires hundreds, even tens of thousands, of linked computers running intensive calculations in search of the Internet equivalent of precious metals.

New coins are awarded to those who complete calculations first, with the transaction confirmed and entered into the currency's shared public ledger, known as the "blockchain".

The top 100 cryptocurrencies have a current market value of about $200 billion (175 billion euros), according to the website coinmarketcap.com.

Bitcoin accounts for more than half of that amount.

"We wanted to spread awareness about the potential environmental costs for mining cryptocurrencies," Krause said.

DIGITAL IS NOT COST-FREE

"Just because you are creating a digital product, that doesn't mean it does not consume a large amount of energy to make it."

The movies, music and videos that billions of people stream every day all have measurable environmental costs, earlier research has shown.

For the study, Krause and Thabet Tolaymat, an environmental engineer based in Cincinnati, Ohio, calculated the average energy consumed to create one US dollar's worth of four top virtual currencies -- bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin and monero -- over the 30-month period up to June 2018.

That amount was 17, 7, 7 and 14 million joules, or megajoules (MJ), respectively.

A joule is a unit of energy equivalent to the work required to produce one watt of power for one second.

That is up to three times the energy needed to excavate gold, platinum or copper, they found. Of the metals examined, only aluminium -- at 122 MJ per dollar's worth -- was more energy intensive.

A complete calculation of the environmental cost of virtual currencies would take into account the banks of computers used to mine them.

"The computers are made with gold and other precious metals," said Krause.

"They are run aggressively, which means the hardware is destroyed much quicker than you or I would expect for regular use -- maybe a year instead of five or ten."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'Virtual gold' may glitter, but mining it can be really dirty

As the poster child for the growing ranks of computer-generated currencies, bitcoin's recent stratospheric price rises have propelled it from the chat forum-hosted depths of nerddom into the global consciousness.

As it rose from under $1,000 to over $19,500 at one point this year, hordes of tech-savvy punters have rushed in to buy, while any investors can now do the same on the US futures markets.

Bitcoin has been called virtual gold, in part because it is created in a process that insiders call mining. And like real mining, it can be dirty.

That's because joining the online gold rush to mine the coins that are streams of computer code requires high-powered rigs that consume considerable amounts of electricity to do the virtual equivalent of blasting through rock by solving a string of highly complex computer algorithms.

Depending on how the electricity used for mining is generated, the virtual currency can have a very real impact by adding pollutants into the air and contributing to global warming.

Out of the bedroom

What barely five years ago was a hobby for "bedroom miners" has mushroomed into a massive, but unregulated, industry that some observers fear is a bubble waiting to explode, potentially causing damage similar to the sub-prime mortgages fiasco that caused the global economic crisis a decade ago.

Mining involves "adding value by dedicating computational resources to verify transactions in a huge public ledger called a 'blockchain'," explained Julian Oliver, a New Zealander who uses wind power to mine ZCash -- a bitcoin cousin.

The miners are thus providing the computer resources for their currency's trading system to operate.

But the number-crunching to pocket coins requires ever more powerful hardware and the means to keep them running, Oliver told AFP.

"At current bitcoin prices things are looking good for miners," he said. "But it's a huge use of energy, whatever the profit margins (and is) not remotely sustainable."

Specialist studies estimate the total annual energy output of the hundreds of thousands of dedicated mining machines worldwide at 35 terawatt hours, according to the Digiconomist website -- some 25 percent up on last year.

That puts it on the level of energy consumption of Denmark.

Each transaction consumes roughly 100 kWh -- the equivalent of running a lightbulb for three months. By contrast, a credit card transaction uses about 0.2 kWh.

But focusing on the electricity consumption of cryptocurrency mining "ought not to overshadow pre-existing environmental costs of the traditional financial system," said Oliver, as "cash needs to be printed and transported and banks run off the back of data centres."

Cleaning up 

Nadine Damblon, chief executive of HydroMiner, which uses hydroelectric power to mine in the Austrian Alps, said there is a need for greater use of renewables in the industry as Asian miners often rely on coal-generated electricity.

Hydroelectric can play a leading role as "one of the most environmentally friendly ways to generate power," she said.

Damblon believes the market will help solve the problem.

"I think in the case of bitcoin mining the capital will flow into more efficient hardware that will need less energy," said Damblon.

The scale of the long-term environmental threat that mining poses is unclear, as is the degree to which it could act as a catalyst for greater take-up of renewables.

In its Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study, the Cambridge Centre of Alternative Finance found that nearly three-quarters of all major mining zones are in China and the United States.

But the likes of Iceland and Austria are gaining ground. Not only do they offer clean hydroelectric power, but also cold temperatures that help save on cooling computer equipment, which can account for up to a third of energy needs.

What is undeniable, said the report, is that "the mining sector has evolved in a short time from a hobby activity performed on personal computers into a professional and capital-intensive industry with its own value chain."

As for how many bitcoin mines or miners there are now, nobody really knows.

Green vs anarchist 

In terms of large-scale mines "there are perhaps about a hundred," said French information technology specialist Marc Bevand.

"Maybe (there are) a few thousand smaller ones" using "one or two racks" of machines rather than the tens of thousands in the largest Asian mines, San Francisco-based Bevand told AFP.

The push for scale to save on energy costs and go green also risks pushing bitcoin against its libertarian, or even anarchist, founding philosophy.

Bitcoin was created to not only allow secure and anonymous transactions, but for the system to be controlled by users and not by a government or corporation.

The push for scale "would concentrate number-crunching power in the hands of the richest or throw into question bitcoin's (decentralised) philosophy," said Teunis Brosens, a senior economist with ING bank.

He forecasts that eventually "banks will create private blockchains which will not face the problems of scale or regulation" which bitcoin is coming up against.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Local mining stocks on spotlight after Duterte's 2nd SONA

Local mining stocks will be on the spotlight after President Rodrigo Duterte made a stern warning against irresponsible miners during his second State of the Nation Address (SONA). But ahead of that much-awaited speech, Philippine shares closed lower. - Business Nightly, ANC, July 24, 2017

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Nickel miner TVI defers PSE until Feb. 29

MANILA - Nickel miner TVI Resource Development (Phils.) Inc. (TVIRD) has deferred a planned listing on the Philippine Stock Exchange to Feb. 29 next year, subject to market conditions and regulatory approvals, shareholder TVI Pacific Inc. of Canada said.

Delays in regulatory approvals, which TVI said was partly due to local public holidays, had prompted it to postpone the initial public offering.

The miner was previously looking at a Dec. 18 listing after a 1 billion peso ($21 million) IPO intended to fund a gold and silver mining project.

"TVI remains optimistic about the prospects for the IPO in early 2016 given TVIRD's diverse pipeline of projects and the strong support of its majority shareholder, Prime Resource Holdings Inc.," Clifford James, chairman and CEO of TVI and chairman of TVIRD, said in a statement.

TVIRD has filed an updated IPO prospectus and is still looking to sell up to 272.02 million primary shares and up to 136.01 million shares currently held by existing shareholders, at a price of up to 3.71 pesos per share.

"We believe the establishment of a public market for TVIRD shares will allow North American investors to better evaluate the value of TVI's 30.66 percent indirect interest and provide us with a potential source of non-dilutive funding," James said.

After market volatility took its toll on local listings this year, the country's bourse expects a busy year ahead with Philippine companies likely to raise as much as 200 billion pesos in fresh equity capital via share sales.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

At least 90 dead in landslide at Myanmar jade mine

KACHIN, Myanmar - At least 90 people have died in a huge landslide in a remote jade mining area of northern Myanmar, officials said Sunday, as search teams continued to find bodies in one of the deadliest disasters to strike the country's shadowy jade industry.

"We found 79 dead bodies on November 21 (and) 11 today so the total so far is 90," said Nilar Myint, an official from the local administrative authorities in Hpakant, northern Kachin state, adding that the rescue operation was ongoing.

Rescuers were thought to still be battling to dig through the mountains of loose rubble at the site on Sunday, in the latest deadly accident to affect Myanmar's secretive multi-billion dollar jade industry in war-torn Kachin.

Those killed were thought to have been scavenging through a mountain of waste rubble dumped by mechanical diggers used by the mining firms in the area to extract Myanmar's most valuable precious stone.

Landslides are a common hazard in the area as people living off the industry's waste pick their way across perilous mounds, driven by the hope that they might find a chunk of jade worth thousands of dollars.

Scores have been killed this year alone as local people say the mining firms, many of which are linked to the country's junta-era military elite, scale up their operations in Kachin.

Myanmar is the source of virtually all of the world's finest jadeite, an almost translucent green stone that is prized above almost all other materials in neighboring China.

In an October report, advocacy group Global Witness estimated that the value of jade produced in 2014 alone was $31 billion, the equivalent of nearly half the country's GDP.

But that figure is around 10 times the official $3.4 billion sales of the precious stone last year, in an industry that has long been shrouded in secrecy with much of the best jade thought to be smuggled directly to China.

Local people in Hpakant complain of a litany of abuses associated with the mining industry, including the frequency of accidents and land confiscations.

The area has been turned into a moonscape of environmental destruction as huge diggers gouge the earth looking for jade.
Itinerant miners are drawn from all parts of Myanmar by the promise of riches and become easy prey for drug addiction in Hpakant, where heroin and methamphetamine are cheaply available on the streets.

"Industrial-scale mining by big companies controlled by military families and companies, cronies and drug lords has made Hpakant a dystopian wasteland where locals are literally having the ground cut from under their feet," said Mike Davis of Global Witness, calling for firms to be held accountable for accidents.

The group wants the jade industry, which has long been the subject of United States sanctions, to be part of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), a global scheme designed to increase transparency around natural resource management.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Apex makes financial turnaround

MANILA - Listed mining firm Apex Mining Co. Inc. reported a consolidated net income of P81.7 million in the first half, reversing the net loss of P279 million in the same period last year amid declining metal prices.

The turnaround was due to higher revenues owing to higher gold and silver output. First semester revenues surged to P1.17 billion from only P685.35 million a year ago.

However, in the second quarter alone, the company incurred a net loss of P18.56 million, lower than the P135.53 million net loss incurred in the April to June 2014 period. Revenues increased to P511.36 million from P422.18 million.

“While average metal prices were lower at $1,215 per ounce gold and $17 per ounce silver this year, increased production output to 20,334 ounces gold and 107,036 ounces silver more than compensated for the unfavorable downtrend in metal prices,” Apex Mining said in its quarterly report.

During the first half, Apex Mining focused on development activities for the Maco mine in Compostela Valley to improve the mine’s operating capability.

The company secured a P2.25 billion loan from BDO to procure the necessary capital equipment to push forward mine development activities, said Walter W. Brown, president and CEO of Apex Mining.

The loan proceeds would help the company achieve its goal of milling at the rate of least 1,500 tons per day this year.

“Hopefully by the fourth quarter, we would be reaching this important milestone in our thrust to elevate the Maco mine’s operating capability to deliver 4,000 ounces of gold a month,” Brown said.

Last June, Apex Mining acquired 98 percent of Itogon-Suyoc Resources Inc. for P182.7 million.

Apex Mining has infused P238 million in new equity in Itogon-Suyoc to pay down its debt and to reopen its Sangilo mine.

“We should be producing at 75 tons a day from this mine by yearend, and at 200 tons a day by next year. This will further boost the company’s production output and provide additional buffer to counter the declining trend in metal prices,” Brown said.

Apex has set aside P1.9 billion in capital expenditures this year, of which P690.2 million has already been spent.

Read more on Philippine Star. 

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Glencore aims to sell stake in $5.9-B Tampakan project

MELBOURNE/MANILA - Glencore Xstrata plans to sell its majority stake in the $5.9 billion Tampakan copper and gold project, its partner in the long-delayed Philippines joint venture said on Thursday.

Glencore, with a 62.5 percent stake in the project, has made clear it has little appetite for spending billions on building new mines, and previously flagged it was reviewing its Tampakan holding along with a range of other big-ticket projects.

"Glencore Xstrata has advised Indophil of its preference to pursue divestment of its interest in Tampakan," Indophil Resources Chief Executive Richard Laufmann said in the group's quarterly report.

Glencore declined to comment on Indophil's statement.

Laufmann said no formal sale process has begun but discussions are going on, including informal talks with Indophil, which has a pre-emptive right over Glencore's interest in the project.

Indophil, which owns the remaining 27.5 percent stake in Tampakan, did not rule out divesting it, potentially clearing the way for a full takeover of the challenging project in a troubled region of the southern Philippines.

"Indophil remains committed to maximising value either by development of Tampakan, 100 percent ownership of SMI or divestment," it said, referring to the project's operating arm, Sagittarius Mines Inc.

Exiting Tampakan would help Glencore meet a requirement to sell down copper stakes, imposed by China as a condition for approving Glencore's takeover of Xstrata last year, as Beijing feared the commodities firm would gain too much power in copper.

Glencore is in the process of trying to sell its $5.9 billion Las Bambas copper project in Peru and has agreed to sell its majority stake in a copper project in Papua New Guinea for $125 million.

If it were unable to sell Las Bambas, it would have to sell Tampakan to meet Beijing's conditions.

Tampakan has been a challenging project for Sagittarius Mines, hampered by a provincial ban on open-pit mining that has been in place since 2010, although it runs counter to the national mining policy.

The ban imposed by the South Cotabato provincial council has made it difficult for Sagittarius to get necessary approvals for the project, thus forcing it to revise its work plan and delay by three years, to 2019, its target to start production.

The delay in what could be the biggest single foreign direct investment in the Philippines has resulted in massive jobs and spending cuts for Tampakan.

Discovered in 1992, the Tampakan mine is predicted to have a 17-year lifespan with estimated deposits of 15 million tonnes of copper and 18 million ounces of gold.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Group launches book on women vs mining

MANILA, Philippines -- Anti-mining group Alyansa Tigil Mina (ATM) has launched a book showcasing powerful women who have campaigned against the promotion of large-scale mining in the country.

The book titled "Stories from the Mines, of struggle, sisterhood and solidarity" features women's struggles against the presence of mining projects, their sisterhood within the community and solidarity across cultures, ATM said in a press statement on Tuesday.

The anti-mining group said these are "pro-environment, pro-human dignity, pro-conservation and pro-sustainability women who are always eager to fight for what they think is right."

The book features ABS-CBN Foundation managing director Gina Lopez, who is also behind the "No to Mining in Palawan" campaign which has already collected about 7 million signatures from supporters.

It said Lopez believes the key to fighting mining is to show people that they can earn without damaging the environment.

Lopez was quoted as saying, "Wherever large-scale miners go, the communities are damaged. They remain poor. The so-called economic benefits do not benefit the people. Mining does not translate to community development."

Other women featured in the book include Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros, Dr. Catherine Coumans of the Mining Watch Canada, Annabelle Plantilla of the Haribon Foundation, Dr. Nymia Simbulan of the Philippine Human Rights Information Center and Mayor Sadeka Garcia-Tomaneng of Tubay, Agusan Del Norte.

source: abs-cbnnews.com

RP stocks end lower Monday on weaker US market

Source - (philstar.com)

MANILA, Philippines (Xinhua) - The Philippine stock market closed lower Monday tracking the US market's decline.

The bellwether Philippine Stock Exchange index retreated by 0. 67 percent or 20.73 points to 3,048, while the all share index was down by 0.59 percent or 11.46 points to 1,902.52.

Only one of the six counters tumbled. Industrial shares slipped by 1.39 percent or 64.65 points to 4,572.77 pulled down by Manila Electric Co.(Meralco) which closed lower by 3.07 percent to P221 ($4.61) per share.

Mining and oil shares rose thanks to the strong close of Philex Mining Corp. Philex ended 4.28 percent higher to finish at 18.25 pesos (0.38 US dollar) per share. The index closed up 3.32 percent or 382.45 points to 11,895.23.

Trading was below average where only a total of 2.28 billion shares valued at P2.8 billion ($59.3 million) changed hands.

Foreign investors reverted to the selling side with a net foreign selling of P375 million ($7.94 million).

A total of 55 issues slipped while 46 tumbled and 63 stocks were unchanged.

"The Philippine market opened marginally on the upside on Monday but spent the rest of the session in the red, tracking the Dow Jones's industrial drop on Friday," Justino B. Calaycay of local brokerage Accord Capital Equities Corp. said in his daily stock market comment.

The US market was down for the third time on Friday as concerns over the health of the US economy lingers.

But Calaycay said Monday's decline in local bourse is " reasonable" considering there was not much news locally or overseas that could have influenced the local market.

Technical indicators also show that investors are not willing to wait for the market to break into the overbought level before shifting to a sell bias that pulled the index down.

Stocks in the 30-company index closed lower, although heavyweight Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. was spared and did not move at P2,545 ($53.93) per share.