OMERS posts 8.8% return as it faces down members’ complaints

Paula Sambo, Bloomberg News

Samples of various employee benefits brochures are shown in a photo illustration, in Toronto on Tuesday, July 17, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Giordano Ciampini

Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, one of Canada’s largest pension funds, reported mid-year results for the first time in an effort to reassure members who are growing increasingly frustrated with its performance.

The pension fund, known as OMERS, gained 8.8 per cent on its investments in the six months through June, pushing assets to $114 billion. That follows a 2.7 per cent loss last year -- its worst since the 2008 global financial crisis -- when the pension fund suffered big pull-backs in its private equity and real estate holdings.

“Our results during the first six months of 2021 were driven by strong returns across our asset classes and by the commitment of our global teams,” Chief Executive Officer Blake Hutcheson said in a report posted to OMERS’ website Friday. “Our diverse portfolio is actively participating in the global economic recovery and our investment strategy remains focused on enhancing value over the long-term.”

In the year ended in June, OMERS returned 18.2 per cent, he said. Last year the pension fund fell far short of its 6.9 per cent return benchmark.
 

‘DESPARATE MOVE’

The union representing more than 40 per cent of OMERS’ members did not appear placated, instead renewing calls for an independent review of OMERS, saying the mid-year results aren’t enough to draw attention away from the pension fund’s “systemic underperformance.“

“Just like a single cold day doesn’t mean temperatures aren’t rising, half a year of investment returns tells us very little about the long-term performance of our pension plan,” Fred Hahn, president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said in a statement. “Clearly, this is a desperate move to mislead and distract in response to growing concerns about how OMERS operates.”

The union issued a report in May saying OMERS has underperformed its benchmarks, as well as seven other large Canadian pension plans, for at least the past decade.

“We heard from our broad member base who have asked for an update on investment results outside of our annual reporting process,” OMERS spokesman Neil Hrab said by email. “We value transparency and chose to provide this additional mid-year investment update.”

The Police Association of Ontario, another member of OMERS, said it was encouraged by the mid-year release and that the responsibility of the pension fund’s performance lies with its independent board.

“We are confident that this independent board – whose members are nominated by the plan’s primary sponsors, including the PAO – is the proper governance model for OMERS, and is appropriately positioned to determine what, if any, adjustments need to be made to investment personnel and strategies,” PAO’s president Mark Baxter said in a message. “We would encourage OMERS to continue its efforts to share information and build relationships with all plan sponsors, stakeholders and members.”
 

PRIVATE EQUITY SURGE

OMERS’ private equity segment jumped 15.8 per cent in the first half of this year, helped by a recovery in its buyout portfolio, gains in its ventures and growth equity strategies and by the sale of sustainability consultancy ERM Group Inc. to KKR & Co. in May. OMERS sold a majority stake in ERM, with the Alberta Investment Management Corp., to KKR for an undisclosed amount. The deal values ERM at about US$2.7 billion, including debt, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg at the time.

Last year, OMERS’ private equity portfolio had a negative return of 8.4 per cent. A movie theater chain and a recruiting company in Europe constituted about 90 per cent of the drop, Hutcheson said in February.

Public equities advanced 12.8 per cent in the year through June, earning more than $4 billion for the pension fund, while its real estate bounced back to gain 8.8 per cent, driven by its Oxford Properties’ industrial logistics and residential assets as well as returns in some office sectors, the pension fund said.

 

Oldest  Fossilized Land Plant Spores Have Scientists Rethinking How Plants Evolved

Volvox, seen here under a microscope, is a genus of freshwater green algae. (Sinhyu/iStock/Getty Image)

CLINTON FOSTER, THE CONVERSATION

14 AUGUST 2021

When plants first ventured onto the land, evolving from freshwater-dwelling algae, more than 500 million years ago, they transformed the planet. By drawing carbon dioxide from the air, they cooled Earth, and by eroding rock surfaces they helped build the soil that now covers so much land.

These changes to the planet's atmosphere and land surface paved the way for the evolution of the biosphere we know. Land plants make up around 80 percent of Earth's biomass.

The pioneering plants were small and moss-like, and they had to overcome two big challenges to survive on land: avoiding drying out, and surviving the Sun's harsh ultraviolet light.

In rock samples from Canning Basin in the north of Western Australia, we have discovered 480 million-year-old fossilized spores from early land plants alongside spores from ancestral water-dwelling algae.

These are the oldest land plant spores found, and they give us new clues about when and where plants made the jump to land and also how they managed to survive. The research is published in Science.

When plants colonized land

Estimates of the initial timing of the colonization of land by plants are based on large fossilized plant remains, calculations of how long it has taken different species to evolve (called "molecular clock" data), and the record of plant spores.

Molecular clock data suggest land colonization occurred around 515 million years ago (in the Cambrian period), while the earliest plant stem fossils occur around 430 million years ago (in the mid-Silurian period).

These early small plants did not have root systems or hard woody tissue, which may explain why their fossil remains are rare.

Alternatively, we can look at the spores of plants. Spores are simple reproductive units that carry genetic material (much simpler than seeds, which did not evolve until much later).

For successful reproduction, the spore walls of land plants had to be strong enough to resist drying out and damage from ultraviolet radiation.

These resilient spore walls are also what allows the spores to be preserved for hundreds of millions of years in ancient sediments, and to be extracted from those sediments using strong acids as used in this study. We then studied the shapes of the spores under the microscope.

The shape of spores

The spores of the earliest land plants occur as more or less regular geometrically arranged groups of two or four cells. Such spores and have been found in sediments as old as 465 million years (in the Ordovician period), which places them at least 35 million years before any known larger plant fossils.

However, older spores (from around 505 million years ago) have also been found in the United States. Paul Strother (of Boston College, my co-author on the new Canning Basin research) and his colleagues have shown these older spores are likely to derive from freshwater algae called charophytes.

These older spores occur as irregularly shaped "packets" of cells. These same "packets" of spores also occur in the fossils we found in the Canning Basin, dated to around 25 million years later.

Charophyte algae live semi-aquatically. To survive in this situation they developed genes to resist desiccation and the damaging effects of UV.

The earliest land plants either captured parts of that ancestral algal genome, perhaps through "horizontal gene transfer" in which bacteria move genes from one organism to another, or developed similar genes on their own.

Given the time frame of millions of years, it suggests the origin of the land plants did not occur as a singular event.

We found both land plant spores, with either two or four cells, and irregularly packaged algal spores in the Canning Basin assemblage, which shows land plants and their algal ancestors existed together in the same area at the same time.

It also shrinks the time gap between estimates of land colonization from molecular clock data (515 million years ago) and fossil evidence.

At around 480 million years old, the Canning Basin record is the oldest yet found anywhere in the world.

Where did land plants get their start?

Our discovery follows from earlier studies of land plant spores in Canning Basin. In 1991 spores dated around 440-445 million years ago were found, and more dated to 460 million years ago were found in 2016.

Those two records were only found after examination of extracts from about 100 core samples in efforts to determine the age of the rock sequences, which shows the spores are rare.

The sediments deposited in the Canning Basin in this period are mainly from marine environments, as we can see from shelly fossils and microfossils such as conodonts.

The early land plants, like their charophyte algae ancestors, grew in freshwater settings at the fringes of the sea.

Spores and sediments were washed into these areas. So the fossil records that have come down to us depend on the geography of the ancient world.

In 2020, Geoscience Australia in collaboration with the Geological Survey of Western Australia drilled a well in the southern part of the Canning Basin to understand the geology of the subsurface rocks.

After acid extraction of rock samples from a geological formation called the Nambeet Formation, which dates to the Early Ordovician period (485 million to 470 million years ago), we identified land plant spores with the typical regular arrangements of two or four cells.

As part of that work, we examined preparations of plant spores, already mounted on glass slides, from the original section of the Nambeet Formation drilled in 1958.

And here we found the first record of land plant spores associated with spores from their algal ancestors. Our discovery would not have been possible without the access to these earlier materials provided by the WA government.

Further studies are needed to determine where additional algal and land plant spores occur in Australian sediments from the Late Cambrian and Ordovician periods.

New data may also shed light on where the land plants got their start: was it on this continent, as others have suggested?

The present work has emphasized the importance of access to previous data and materials, and we acknowledge the critical science infrastructure role of curating geological samples and data by the WA government.

Clinton Foster, Honorary professor, Australian National University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trudeau injects vaccine hesitancy into spotlight of Canadian election

The Liberal leader used Day 1 of the campaign to highlight the philosophical clash between the vaccinated and the vaccine reluctant in Canada.


Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks to media following a meeting with Governor General Mary Simon at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on Aug. 15, 2021. | Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP

HE SHAVED YOU KNEW THE ELECTION CALL WAS COMING

By ANDY BLATCHFORD
08/15/2021 
OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau launched Canadians into an election campaign Sunday that on the surface gives voters a choice between competing visions for a post-pandemic Canada.

But Trudeau also used his Day 1 words to shape the campaign’s subtext. Canada’s election, the Liberal leader suggested, could hinge on the philosophical clash between the vaccinated and the vaccine reluctant.

“We chose to make sure that federal public servants and everyone boarding a train or a plane be vaccinated. Not everyone agrees. Not every political party agrees,” Trudeau told reporters outside the front doors of Rideau Hall, where Governor General Mary Simon accepted his request to dissolve Parliament. “Well, Canadians should be able to weigh in on that, and on so much more.”

Vaccine hesitancy has been relatively low in Canada, making the country a world leader in Covid vaccinations. Almost 82 percent of eligible people in the country have received one dose, while nearly 72 percent are fully vaccinated.

But many have yet to be vaccinated. Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, recently said more than 6 million eligible Canadians fell into this category.

Trudeau’s move to highlight Covid vaccinations at the outset appeared to put his main rival, Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole, in a bind.

O’Toole supports Covid vaccinations and has encouraged Canadians to get their shots. But he's supported individuals' rights to choose whether they get one.

O’Toole took several questions Sunday on his vaccine position shortly after Trudeau triggered the election.

“Vaccines are a critical tool — they're safe and effective,” O’Toole told a press conference in response to one of the queries. “We can also have an approach that uses a full suite of health measures, from rapid testing and screening [to] mask usage, to have reasonable accommodations for people that may not be vaccinated, whether young children or other people.”

The Liberals and New Democrats require that all their candidates are vaccinated against Covid-19, while every Bloc Québécois hopeful has received two doses, according to a report by CBC News.

The report said the Conservatives and Greens are not requiring their candidates to get the jabs.

Trudeau hasn't always drawn a hard line.

He shot down the idea of vaccine passports during a January interview with Reuters, arguing it was “fraught with challenges.” He said he was worried about creating “knock-on, undesirable effects” in communities since there are many reasons why someone might not get a shot.

A month later, Trudeau showed more receptiveness, saying he had heard “pros and cons.” Asked if he had a change of heart, he noted how experts’ recommendations had evolved on Covid matters.

Just last week, his government started taking tougher action.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra announced on Friday that the government would make vaccinations mandatory for workers across the federal public service.

“We also expect that Crown corporations and other employers in the federally regulated sector will also require vaccination for their employees for the same compelling reasons,” Alghabra told reporters.

He added that, no later than the end of October, all employees in the federally regulated air, rail and marine transportation sectors will have to be vaccinated.

Trudeau said Sunday that the Liberals want "to keep moving forward on measures that both encourage people to get vaccinated, but also make it more difficult for unvaccinated people to spread the disease to others."

Canada's not alone. The Biden administration has looked at ways to increase vaccine uptake with similar measures that have set off debate in the United States.

But in Canada, individuals' differences over vaccines have the potential to affect the outcomes of the national election.

Conservative David Yurdiga, first elected to the House of Commons in 2014, made national headlines late last week for his criticism of the Trudeau government’s plan to make vaccinations compulsory for federally regulated workers.

“Mandating the vaccine as a requirement to work would be the beginning of a slippery slope,” Yurdiga said in a statement quoted by many media outlets. “It is our job to stand up against this tyrannical idea that forces discrimination based on what Canadians choose to do with their bodies.”

Conservative spokesperson Cory Hann told POLITICO later Sunday that Yurdiga notified the party Saturday that he would not seek reelection due to medical reasons.

Trudeau latched onto Yurdiga’s statement and used it Sunday as he argued what was at stake in the federal election and why a vote was necessary.

“We’ve seen some situations where Conservative back-benchers have referred to this government’s decisions as 'tyrannical' in terms of how we’re creating mandates for vaccination of public servants or vaccination of people on trains and airplanes,” said Trudeau, who was criticized by his opponents for calling a snap election in a bid to strengthen his party’s hold on power. “Well, the answer to tyranny is to have an election. And I think people who disagree with this government or disagree with this direction should have an opportunity to make themselves heard.”

PERU

Cerro Verde pays $245m tax debt ‘under protest’
Reuters | August 13, 2021 |

Freeport McMoran’s Cerro Verde copper mine. (Image courtesy of Huella Minera)

Peruvian copper miner Sociedad Minera Cerro Verde said on Friday in a securities filing that it had paid “under protest” a tax debt of 1 billion soles ($245.52 million), as the amount continues to be the subject of an arbitration dispute.


Peru’s tax authority has longstanding disputes with several miners regarding tax calculations.

Peru, the world’s No. 2 copper producer, is highly dependent on mining to finance public spending. Newly inaugurated leftist President Pedro Castillo has said he wants to extract higher taxes from miners, especially at a time of high international prices.

Cerro Verde is the second large Peruvian miner to pay a tax debt that remains under dispute in recent weeks.

Last month, Compania de Minas Buenaventura paid a debt worth 2.1 billion soles ($515.59 million).

Still, Bueaventura’s chairman, Roque Benavides, said in an interview with Bloomberg Linea that they were hoping to recover those funds once the tax dispute was finalized, which they said they would win.

Cerro Verde is controlled by Freeport-McMoRan Corp , while Buenaventura holds a minority stake.

($1 = 4.0730 soles)

(By Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by David Gregorio)

Copper price rises as supply worries return
MINING.COM Staff Writer | August 13, 2021 |

Andina mine control room (Credit: Codelco)

Copper prices advanced on Friday after workers at Codelco’s Andina copper mine in Chile went on strike, raising supply disruption risks.


Copper for delivery in September rose 1% from Thursday’s settlement price, touching $4.431 per pound ($9,748 per tonne) on the Comex market in New York


Click here for an interactive chart of copper prices

Copper prices have soared to record highs this year, handing unions in Chile additional leverage, ratcheting up tensions in labor negotiations and putting pressure on global supply of the red metal.

On Thursday, two unions at Andina walked off the job after rejecting the latest contract offer, while workers at JX Nippon Copper’s Caserones mine also went on a strike after labor contract talks collapsed.

Andina produced 184,000 tonnes of copper in 2020, while Caserones delivered 126,972 tonnes of copper in 2020.

On Thursday, workers at Chile’s Escondida mine, the world’s biggest copper deposit, approved a new contract, avoiding a labor strike.

120-year chart shows commodities
have never been this undervalued
Frik Els | August 11, 2021 |\

Image: Codelco via Flickr

In its Q2 wrap-up, commodities investment house Goehring & Rozencwajg Associates (G&R) poses the question: Natural resources – Uninvestable assets or unprecedented opportunity?


To help answer the question, the Wall Street firm put together a 120-year chart comparing commodity prices to the Dow Jones Industrials going back to 1


Despite the uptick in metals and mineral prices over the past year, there is still a yawning gap and “real assets have never been as undervalued relative to financial assets,” according to the authors.

The chart shows other major bottoms occurred in 1929, 1969, and 1999 and, like those cycle nadirs, present an “excellent time to establish real asset positions,” according to G&R:


“Prior catalysts have all been monetary related. This time likely as well.”


In May, G&R made the case for a $30,000 copper price as supply comes under pressure from depletion at the world’s major mines. G&R’s latest research is headlined: The IEA Ushers in the Coming Oil Crisis.

Cast iron, Portland cement clinker can now be obtained from metallurgical slag

MINING.COM Staff Writer | August 15, 2021 | 

Slag. (Reference image from Pxfuel).

Researchers at Ural Federal University and the Institute of Metallurgy of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences have developed a technique to process slag and obtain valuable materials, cast iron, and Portland cement clinker, while at the same time reducing waste.


In a paper published in the journal Steel in Translation, the scientists explain that they decided to focus on out-of-furnace slag because -given its little iron content- it is usually sent to waste dumps, increasing the environmental footprint of smelting processes.

The development and testing of the new technique consisted of several stages. The first step was stabilizing the ladle slag in a solid state by adding borate glass —a cheap waste material that also requires recycling.

To obtain clinker from ladle slag, the team first calculated the conditions necessary for the production of clinker. These are the chemical composition of the processed mixture (charge) and the temperature range. Then, with the help of crushing and mixing, they obtained a charge with admixtures of silicon and aluminum-containing minerals alite, belite, celite, and brownmillerite.

SINCE OUT-OF-FURNACE SLAG CONTAINS VERY LITTLE IRON, IT IS USUALLY NOT REUSED BUT SENT TO WASTE DUMPS

At the lab, the briquetted charge was heated in a furnace up to 1500-1600 degrees Celsius, until it completely melted, kept, and then slowly cooled. The experiments made it possible to find out that the clinker, in terms of the quality corresponding to industry standard, is formed from five slag compositions at a 10-minute exposure at a temperature of 1540-1560 degrees Celsius.

In the next stage, the group selected samples of waste from the electric furnace production that were similar in structure. These samples had a high iron content. After several melts —using coke as a carbonaceous reductant of iron simultaneously with Portland cement clinker— the scientists obtained cast iron that satisfies industry standards.

Subsequently, the technology of joint waste-free production of pig iron and Portland cement clinker was successfully tested at the Klyuchevskoy Ferroalloy Plant.

In the course of test heats, the developers came to the conclusion that in order to avoid overheating and control temperatures and save money, a cheaper rotary tilt furnace should be used, not an arc furnace.

Clinker was formed from the charge, which was fed into the rotary tilting furnace, as a result of mixing, reduction, and melting cast iron and slag residue. Subsequent mixing of clinker with gypsum dihydrate and firing the mixture in a kiln resulted in the formation of Portland cement, the most widely used type of cement.

What the heck is a time crystal, and why are physicists obsessed with them?

Some of today’s quantum physicists are tinkering with an esoteric phase of matter that seems to disobey some of our laws of physics.

BY RAHUL RAO | UPDATED AUG 13, 2021  POPSCI

In the last few years, physicists around the world have been constructing another state of matter: a “time crystal.”. Pixabay

You’re probably quite familiar with the basic states of matter—solid, liquid, gas—that fill everyday life on Earth.

But those three different sorts of matter that each look and act differently aren’t the whole of the universe—far from it. Scientists have discovered (or created) dozens of more exotic states of matter, often bearing mystical and fanciful names: superfluids, Bose-Einstein condensates, and neutron-degenerate matter, to name a few.


In the last few years, physicists around the world have been constructing another state of matter: a “time crystal.” If that seems like B-movie technobabble, it’s technobabble no longer. Using a quantum computer, a few researchers have created a time crystal that, they think, firmly establishes time crystals in the world of physics.

The researchers haven’t yet formally published their research, but last month, they posted a preprint (a scientific paper that has yet-to-be peer-edited) on the website ArXiV.

So what exactly is a time crystal? It might sound like the critical component that makes a time machine tick, some sort of futuristic power source, or perhaps an artifact of a lost alien civilization. But, to scientists, a time crystal is actually something more subtle: a curiosity of the laws of physics.

What defines any bog-standard crystal—such as a diamond, an emerald, or even an ice cube—is that the crystal’s atoms are somehow arranged in repeating patterns in space. There’s three dimensions of space—and a fourth dimension, time. So physicists wondered if a crystal’s atoms could be arranged in repeating patterns in time.

In practice, that works something like this. You create a crystal whose atoms start in one state. If you blast that crystal with a finely tuned laser, those atoms might flip into another state—and then flip back—and then flip again—and so forth, all without actually absorbing any energy from the laser.

If you step back, what you’ve just created is a state of matter that’s perpetually in motion, indefinitely, without taking in any energy.

That’s no small feat. It beats against one of classical physics’ most sacred tenets: the second law of thermodynamics. That law states that the amount of entropy, or disorder, always tends to increase. Think of it like a vase, teetering at the edge of a table. The universe wants to push that vase over and make it shatter across the floor. To piece it back together, you have to put in the energy.

Time crystals are actually a rather new idea, having first been theorized by Nobel-winning physicist Franck Wilczek in 2012. Not all physicists accepted that theory at the time, with some claiming that the second law of thermodynamics would rear its legalistic head.

Naturally, determined researchers found loopholes. In 2016, physicists at the University of Maryland managed to bodge together a crude time crystal from a collection of ytterbium atoms. Other groups have created time crystals inside diamonds.

[Related: In photos: a rare glimpse inside the heart of a quantum computer]

But these latest time-crystal-tinkerers did something different. They turned to Google and used a quantum computer: a device that takes advantage of the quirks of quantum mechanics, the seemingly mystical sort of physics that guides the universe at the tiniest scales. Instead of using bits of silicon like everyday, “classical” computers, quantum computers operate directly with atoms or particles. That allows physicists to do experiments which can be agonizingly difficult with traditional computers, since quantum physics—which allows particles to be multiple things at one and for particles to interact at seemingly impossible distances—gets quite esoteric.

“The ability to simulate the rules…becomes so much harder” with traditional computers, says Gabriel Perdue, a quantum computer researcher at Fermilab, a national lab in suburban Chicago that focuses on high-end particle physics.

But, by arranging particles in a quantum computer’s processor, it’s possible to literally study systems of tiny particles as if they are building blocks. That’s a powerful ability, and it’s not something you’ll see much in the non-quantum world.

“We don’t compute, you know, how far a baseball goes…by building miniature baseball players and doing simulations,” says Perdue. But doing something quite similar on a very small scale, he says, is what the researchers used Google’s quantum computer to do to make their time crystal.

In this case, physicists could take atoms, rearrange them, then pulse them with a laser to drive a time crystal. That setup has allowed researchers to create a time crystal that’s bigger than any time crystal before it. While many previous time crystals were short-lasting and unravelled within a few back-and-forth flip cycles, the scientists behind this latest time crystal effort are marvelling at the stability of what they’ve created.

“The thing that is most exciting here, for me,” says Perdue, “it’s a demonstration of using a quantum computer to really simulate a quantum physics system and study it in a way that is really novel and exciting.”

So, could these time crystals indeed lead to a new wave of nascent time machines?

Probably not. But they might help make quantum computers become more robust. Engineers have struggled for years to create something that could serve as memory in quantum computers; some equivalent to the silicon that underpins traditional computers. Time crystals, physicists think, could serve that purpose.

And this experiment, Perdue says, is also a demonstration of the power of quantum computers to do science. “The same platform that makes it easy for you to simulate some cool algorithm,” he says, “works just as well, and I would argue even better, for simulating these kinds of systems.”

Labour relations biggest material risk for mining sector – report

Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | August 15, 2021 | 

Former Cerrejón workers blockading the Colombian coal miner’s rail line. (Image by Sintracarbon, Twitter).

A new report by stakeholder intelligence firm Alva states that labour relations are emerging as the biggest material risk for the mining and metals industry as of Q2-2021.


The report looks into the work being done in the environmental, social and governance fronts and ranks companies’ performance based on information sourced from over 200 countries, categorized using the taxonomy of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, machine learning and topic modelling, and contextualized with historic trend data.

Based on this methodology, Alva found that while labour relations contributed just <1% material impact last quarter, it fell to -11% in Q2, as industrial action increases across the diversified mining sector. This situation makes it the most negative issue and the third most impactful material issue overall.

The main development affecting labour relations was the strike called by the United Steelworkers union for 2,500 members working at ArcelorMittal’s operation in Quebec, Canada, while also calling for a further 1,300 strike across in the United States.

ALVA FOUND THAT WHILE LABOUR RELATIONS CONTRIBUTED JUST <1% MATERIAL IMPACT LAST QUARTER, IT FELL TO -11% IN Q2, AS INDUSTRIAL ACTION INCREASES ACROSS THE DIVERSIFIED MINING SECTOR

Similarly, Alva mentions the case of Glencore, BHP and Anglo American who have faced repeated clashes with the largest union at their co-owned Cerrejon mine in Colombia, which held a three-month strike last year.

This quarter, the mine declared force majeure and halted operations because of two blockades which prevented it from bringing in supplies of fuel on a rail line. One of the blockades was launched by former workers who were upset by recent job cuts, as the coal mine saw its exports fall to their lowest level in the past 18 years amid coronavirus restrictions and falling global demand for coal.

BHP is also facing a revolt at its mining camps in Australia after imposing a ban on drinking after 9:30 p.m., with unions saying that staff are “being treated like children.”

Besides labour relations, the study shows that the management of waste and hazardous materials and measures of health and safety represent material risks for the mining sector in Q2, although overall negative material impact falls by almost half compared to Q1.

When it comes to waste and hazardous materials, one of the main issues identified in the report is the situation at Rio Tinto’s Tiwai Point aluminum smelter in New Zealand, where investigations are being conducted after claims that highly toxic waste has been buried in unmapped sites around the facility.

Another major problem reported is connected to Newcrest’s Cadia gold mine tailings dam collapse in 2018. According to Alva’s review, in the Cadia and Errowanbang valleys in New South Wales, Australia, people are reporting health issues caused by dust events that are a consequence of the collapse.

Also in New South Wales, health and safety issues are taking centre stage as the resources regulator is prosecuting South32’s subsidiary Endeavour Coal over an incident that led to a worker suffering serious injuries when operating a conveyor.

In Queensland, on the other hand, the May 2020 explosion at Anglo American’s Grosvenor coal mine is found to have been caused by repeated overproduction and poor planning, exposing workers to “unacceptable risk”.
The good moves

Alva’s review also points out the areas in which miners are making positive changes. For Q2-2021, biodiversity is generating the highest impact reaching +10%. Comparatively, in Q1 this topic registered a -8% negative material impact.

“The heightened materiality comes as the sector begins discussions of how to ethically mine the world’s seabed as technological advances and new mapping capabilities lure companies to target the untapped, underwater resources,” the document reads.

On land, Anglo American’s initiative to roll out an “eDNA” data transfer commitment, becoming the first mining company to make such a pledge, is also generating material positivity. The impact of this program is enhanced by the fact that Anglo started sharing data with eBioAtlas, an initiative to combat extinction by using DNA technology to create a global atlas of the state of life in rivers and wetlands of world importance.

ARCELORMITTAL IS GAINING POSITIVE MATERIAL IMPACT FROM ITS 2020 SUSTAINABILITY REPORT, WHERE IT ANNOUNCED THE DEVELOPMENT OF A POTATO-BASED, BIODEGRADABLE DUST SUPPRESSANT THAT CAN REDUCE SECONDARY SINTER DUST EMISSIONS

In Alva’s view, ArcelorMittal is also gaining positive material impact from its 2020 sustainability report, where it announced the development of a potato-based, biodegradable dust suppressant that can reduce secondary sinter dust emissions by more than 80% when applied as a foam.

“As more instantly recognizable material issues – such as greenhouse gas emissions or energy management – continue to drive material positivity, less visible issues, like biodiversity, are yielding opportunities for companies to take the lead,” the report reads.

Also leading in biodiversity is Newcrest after the company announced over $100,000 in funding support for the construction of a rescue and breeding facility for conserving endangered kangaroos at the Port Moresby Nature Park in Papua New Guinea.

Energy management is another sector where miners are performing well, with Rio Tinto taking the lead as it partners with Schneider Electric to develop digital platforms, technologies and solutions to be used across its supply chain, driving improved energy efficiency and decarbonization.

Alcoa, on the other hand, obtained a standard certification for energy management after committing the Deschambault aluminum smelter to “improve its results through the efficient management of all forms of energy.”
Emission control generates mixed results

For the most part, mining companies’ performance is improving when it comes to GHG emissions, according to Alva’s report.

Barrick Gold’s decision to raise its GHG target to 30% from 10%, pledging to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 following pressure from investors for climate change initiatives, is one of the main positive drivers.

Next to Barrick’s pledge is South32’s decision to reiterate its commitment to the Paris Agreement objectives, announcing a target to half Scope 1 and 2 operational emissions by 2035.

But not everyone is passing with flying colours. ArcelorMittal is being blasted by the environmental lobby group Centre for Environmental Rights, whose members say the company is failing to respect environmental laws that impact air quality standards.

In Australia, on the other hand, environmental groups are protesting the New South Wales planning commission’s approval of Glencore’s Mangoola coal mine. The activists say they are concerned about air quality and emissions from the operation.

UCP SAY'S IF NOT ON OUR TERMS THEN NO THANKS 

Alberta minister blames feds for not striking child-care deal before federal election call

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Parents are showing mixed emotions, but mainly disappointment and frustration

Nicholas Frew · CBC News · Posted: Aug 15, 2021 

Canada's 44th federal election is set for Sep. 20. Negotiations between the federal and Alberta governments will continue if the Liberals are re-elected, said Children's Services Minister Rebecca Schulz. (Marina von Stackelberg/CBC)

The Alberta government is blaming Ottawa for not reaching a deal over universal child care prior to a federal election call that will, at the least, postpone negotiations.

The Alberta government launched negotiations with Ottawa last month, but both parties were unable to close a deal before Canada's 44th federal election formally began Sunday.

The province is disappointed that the federal government "failed to accept the terms of an agreement" prior to the election call, said Alberta Children's Services Minister Rebecca Schulz in a statement sent to CBC News through a spokesperson. 

Ottawa announced $30 billion over five years and $8.3 billion ongoing to create a quality and affordable child-care system as part of this year's budget, unveiled last April.

To receive a cut of the money, each province and territory had to develop a plan that sends the federal funding "primarily" to non-profit child-care providers, halves child-care fees by 2022, cuts regulated child-care costs to $10 per day by 2026 and grows the amount of affordable child-care spaces and industry workforce.

Seven provinces and three territories have reached an agreement with the federal government.

Alberta Children's Services Minister Rebecca Schulz blamed the federal government for a deal not being struck, claiming it put up roadblocks at the last minute. (CBC)

The Alberta government proposed a plan that would reduce fees by half on average within two years and provide subsidies to people making under $200,000 annually. It would cut fees to $10 per day in five years for "the vast majority" of low- and middle-income families, while creating "thousands" of new child-care spaces, Schulz said.

• What's at stake for Alberta as it awaits details on federal child-care plan

• Alberta launches formal talks with Ottawa on new daycare funding

The proposal would use Alberta's existing child-care subsidies, as well as targeted affordability grants for newcomers and rural and remote communities, she added.

This should have met the federal government's requirements, Schulz said. But the minister claims Ottawa put up roadblocks, including new requirements, at the last minute.

CBC News has contacted the office of federal Families, Children and Social Development Minister Ahmed Hussen, but they did not immediately respond.

Alberta's United Conservative government was skeptical of the program from the jump, citing concerns that it was a "cookie-cutter approach" that, among other things, did not account for shift workers, rural communities and non-regulated forms of child care.

One in seven Alberta families use licensed child care, the province has previously said.

• Federal child-care program may be too 'cookie-cutter' for Alberta, premier says

• Alberta premier demands federal child-care deal with no strings attached

Then, earlier this month, premier Jason Kenney demanded Alberta get unconditional funding for child care, similar to what Quebec would receive through its agreement.

THAT OLD CONSERVATIVE IF QUEBEC GETS ALBERTA SHOULD TOO MANTRA GROWS THIN, WHEN QUEBEC HAS THE VERY MODEL OF TEN DOLLAR A DAY PUBLIC DAY CARE THAT CONS IN ALBERTA HATE. THEY LOVE PRIVATE DAY CARE VS PUBLIC, INCLUDING UNLICENSED DAY HOMES OR WHAT I CALL BABA CARE    LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for BABA CARE 

The Opposition NDP, meanwhile, advocated for the United Conservatives to reach an agreement as soon as possible. Experts who spoke with CBC News were skeptical the province's stance would work in its favour and said signing onto the program could benefit Albertans.

In January, the UCP government chose to discontinue the $25-a-day child care pilot program launched by the former NDP government in 2017.

Last month, the UCP government announced a one-year extension of the Canada-Alberta Early Learning Child Care Agreement, which will see Alberta receive $290 million in federal funds over the next four years.

The provincial government is committed to help working parents in Alberta and remains optimistic that a deal can be reached, should the federal Liberals be re-elected Sep. 20, Schulz said.

Clorinda Sposito, a mother of three in Calgary, is disappointed that a deal wasn't struck. (Helen Pike/CBC)

No deal leaves parents with mixed feelings

The postponement of negotiations has left some parents expressing mixed emotions, from disappointment, to frustration, to indifference.

It's disappointing to Clorinda Sposito, who has stayed home with her children for seven years.

• Alberta parents could save thousands under federal $10-a-day child-care plan, new data shows

"Child care is pretty expensive for a lot of families. I have three children, so it would be nice if we had some kind of benefit like that," said Sposito.

"It's pretty much impossible for me to go to work."

Amanda Mueller is also disappointed.

Child-care fees are steep, she said, and it has been tough juggling working from home and taking care of her infant during the pandemic.

"Any kind of relief there would have been super helpful."

Brandon Corbeil is more frustrated than disappointed that negotiations between the Alberta and federal governments have been unsuccessful. (Helen Pike/CBC)

Meanwhile, Brandon Corbeil is more frustrated than disappointed, because he recognizes that the Alberta and federal governments have often not seen eye-to-eye.

Corbeil worked in the service industry before being laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic. He's now a stay-at-home dad.

Child care at $10 per day would "greatly increase the odds of me returning to work sooner than later," he said.

He also has young children, thus his family would benefit from cheaper child care for longer.

"It definitely for the next four years would be pretty crucial in order to progress with my career," he said.

For Tomasz Czura, however, a deal not coming together doesn't make much of a difference.

Tomasz Czura thinks $10-per-day child care is unsustainable, based on how much it costs to run a daycare. (Helen Pike/CBC)

In part, because he'll sort something out to ensure his son is looked after. But Czura also believes $10-per-day child care is unsustainable, based on the various costs of running a daycare such as food and employees.

"They can pay for that — either federal or provincial — but it's subdividing something that is supposed to be self-sufficient," he said.

"We can only go and be nice to a certain point. Past that point, people have to realize, 'I have to pay for certain things if there's no other way around it.'"

 

Well of the Week – The first gas well in Western Canada

August 12, 20215:51 AM Neil Watson

Welcome to the debut of the Petro Ninja(TM) – Enlighten Geoscience Well of the Week (WotW), now a weekly feature on the BOE Report. There is a lot packed into this first of many posts to come. Previously available through the Enlighten Geoscience blog and LinkedIn posts, the WotW celebrates the fascinating and colourful history of the western Canadian oil and gas industry by telling the story of a key well that exemplifies a particular period or play. We are grateful for the opportunity to now reach a wider audience for these stories through the BOE Report. You might find these articles insightful and thought provoking or you might find them to be worth what you paid for them. I hope it is more the former than the latter and that you look forward to reading this space every Tuesday.

This opportunity arose during the final stages of a series outlining how resource plays have, throughout history, been a driving force in the Canadian oil and gas industry. I have decided that refreshing this series and seeing it through to its conclusion is the best way to merge the WotW into the BOE Report.

First, how does a resource play differ from an unconventional play? A resource play is a pervasively hydrocarbon saturated interval extending over a significant portion of a formation. These plays may be under-or over-pressured relative to a hydrostatic gradient. They can be gas or oil-bearing. They can produce from vertical or horizontal wells. Stimulation, such as hydraulic fracturing, is commonly required but not always necessary. “Unconventional” refer to plays developed through horizontal, multi-stage fractured wells as opposed to vertical wellbores. This definition implies that the unconventionality is the engineering application rather than the geological setting. Unconventional drilling and completion techniques have been applied in non-resource plays such as the Midale or the Torquay in the Williston Basin or the Swan Hills complex in central Alberta. The development of horizontal, multi-stage fractured wellbores was very important. It was as significant an event as the transition from cable tool to rotary drilling. But neither overrode the importance of the rocks and resource plays.

To illustrate why this distinction is important, I pose this question. “What do we produce oil and gas from?” We don’t produce hydrocarbons from vertical or horizontal wells. We produce oil and gas from rocks using wellbores. This series will outline the resource plays that helped drive our industry forward through time and the continued importance of focusing on the rocks.

Now on to the story of the first gas well in western Canada.

Resource Play: Milk River – Medicine Hat Biogenic Shallow Gas
Discovery Well UWI: 100/03-29-015-10W4/00
Drilling/Completion Technology: Pre-Conventional (Cable Tool)

Perhaps this WotW was the inspiration for the opening credits of The Beverley Hillbillies, in which Jed Clampett discovered oil through the luck of his poor marksmanship.

Come and listen to my story about a man named Jed
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed,
And then one day he was shootin’ at some food,
And up through the ground come a bubblin’ crude.

Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.

As dedicated geoscientists, we might scoff at the idea of so easily finding hydrocarbons, but back in 1883 a crew drilling for water messed up and discovered natural gas. Currently designated as 100/03-29-015-10W4/00 (also known as the Aldersyde well), what this well discovered was the Giant Milk River / Medicine Hat Biogenic Gas Field. A very interesting and detailed article on 3-29 may be found here.

Not surprisingly, given the spud date, there are no well logs for 3-29 but there are several offsets withi a few hundred metres (e. g.: 100/07-29-015-10W4/00).

 

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And, based on the number of wells, it sure looks like people thought 3-29 was worthwhile following up on over the years. The best producer in this field was the subject of an earlier WotW.  Pretty impressive for a shallow gas well.  This well discovered a truly massive field and launched the western Canadian oil and gas industry.

So, based on the evidence, the first gas well in western Canada was drilled into a resource play manifested as a giant biogenic gas field. It was discovered by pre-conventional technology. That is a cable tool drilling rig.

Next week we discuss the first oil well in western Canada and the resource play it represents.

References
Beverley Hillbillies lyrics

Chen, Zhouheng & Shuai, Yanhua & Osadetz, Kirk & Hamblin, T. & Grasby, Stephen. (2015). Comparison of biogenic gas fields in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin and Qaidam Basin: Implications for essential geological controls on large microbial gas accumulations. Bulletin of Canadian Petroleum Geology. 63. 33-52. 10.2113/gscpgbull.63.1.33.

MEDICINE HAT NATIONALIZED THAT GAS WELL AND ALL OTHER RESULTING HYDROCARBONS AS A CITY, UNDER PUBLIC OWNERSHIP TO THIS DAY GIVENING IT THE CHEAPEST ELECTRICITY RATES IN CANADA