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Canadian Navy Makes Plans to Replace Aging Victoria-Class Subs

HMCS Corner Brook at St. Johns, 2012 (File image)`

PUBLISHED APR 10, 2023 1:01 AM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

As the United States, the UK and Australia join forces on the construction of nuclear submarines, Canada is reportedly weighing whether to purchase up to 12 conventionally-powered attack subs. According to local media, the submarine project is expected to cost in the range of $44 billion to $73 billion if pursued.

The proposed new submarines will replace the Victoria-class vessels, which are scheduled to be retired in mid-2030s. There is already a sentiment within the Canadian defense circles that the replacement process is running behind schedule, considering that it would take at least 15 years to design and build new vessels.

While the Canadian federal government is yet to commit funding for the submarines, the Royal Canadian Navy has revealed that the priority is to have the submarines’ acquisition included in the upcoming Defense Policy Update (DPU). The government is currently reviewing the existing defense policy (released in 2017), with the goal being to update the long-term needs of Canada’s military.

In July 2021, the Royal Canadian Navy created the Canadian Patrol Submarine Project (CPSP), a special team tasked with guiding timely replacement of the Victoria-class submarines. The conclusions of CPSP will be included in the new policy update.

“The CPSP is examining all conventional options available, gathering information, and conducting an analysis of potential submarines capable of meeting Royal Canadian Navy’s requirements. However, the CPSP does not commit the government to any specific course of action, but it is intended to facilitate an informed decision when required,” defense spokesperson Dan Le Bouthillier told the Canadian Defense reporter David Pugliese.

Bouthillier has come out as a strong supporter for replacing the submarines, arguing last month that they are one of Canada’s most strategic assets, especially for expeditionary missions in the Arctic where Russia is expanding its military influence.

Canada is currently served by four Victoria-class diesel-electric submarines, which it acquired in 1998 from the Royal Navy.

However, with Canada’s defense interests expanding to work more in the Arctic waters and supporting operations ashore, the submarines in use must meet certain requirements such as long endurance in the ocean without needing support facilities. By virtue of their design, the Victoria-Class submarines are limited in this sense.

Another hurdle in operating the aging Victoria-class fleet has been the high cost of maintenance. Since 2017, the Canadian forces have spent over $1.4 billion on submarine maintenance. Further, in 2019 and 2020, no submarine operations were conducted, with one submarine (HMCS Corner Brook) not being at sea in the last five years, according to the Ottawa Citizen.

Four killed in accident at Sibanye-Stillwater gold project in South Africa

Staff Writer | April 14, 2023 | 

Kloof gold mine. (Image courtesy of Sibanye-Stillwater.)

Shares in Sibanye-Stillwater (NYSE:SBSW) (JSE: SSW) were down 4.6% during pre-market trading in New York on Friday after reporting four deaths at its Burnstone gold project in South Africa following the collapse of a conveyor.


The precious metals miner said the accident took place on Thursday when five contractors were installing a head pulley on the a newly constructed surface waste rock conveyor. This infrastructure collapsed, killing four of the five workers and seriously injuring the other.

The National Union of Mineworkers called for an inquiry into the company’s practices at the mine it is developing at Burnstone, 75 kms (46.6 miles) east of Johannesburg in Mpumalanga province.

Sibanye-Stillwater said a full investigation was already underway.

The number of mine fatalities in South Africa fell last year to a record low of 49, down from 74 the year before. Serious injuries totalled 1,946 in 2022, down from 2,123 a year earlier, according to official figures.

Botswana threatens break-up with De Beers in push for better diamond deal

Cecilia Jamasmie | April 12, 2023 

Debswana is a major contributor to the national economy of Botswana, making up a fifth of the country’s GDP. (Image courtesy of Debswana.)

Botswana may not renew a five-decade sales agreement with De Beers if the diamond producer doesn’t offer a larger share of rough diamonds to the state’s gem trading company, Okavango Diamond Company (ODC).


The move comes after the southern Africa nation acquired last month a 24% stake in Belgian diamond processing firm HB Antwerp for an undisclosed sum.

Analysts saw this deal as a way for Botswana to loosen the Anglo American-owned miner’s grip on its diamond sector, which is a major source of employment and tax revenue for the country.

De Beers and Botswana jointly own Debswana, which mines almost all of the roughs gems in the country — the world’s second-largest diamond producing nation after Russia.

The partnership has helped Botswana become one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, while supplying De Beers 75% of Debswana’s rough diamonds, which are then sorted and sold to sightholders around the world.

Debswana’s diamond sales hit a record $4.6 billion in 2022, compared to $3.4 billion in 2021.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi has threatened to walk away from the talks if Botswana does not get a larger share of Debswana’s output for marketing outside the De Beers system.

The government has not publicly stated what share it seeks, but it is believed to be as high as 50%, double its current allocation.

The two parties have been negotiating for several years to extend their 2011 mining rights and sales agreement, which is due to expire in June this year.

“Colonial” model

Rafael Papismedov, co-founder of HB Antwerp, told the Financial Times that a revised deal would help Botswana break free from the current model of being “stuck in a box that says you can only dig and wash the diamonds.”

Papismedov added that De Beers’ operating model carries on “colonization” principles, acting as if Botswana was incapable of building midstream capabilities for polishing diamonds.

Masisi wants more locals employed in the diamond sector, which accounts for a fifth of the country’s gross domestic product.

The largest diamond producer by value has said it is confident that it can maintain its partnership with Botswana, but that some of the negotiations are complex and require more time.

De Beers has said that the arrangement must make economic and strategic sense for both parties, adding that it is committed to supporting Botswana’s aspirations to grow its diamond industry.

The stakes are high for both sides, as they seek to secure their future in a volatile and competitive industry that has been hit by the covid-19 pandemic, changing consumer preferences and ethical concerns.

A new deal between Botswana and De Beers could have significant implications for the global diamond supply chain and the balance of power in the sector.

 

How humanity’s conquest of space will depend on mining lunar water

Astronaut David Scott Gives Salute Beside U.S. Flag on Aug. 1, 1971. Photo credit: NASA/JSC.

POSTED BY: HENRY LAZENBY APRIL 14, 2023

Space agencies worldwide are looking to adapting terrestrial mining methods for use on the moon as a critical enabler of mankind’s conquest of deep space exploration.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has contracted the Sudbury, Ont.-based Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) to help identify Canadian earth-bound mining assets, capabilities and innovators that could help develop and establish a space mining industry.

The target? Water on the moon in the form of tiny ice crystals. The ice is trapped in a fine dusty top 2-metre surface layer called regolith. Once extracted, the water can be split into two valuable commodities in space using simple electrolysis – oxygen to sustain human presence and hydrogen, recombined with oxygen, becoming one of the most potent chemical propellants known to humanity.

The goal is to set up lunar infrastructure and a midway space staging area orbiting the Moon, from where deep space exploration to Mars and beyond can be contemplated.

According to Dale Boucher, who has been researching space mining technologies for over two decades and is working with CEMI on the CSA project, mining on the Moon will not resemble anything we’re used to on Earth.

However, he told an Apr. 13 CEMI-hosted webinar on the emerging space mining economy the clock is ticking to find suitable mining methods applicable to the moon.

With the successful completion of the Artemis I moon flyby, Canada is set to play an increasingly important role in space exploration and mineral extraction. In 2024, Canada is set to send astronaut Jeremy Hansen to orbit the Moon as part of Artemis II, the first crewed mission of the Artemis program.

“Thanks to our contribution of Canadarm3 to the Lunar Gateway, Canada has not only secured two astronaut flights to the Moon’s orbit but also benefits from a range of opportunities to conduct cutting-edge lunar science, technology demonstration and commercial activities,” François-Philippe Champagne, the minister responsible for the CSA said in a December statement following the safe return of NASA’s Orion capsule after a 25.5-day mission around the Moon.

By December 2025, the Artemis III program expects to touch down on the moon, by which time the first iteration of prototypical Moon mining equipment will need to be ready, according to Boucher.

NASA’s Apr. 5 Moon-to-Mars strategy aims to bridge the efforts made during the Artemis program, explained CEMI vice-president for business development and communications Charles Nyabeze.

“It aims to reach further down the space development timeline to Mars. It specifically refers to a lunar infrastructure goal to demonstrate the industrial scale of our mining capabilities in support of building that continuous human space presence and creating a robust lunar economy.”

Meanwhile, the United Nations International Space Exploration Coordination Group, or ICG, comprising 27 participating agencies, has developed a space development strategy roadmap.

“The ICG’s goal is to advance the global exploration strategy through coordination and their mutual efforts in space exploration. The global space exploration roadmap is a key deliverable, as well as in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) capabilities (also known as mining on Earth).”

Nyabeze says elements of mining are sprinkled throughout the timeline extending up to 2035. “We believe ISRU spanning the entire mineral value chain will become a key enabler of mankind incrementally building up infrastructure to support longer space expeditions.”

Lots of water

Boucher says the scientific community has found a surprising volume of water on the Moon over the past few years. As of 2016 data, Boucher estimates that about 60 million tonnes of water are on the Moon.

“It’s not as dry as we thought it would be. It is mostly concentrated in the north and south poles,” he said.

The ice is said to be about 2 metres from the surface since that’s the maximum depth to which orbiting sensors can penetrate. Scientists don’t know what lies at depth.

“And that means that if we converted all that water into shuttle fuel, we could launch a shuttle per day for more than 2,000 years just using the water at the north pole. The south pole has a little more water, but I don’t have the numbers,” said Boucher.

However, the big question everyone is looking to solve is how to extract the water effectively —and sustainably.

“The scale of the micro ice crystals are all sub-100 microns, and the average water concentration is about 5% by weight, which means that that is pretty good if it was gold. That’d be an awesome orebody; we certainly don’t get 5% gold per tonne in any of the gold mines in Canada,” he said.

According to Boucher’s back-of-napkin calculations, we need around 50 tonnes of oxygen per mission to the Moon, just gauging by NASA’s stated ambitions. “Now, that’s not an awful lot, but considering the 60 tonnes of water you’ve got to extract to produce the oxygen, that translates to about 5,000 tonnes of excavated regolith per year.”

“Suddenly, those numbers no longer apply to science experiments in laboratory tests. It can no longer be done in a beaker. It really needs some well-thought-out process to achieve these results at scale,” he said.

Bootstrap into space

The space mining race is quickly evolving. AstroForge, an asteroid-mining startup, is preparing to launch the first of its two missions on Apr. 14. The main objective is to test the firm’s technique for refining platinum from a sample of asteroid-like material.

The company has placed a payload on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, pre-packed with elements similar to those in asteroids. Working in Earth orbit, the OrbAstro-built cubesat will attempt to vaporize and sort the materials into their elemental components.

While AstroForge intends to visit asteroids, the Artemis missions revolve around the moon and ultimately Mars. The idea is to extract minerals where they will be used, not to send back to earth. And how it will look like is the stuff of science fiction.

Boucher suggests sending a giant Caterpillar bulldozer to the Moon is obviously out of the question. Instead, he proposes taking small steps in space, each representing a mighty technological achievement. “You can actually bootstrap your terrestrial market onto the Moon,” said Boucher.

He suggests that is the market is there, the technology will find a way to tap it. He calculates there is already an existing potential market for 60 tonnes of water to supply NASA alone with its medium-term space chemical needs.

“The support required for this long-term human presence on the Moon is going to drive a market for the development of larger volumes of product,” predicts Boucher. “And how do you make that sustainable? Again, we only know what’s down 2 metres below surface. It sounds a little bit like it would entail an open pit excavation. But who knows where we’re going to go with this?”

Douglas Morrison, president and CEO of CEMI, also highlighted that aside from finding the best moon mining technologies, there are other essential question marks that need to be dealt with.

“There are outstanding issues regarding legal frameworks in space, security of tenure, property rights – simple things like the National Instrument 43-101: How do you do due diligence on the moon?” he asked. “How do you prove that you can actually extract this stuff? How do you stake a claim robotically, and if you can do it, is it defensible? How do you do automated assays on the moon? How do you manage your claim? How do you manage your communications?”

A further sticking point would be to consider how these polar-based Moon mining operations will be powered when the water is only found in areas without direct sunlight. Are small modular nuclear reactors the answer?

“While these questions remain to be resolved, I see ample opportunities for the terrestrial mining sector to innovate and transpose their experience to space,” Morrison said. “Conversely, any technological advances on the moon stand to benefit the terrestrial industry directly.”

 NORTHERN MINER

Fitch sees scope for ‘digestible’ tax hike on Chile copper mines

Bloomberg News | April 14, 2023 | 

Chile’s Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine.

 (Image courtesy of BHP | Facebook.)

Chile can raise the tax burden for copper producers by about 5 percentage points without significantly affecting the industry or its competitiveness, according to Fitch Ratings.


“If the tax burden went up by 5 percentage points and hit a level of around 42%, a little bit over 40%, I don’t think it would have an impact,” Alejandra Fernandez, a director at Fitch who covers the Latin America mining industry, said in an interview. “It would be digestible and wouldn’t generate significant distortions.”

After a broader tax reform proposal was rejected, Chile’s left-leaning government is pushing for a bigger share of profit at giant mines owned by companies such as BHP Group and Freeport-McMoRan Inc. to fund social programs. While the industry is prepared to pay more, it warns that the current version of a royalty bill would erode competitiveness and investments.

This week, Finance Minister Mario Marcel amended the bill to ensure the royalty rate would adjust to keep the total tax burden for each company capped at 50%, thereby keeping the industry average rate well below that level.

But talks over how high taxes should go are being complicated by a disagreement over where they are now, with the government estimating the current effective rate at 33% and the industry saying it’s closer to 40%. Much of the gap is explained by different assumptions on how much profit is paid out in dividends.

Still, after a series of modifications, the proposal is now “significantly more reasonable,” Fernandez said. In fact, Minister Marcel said Thursday he’d be willing to discuss a lower ceiling.

Lifting the effective rate to about 40%, “wouldn’t generate a distortion,” she said. “But if it’s effectively closer to what the industry is saying, that it would hit 50%, then we can say it would generate a more distorted scenario.”

(By Marcelo Rochabrun and James Attwood)

Lundin’s bid for Chilean copper hints at returning investor optimism

Reuters | April 14, 2023 | 

Caserones copper mine is located at an altitude of 4,200m to 4,600m above sea-level in the Atacama Desert, close to the border with Argentina.

 (Image courtesy of Lumina Copper Chile.)

Lundin Mining Corp’s bid for control of Chile’s Caserones copper mine comes despite ongoing uncertainty over potential policy changes to royalties and taxes, an indication that investors may be regaining confidence in the world no.1 copper-producing country.


Lundin last month agreed to pay $950 million for 51% control of the mine, calling the deal “an endorsement that we believe the mining royalty and taxation discussions are trending in the right direction.”

The deal caused some surprise. In the past 18 months, mining giants have been vocal about concerns in Chile. BHP Group Ltd said it might reevaluate its investments depending on new tax plans by the government, while Freeport-McMoRan Inc has said it would pause expansion plans in Chile, citing political uncertainty.

But with the outlook looking rosier for investment and global demand surging for the key green energy metal, reluctance has diminished, experts and officials say.

Chile’s mining minister, Marcela Hernando, told Reuters on Thursday she felt “confident” that the concerns of the industry had been taken into account with the royalty proposals and that she had seen hints investment was starting to improve.

“What one observes are signs, you see how some investments have materialized, how a very important deal was completed a few weeks ago,” she said, referring to the Caserones purchase.

“We aren’t worried investments are going to be scared away.”

A proposed new constitution that, among other changes, would have given the state greater control over mining was rejected by voters last September, while an ambitious tax overhaul plan was voted down by Congress in March.

Meanwhile, another government plan for new royalties on mining, currently moving through Congress, has also been tempered amid industry complaints that an increased tax burden at a time when deposits were facing decreased production would hurt the country’s competitiveness.

“As the proposed bill has moderated, some companies have gotten to a risk level compatible with their investment decisions, as happened with Lundin,” said Juan Carlos Guajardo, head of the Plusmining consulting agency in Santiago.

“Some companies have a more optimistic vision about the final evolution of the royalty bill, which is sparking investment decisions, but there are others that are still in ‘wait-and-see’ mode.”

Canada-based Teck Resources has also recently boosted investment in Chile, submitting for environmental approval this year a $3 billion project to increase capacity at its Quebrada Blanca 2 mine.

But BHP said its stance on investment in Chile had not changed. Freeport did not reply to a request for comment.

Lundin said it was considering raising its stake to 70% of the mine for an additional $350 million, but that it would “continue to evaluate any potential royalty and taxation changes” as a factor in that decision.

Environmental concerns

Lundin’s purchase from JX Nippon Mining & Metals comes at a time when companies are seeing longer delays for permits as opposition has risen from local communities. Some projects have been rejected by the state or by courts on environmental impact concerns.

Caserones, located 4,300 meters above sea level, has itself faced strikes by workers and lawsuits by farmers, who have complained about water over-extraction.

Chilean courts have since approved plans from JX Nippon to rectify environmental damage and Lundin told Reuters one of the company’s “primary objectives is to minimize potential environmental impacts through implementation of environmental management controls.”

The company added that its nearby Candelaria operation uses desalinated water and has a guaranteed minimum of 80% of renewably-sourced electricity.

Lundin remains confident in the future of the Caserones project, which began operations in 2014 and has annual output of 100,000 tonnes of copper. Peter Rockandel, Lundin Mining’s CEO, said the firm had “no concerns” of what lay ahead in a conference call following the announcement of the deal.

The purchase is emblematic of the emerging copper industry trend of buy versus build, said Christopher LaFemina, an equity analyst at Jefferies, with falling share prices and ballooning development costs favoring purchasing, rather than constructing, new mines, even at “premium prices.”

“The optimal time to pursue sizable acquisitions is now,” LaFemina said in a report, adding that the window might close if investors wait for “the macro environment to improve.”

(By Fabian Cambero and Divya Rajagopal; Editing by Alexander Villegas, Ernest Scheyder and Rosalba O’Brien)

BHP wins vote to buy Oz Minerals in $6.4bn deal
Reuters | April 12, 2023 | 

Credit: Oz Minerals

Top global miner BHP Group has won support from Oz Minerals’ shareholders, as expected, to go ahead with a A$9.6 billion ($6.4 billion) takeover of the Australian copper producer.


Some 78.9% of proxy votes on behalf of Oz Minerals’ investors were in favour of the takeover offer of A$26.50 cash from BHP and a A$1.75 special dividend paid to Oz Minerals investors, at a shareholder meeting in Adelaide on Thursday.


The deal is the third largest in global mining in recent months after gold miner Newmont landed a $19.5 billion offer for Australia’s Newcrest this week and Glencore offered $22.5 billion for Canada’s Teck Resources.

Miners are scrambling for new supplies of copper, key to the energy transition, after years of austerity led to cuts in exploration and a focus on fixing balance sheets and appeasing investors irked by overspending in the last commodity boom.

The deal will add to BHP’s copper exposure and raise its nickel prospects. It will bring in Oz Minerals’ Carapateena copper mine, close to BHP’s own Olympic Dam copper mine and smelting operations in South Australia.

Strategically it will also boost BHP’s nickel supply through Oz Minerals’ West Musgrave nickel project in Western Australia, where BHP is already producing nickel sulphate at its Nickel West operations. Its customers include Tesla.

The final regulatory hurdle is approval from the Federal Court of Australia, which is slated to rule on Monday, April 17. If the deal is approved as expected, Oz Minerals shares will be suspended on April 18.

Oz Minerals’ board had unanimously supported the bid.

($1 = 1.4930 Australian dollars)

(By Scott Murdoch and Melanie Burton; Editing by Alasdair Pal, Jacqueline Wong and Sonali Paul)

Asteroid mining startup AstroForge readies first mission
Cecilia Jamasmie | April 13, 2023 |

Artist rendition of a mining operation in space. (Screenshot via YouTube.)

AstroForge, a startup with plans to mine asteroids, is getting ready to launch the first of its two missions on Friday, of which the main objective is to test the firm’s technique for refining platinum from a sample of asteroid-like material.


The startup has placed a payload on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, pre-packed with elements similar to those found in asteroids. Working in Earth’s orbit, the OrbAstro-built cubesat will attempt to vaporize and sort the materials into their elemental components.

AstroForge says its vehicle Brokkr-1 aims to demonstrate the company’s refining capabilities in the vacuum of space and zero gravity.

The second mission, scheduled for October this year, will focus on scouting an already identified asteroid that is close enough to Earth to potentially be mined.

The rideshare mission, chartered by Intuitive Machines, will attempt to send the second spacecraft —Brokkr-2 — to the (so far undisclosed) asteroid located 35.4 million km (22 million miles) from Earth for a future retrieval mission.

The company said it would take about 11 months to reach the celestial body. The overall mission will last two years, with spacecraft testing continuing after the flyby to simulate a projected round-trip mission.

Asteroid AI provides the AstroForge team the ability to track and lock onto the asteroid as the spacecraft makes its final approach.

 (Image courtesy of Ed Carreon | AstroForge.)

When the time comes, AstroForge intends to target asteroids measuring 20 to 1,500 meters (66 to 4,920 feet ) in diameter and, instead of landing on them, will break them apart from a distance and collect the valuable aggregate materials.

Both journeys are part of AstroForge’s goal of refining platinum-group metals, or PGMs, from asteroids, with the goal of cutting down the cost of mining these metals. It also hopes to reduce the massive amount of carbon dioxide emissions that stem from mining rare earth elements on our own planet, according to chief executive officer Matthew Gialich.

RELATED: Scientists working on autonomous swarms of robots to mine the Moon

“With a finite supply of precious metals on Earth, we have no other choice than to look to deep space to source cost-effective and sustainable materials,” Gialich said in the statement.

The Huntington Beach, California-based company raised $13 million in seed funding in 2022 — its first year of existence. So far, it has partnered up with big names in the industry, including OrbAstro, Dawn Aerospace, and Intuitive Machines.

Recently, the startup collaborated with the Colorado School of Mines to publish a paper that emphasized the potential concentration of metals to be obtained from asteroids.

Laser tests the removal of material within AstroForge’s mining process. 

(Image courtesy of Ed Carreon | AstroForge.)

If the initial two missions are successful, AstroForge intends to launch a third one, which will attempt to land on the asteroid they have identified. A fourth mission will then try to extract and refine its metals before returning to Earth.

AstroForge is not the first startup to try asteroid mining, but its timing may be better. Two previous companies, Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries emerged about a decade ago, but neither company arrived on any asteroids and were eventually acquired and rerouted to other endeavours.

Nearly 9,000 asteroids larger than 36 meters (150 feet) in diameter orbit near Earth. Geologists believe they are packed with iron ore, nickel and precious metals at much higher concentrations than those found on Earth, making up a market valued in the trillions of dollars.

AstroForge founders, Jose Acain and Matt Gialich. (Image courtesy of Ed Carreon | AstroForge.)

Venezuelan military destroys illegal mining operation in the Amazon
Valentina Ruiz Leotaud | April 16, 2023

Venezuelan military destroys illegal mining camp in the Yapacana national park in April 2023. 

(Image by the Operational Strategic Commander of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, Twitter.)

The Venezuelan military destroyed what they call a “logistic system” of illegal mining, which was operated by criminal groups in the Yapacana national park, located in the southern Amazonas state, near the border with Brazil and Colombia.


In a series of social media posts, the Operational Strategic Commander of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, Domingo Hernández Lárez, said that the unregulated operation was found in Yapacana’s Caño Grande sector by agents who are permanently deployed in the Amazonas state with the goal of guaranteeing that environmental conservation and protection rules are observed.

“No human activity is allowed in national parks,” Hernández Lárez said. “No human group has the right to destroy forest reserves, parks or national monuments protected by the State. All citizens must adhere to the Fifth Historical Objective of the Homeland.”

The Objective is a six-year program aimed at promoting conservation measures that balance out human activities and the safeguarding of nature.

Among the items destroyed by the military during this week’s incursion were suction pumps, engines, high-pressure hoses and fuel, all used to illegally extract gold from the national park.

Despite the Commander’s words, the Venezuelan military has been repeatedly accused by NGOs and intergovernmental organizations of allowing criminal groups to exploit and smuggle the country’s gold resources.

Late last year, an independent international fact-finding Mission set up by the UN’s Human Rights Council issued a report stating that a significant part of the destruction of Venezuela’s national parks and protected areas in the southern states is caused by concessions granted by the Nicolás Maduro administration to the National Liberation Army (ELN), a Colombian guerrilla group. The group has divided the region into several chunks ruled by so-called unions that, in addition to carrying out illegal mining and logging, trafficking drugs, arms, fuel, medicine and food, create modern slavery situations and attack Indigenous communities.

“Venezuelan military units allow and sometimes facilitate, ELN activities to drive out rival criminal armed groups,” the dossier reads. “Additionally, the ELN relies on a network of smugglers and mules who pay bribes to cross GNB (Venezuelan army) lines and armed group checkpoints to bring gold to the Colombian border.”

Coal phase-out not happening fast enough to avoid rising global temperatures – study

Staff Writer | April 16, 2023 |

A stockpile of coal maintained by the base power plant at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska. (Reference image by The U.S. National Archives, Picryl.)

A recent study by researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology and Lund University shows that the use of coal power is not decreasing fast enough to avoid a temperature rise higher than 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 as established in the Paris Agreement.


“More and more countries are promising that they will phase out coal from their energy systems, which is positive,” Aleh Cherp, co-author of the study, said in a media statement. “But unfortunately, their commitments are not strong enough. If we are to have a realistic chance of meeting the 2-degree target, the phasing out of coal needs to happen faster.”

Cherp and his co-authors analyzed 72 countries’ pledged commitments to phase out their use of the fossil fuel by 2022–2050.

In the best-case scenario, the researchers show that it is possible that the temperature increase will stay at 2 degrees. But that assumes, among other things, that both China and India begin phasing out their coal use within five years. Furthermore, their phase-out needs to be as rapid as it has been in the UK, which is the fastest that has ever happened in a large country, and faster than Germany has promised. This may create inequities which will need to be addressed by international policies.

The scientists also developed scenarios that they consider to be the most realistic. These scenarios indicate that earth is moving towards 2.5–3 degrees of global warming.

“The countries’ commitments are not sufficient, not even among the most ambitious countries. In addition, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may prevent some countries from phasing out coal as they promised”, Jessica Jewell, co-author of the study, said.

The paper also shows that the 72 countries’ commitments to phase out coal power are similar to each other and in line with historical data for how quickly coal power was phased out in the past.

Industrial contamination may no longer be contained by Arctic permafrost — study

Staff Writer | April 14, 2023 |

Pipeline in Alaska. (Image by Alfred-Wegener-Institut / M. Lange).

A sleeping giant harbouring toxic substances that span from diesel fuel to heavy metals and even radioactive waste could soon become an acute threat, researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research have found.


According to the scientists, since the permafrost regions of the Northern Hemisphere are warming between twice as fast and four times as fast as the rest of the world, the frozen soil is increasingly thawing. The issue is that many of these places host industrial waste from defunct or active facilities.

“As a result of the industrial expansion during the cold war, over the decades this led to micro-dumps full of toxic sludge from oil and gas exploration, stockpiles of mining debris, abandoned military installations, and lakes in which pollutants were intentionally poured,” Moritz Langer, lead author of the research, said in a media statement.

Langer explained that permafrost has not only been viewed as a solid platform for buildings and infrastructure but is also considered a natural barrier that prevents the spread of pollutants.

“In many cases, the assumption was that the permafrost would reliably and permanently seal off these toxic substances, which meant there was no need for costly disposal efforts,” Guido Grosse, co-author of the study, said. “Today, this industrial legacy still lies buried in the permafrost or on its surface.”

When climate change affects these areas, however, it changes the hydrology and the permafrost no longer provides an effective barrier. As a result, contaminants that have accumulated in the Arctic over decades can be released, spreading across larger regions.

In addition, thawing permafrost becomes more and more unstable, which can lead to further contamination. When the ground collapses, it can damage pipelines, chemical stockpiles and depots.

Just how real this risk already is can be seen in a major incident from May 2020 near the industrial city Norilsk in northern Siberia: a destabilized storage tank released 17,000 metric tons of diesel, which polluted the surrounding rivers, lakes and tundra.

“Incidents like this could easily become more frequent in the future,” Langer said.
Over 4,000 industrial sites

To more accurately assess such risks, Langer and an international team of experts from Germany, the Netherlands and Norway took a closer look at industrial activities in the High North. To do so, they first analyzed freely available data from the portal OpenStreetMap and from the Atlas of Population, Society and Economy in the Arctic. According to these sources, the Arctic permafrost regions contain close to 4,500 industrial sites that either store or use potentially hazardous substances.

“But this alone didn’t tell us what types of facilities they were, or how badly they could potentially pollute the environment,” Langer said.

More detailed information on contaminated sites is currently only available for North America, where roughly 40% of the global permafrost lies. The data from Canada and Alaska showed that using the location and type of facility, it should be possible to accurately estimate where hazardous substances were most likely to be found.

For Alaska, the Contaminated Sites Program also offers insights into the respective types of contaminants. For example, roughly half of the contaminations listed can be attributed to fuels like diesel, kerosene and petrol. Mercury, lead and arsenic are also in the top 20 documented environmental pollutants. And the problem isn’t limited to the legacy of past decades: although the number of newly registered contaminated sites in the northernmost state of the US declined from about 90 in 1992 to 38 in 2019, the number of affected sites continues to rise.

Siberia

When it comes to Siberia’s extensive permafrost regions, however, there are no comparable databases.

“As such, our only option there was to analyze reports on environmental problems that were published in the Russian media or other freely accessible sources between 2000 and 2020,” Langer pointed out. “But the somewhat sparse information available indicates that industrial facilities and contaminated sites are also closely linked in Russia’s permafrost regions.”

Using computer models, the team calculated the occurrence of contaminated sites for the Arctic as a whole. According to the results, the 4,500 industrial facilities in the permafrost regions have most likely produced between 13,000 and 20,000 contaminated sites. From 3,500 to 5,200 of them are located in regions where the permafrost is still stable, but will start to thaw before the end of the century.

“But without more extensive data, these findings should be considered a rather conservative estimate,” Langer said. “The true scale of the problem could be even greater.”

The researchers noted that the issue is unlikely to go away any time soon as more and more industrial facilities are being built in the Arctic, which could also release toxic substances into nearby ecosystems.

Further, this is happening at a time when removing such environmental hazards is getting harder and harder— doing so often requires vehicles and heavy gear, which can hardly be used on vulnerable tundra soils that are increasingly affected by thawing.

“In a nutshell, what we’re seeing here is a serious environmental problem that is sure to get worse,” Grosse said. “These pollutants can, via rivers and the ocean, ultimately find their way back to people living in the Arctic, or to us.”

The experts, thus, call for more data, and a monitoring system for hazardous substances in connection with industrial activities in the Arctic.

They also said that it is important to intensify efforts to prevent the release of pollutants and undo the damage in those areas that are already contaminated.

And lastly, they no longer consider it appropriate to leave industrial waste behind in the Arctic without secure disposal options.