The RITV Blog

SilverCrest Mines Now a Gold and Silver Producer

Avanti Mining, Kitsault Project Animation: From Construction to Reclamation

Avanti Mining Plans 5th Largest Molybdenum Mine

The Kitsault project is located in the Nisga’a traditional lands – the Nass Wildlife Area.

Ideal Infrastructure

This mining project is a proposed redevelopment of an existing abandoned mine, and is located south of Alice Arm, and approximately 200 km by road northwest of Terrace, BC.

The mine site is ideally situated. It is accessible by road from Kitsault and New Aiyansh via the Nisga’a Highway and Forest Service Roads. Read more

Protected: The Kitsault Molybdenum Mine Plan: From Construction to Reclamation

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Banamichi, Mexico: Rancher Town Hosts SilverCrest Mines Construction Activity

SilverCrest Mines (TSX.V: SVL) is building the Santa Elena Gold and Silver Mine in Banamichi, Sonora. This northern Mexican state is a hub of ranchero activity along with some agriculture. SilverCrest Mines’ new mine will bring tens of millions of dollars of economic activity to the area – and to its investors and shareholders – this winter when the company begins commercial gold and silver production at the mine.

Here’s a snapshot of the town that has played host to this company’s mine development activity.

Protected: Chilean IOCG Belt

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Protected: Avanti Minerals – Kitsault Project

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The Fraser Institute’s Fred McMahon on Resource Intelligence TV

RI: Today we have a smorgasbord of intelligence for you. Joining us on the show is the co-author of the prestigious Fraser Institute’s Survey of Mines. He’s done it for 13 years and he’s joining us here on Skype.  Fred, thanks for joining. What was the genesis of the survey? Read more

Protected: Avanti Mining Appears on Resource Intelligence TV

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Goldsource Mines on Resource Intelligence TV

Goldsource Mines has been on resourceINTELLIGENCE’s radar more or less since that company made its first coal discovery in Eastern Saskatchewan in 2008. News of that discovery sent the company’s share prices soaring to about $20 per share. Of course, over time, calmer heads prevail and the company share prices have been in a holding pattern since, as they drill out coal deposit after coal deposit. So far the company has identified approximately 17 coals deposits on its Border project in a series of interesting sub-basins, and here to tell us more about that is Scott Drever, the company’s president. Read more

Protected: Gold Mining from the Ground Up

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Protected: Santa Elena in Construction: Time Lapse (Private Viewing)

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Protected: Far West Mining Video, Private Viewing

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Protected: Almaden Minerals, Private Viewing

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The Decade of the Commodity – Part 1

Welcome to the Decade of the Commodity. As the vast populations of China and to a lesser extent India and the other BRIC countries awaken to the possibilities of wealth, the world’s reserves of commodities — and minerals in particular — have begun to show signs of strain. And it’s not just oil either. Gold, copper, iron, molybdenum, uranium and many other commodities are no longer plentiful and cheap as they once were. In some cases this is due to dwindling resources, and such is the case with gold, but in other cases the dearth of resources is simply due to skyrocketing demand, inflation or currency valuations.

What investors must ask themselves is this: What do you get when you add global population growth, international currency debasement, peak resources, and multiple rapidly emerging economies? If you answered “bubbles”, you may not be far off. But the latest “bubbles”, if that’s what they are,  are a temporary consequence of a long term trend toward systemic resource shortages. What some people call bubbles are more accurately speculative adjustment to massive shifts in demand. We see with them short term price increases, but some deflation within a bull trend. With rapid demand increases in everything from oil to olive oil the world struggles to find the resource to match demand with supply. This is driving up prices on the secular or long-term level, which explains some of the “super cycle” trend of the past decade.

Now look at the charts for some common resources over the past 5 to 15 years:

The long term trend is clearly bullish. By and large, that’s the way markets go. That also explains why in the majority of years over the past century markets have ended the year better than they started. It has nothing to do with the January, as the old adage would have you believe. (“As January goes so goes the year.”)

But within that secular cycle we are seeing shorter term price increases that are certainly more akin to “bubbles”. Note the spikes that occur in most of the charts above. Nouriel Roubini believes that the price of gold

Speculation in favor of imbalances in fundamentals artificially pumps up demand and leads to short term increases in prices.

Presently gold appears to many to have “bubble” status. As CPM Group founder Jeff Christian has repeated pointed out to RITV and other pundits, gold’s price, is largely driven by investment demand, and today that demand has been inflated by concerns over and flight from the US dollar, for one, and other currencies as well. The global financial crisis of 2007/2008 called into question the long-term stability of paper currencies in general. This is not new. Gold bugs, for instance, have long argued that fiat paper currencies are essentially worthless. Some, such as Gata.com authors, argue that “Central banks run the world’s biggest Ponzi scheme, issuing bits of paper that people will accept in return for real goods and services.”

The run up in investment demand has led to a secular bull run; but the bubble-like spikes we’ve seen are the result of speculation. None can say where gold’s ascent will halt.

It’s clear that the China situation is beginning to heat up in earnest. On both the demand and supply side of the fundamentals equation we’re seeing shots fired across the bow and early warning signs that will only intensify in the coming Decade of the Commodity.

In most respects the west has been slow to respond to China’s necessary expansion into Africa, Australia, Europe and even North America. Each year the so-called Middle Kingdom acquires new monster projects on foreign soil. Why? China’s indefatigable appetite for resources. The most populous country in the world doesn’t have enough iron, oil, copper, molybdenum, etc. to build the infrastructure required to sustain its 9+ per cent annual growth.

Although the much ballyhooed acquisition of one of the world’s largest copper deposits, located in Afghanistan, is not really “new” news, it recently captured the world’s attention. The New York Times reported, “While the United States spends hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda here, China is securing raw material for its voracious economy. The world’s superpower is focused on security. Its fastest rising competitor concentrates on commerce.”

Certainly this is true, but the irony of China’s accomplishment is thick. Two years ago, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, a Chinese state-owned conglomerate, bid $3.4 billion — $1 billion more than any of its competitors from Canada, Europe, Russia, the United States and Kazakhstan — for the rights to mine deposits near the village of Aynak. And who first discovered the deposits? Communist Russia did, during its short lived attempt to rule Afghanistan. After Russia gave up the lost cause that is Afghanistan, the Taliban took over the mining camp, not for copper, but to train terrorists.

Now that the US has ousted the Taliban foreign interests can once again put dibs on the mineral wealth in Afghanistan. So, over the next 25 years, China plans to extract about 11 million tons of copper, which is approximately one-third of China’s existing copper reserves. That’s just what comes of trying to be the good guy in a global marketplace.

Incidentally, the same is true of Iraq! I always argued that the Iraq war had more to do with misplaced Christian morality than it had to do with oil. It turns out that China is investing more in extracting Iraqi oil than American companies are!

According to the same New York Times article, China “has reached long-term arrangements to buy gas from Iran, even as the government there comes under the threat of Western sanctions for its nuclear program.” China has also become a dominant investor in Pakistan and volatile parts of Africa as well.

All this brings to mind a line from Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism: “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread”. Except here China is not the fool for rushing in; it is the US that is the fool for not rushing in, not seizing the opportunities it has created, even if the opportunities were so often created in error.

China has little moral impetus to keep it from doing business with the scum of the earth. It invests heavily in the Sudanese government, genocide notwithstanding. It’s not that China supports genocide; it simply sees genocide as none of its business. Perhaps in that regard a communist government is like a corporation–analogies to psychopaths have oft been made. In any case, they’re both pretty unfeeling, except when the cameras are on.

The Decade of the Commodity is at hand, and come 2020, astute investors will have reaped the greatest rewards.

China’s wealth — and its lack of debt — and its ability to corral monetary resources to make acquisitions has grown dramatically, while that of the US has dwindled. As such, China stands to profit most, so long as its Yuan remains low enough to provide the rest of the world — and itself — with the cheapest and most plentiful goods and commodities in the world.

In the meantime however, American fears of a world where the US is not the single dominant superpower will cause setbacks to the march globalization. The US sees China’s ascent and particularly the conceit of that ascent: Having the power to do what it pleases while the West does what it can, while restraining itself morally for the electorate it must pander to for reelection.

There are few tools available to the US to rectify its weakening position in the global economy. One is to screw around with free trade. To wit: On December 29th 2009, the US Department of Commerce announced its preliminary determination in the antidumping duty investigation on imports of certain steel grating from the People’s Republic of China. The decision: Commerce determined that Chinese producers/exporters have sold steel products in the United States at 14.36% to 145.18% less than normal value.

While there are still further deliberations, it looks like the US will be slapping some serious duties on some steel products which between 2006 and 2008 were valued at about $90 billion. At just 14% that’s well over $4 billion per year in duties. Yikes, the US may have found a new way to pay down it’s mounting debt!

I’ll post some interesting mining projects that may benefit from this tomorrow. This move could have far reaching consequences for a number of companies. I’d imagine that the steel industry is holding its breath for a final decision in its favor.

Domestic Natural Gas Investments for the Next Decade

Natural Gas represents our energy FUTURE for the next 15 years — and the biggest energy company in the US is saying they need more exposure to the fuel of the foreseeable future, and are willing to pay a really high premium to get it. Exxon, Deven Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Apache Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp.

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Avoid these mistakes when investing in gold

From the Best of TSC TV: JC Doody, editor of goldstockanalyst.com, reveals two mistakes to avoid when investing in gold.

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Alternative Way to Play Gold: Royalties Can Make a Safe Play

NEW YORK (TheStreet) — Tom Winmill, portfolio manager of the Midas Fund, reveals how an investor can benefit from rising gold prices without playing gold stocks.

RBC Capital Markets’ George Gero on Gold’s Trading Range

NEW YORK (TheStreet) – George Gero, vice president of global futures at RBC Capital Markets, reveals his current trading range for gold and when he expects momentum buyers to come back into the market.

Jim Cramer isn’t buying clean coal, but he is buying coal

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News Hour with Jim Lehrer: Is the 21st century gold rush here to stay?

This video from PBS is a few weeks old now, but it’s still incredibly timely. Gold appears to be showing signs of price fatigue around $1,150 but there are still a lot of people who see more upside. Read more

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