McDonald’s and Chuck E Cheese tied to alleged foreign worker exploitation

Katie McQue and Pramod Acharya

THE GUARDIAN
Tue, 10 October 2023 

LONG READ

Over the years the world’s most powerful fast-food chain, McDonald’s, has twice honored a Saudi prince’s business empire with its highest accolade for its franchisees: the Golden Arch award.

Prince Mishaal bin Khalid al-Saud – who controls more than 200 McDonald’s outlets across Saudi Arabia – told CEO Magazine in 2018 that one of the secrets of his enterprise’s success is “ensuring a positive and favorable environment for our employees”.

Related: McDonald’s and Amazon’s ties to alleged labor trafficking: five key takeaways


Macrae Lee and Buddhiman Sunar recall a different environment. They say that they labored under harsh and unfair conditions at McDonald’s locations owned and operated by the prince’s Riyadh International Catering Corp (RICC).

Lee, who is from the Philippines, says RICC’s store managers ordered him to put in as many as 22 hours a day and hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime. He was denied days off for rest, he says, even when he was sick with fever. When he tried to quit, a manager withheld paperwork that would have permitted him to find a new employer, he claims, leaving him jobless and begging on the street for food and water.

Sunar says he had to pay a stiff recruiting fee to an employment agent in Nepal to get a job at the prince’s fast-food outlets. Once he was in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, he worked 13- and 14-hour shifts with no breaks, he says. All the while, managers screamed abuse, he says, calling him “an animal” and asking: “Don’t you have a brain in your head?” If he stepped outside the restaurant, he says, he had to fill out an “incident report” explaining why.

I felt like I was in jail

Buddhiman Sunar, a former McDonald’s worker in Saudi Arabia

“I felt trapped,” Sunar, who left his job with the Saudi McDonald’s franchisee in 2022, said in an interview. “I felt like I was in jail.”

Lee and Sunar are among nearly 100 migrant laborers from Asia who say they’ve been subjected to repressive labor practices while working at the Persian Gulf locations of four well-known American and British brands: McDonald’s, Amazon, Chuck E Cheese and the InterContinental Hotels Group.

The current and former workers say independent employment agents in their home countries coerced them into paying exorbitant recruiting fees, while labor contractors and workplace supervisors in Saudi Arabia and other destination countries subjected them to abuses that included confiscating their passports and limiting their freedom to leave their jobs.

Related: Revealed: Amazon linked to trafficking of workers in Saudi Arabia

These practices are widely identified as indicators of labor trafficking, which is defined by the United States and the United Nations as using force, coercion or fraud to exploit workers.

The workers were interviewed as part of Trafficking Inc, a joint investigation by the Guardian US, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), NBC News, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism and other media partners. The latest installments in the investigation reveal how some of the world’s most recognized companies may be complicit in labor abuses through their overseas subsidiaries, franchises and business partnerships.

The workers who provided information for this investigation were employed through various arrangements. Workers for McDonald’s, Chuck E Cheese and the UK-headquartered InterContinental Hotels Group in the region are mostly direct employees of franchise holders or other local partners. Workers who say they came to Saudi Arabia from Nepal to work directly for Amazon instead discovered they were employed by Saudi labor supply firms that placed them in contract positions at the online retail giant.

Michael Page, deputy director of the Middle East and north Africa division at Human Rights Watch, says big companies have responsibilities under UN human rights standards to check their global operations and supply chains – even when the component is a franchise holder instead of a company-owned branch.

“Global corporate McDonald’s should absolutely be monitoring and verifying what is happening in its supply chain, whether it is in Saudi franchises or recruiters in the migrant origin countries where workers are hired,” he says.

In a statement, a representative from McDonald’s Corporation headquarters in Chicago called the abuses detailed in the workers’ accounts “extremely troubling”. The statement said the global corporation updated its “ethical recruitment” standards last year to provide “a consistent approach” to protecting workers. These standards require that “no migrant worker pays for recruitment fees and related costs to secure their employment”, the statement said.

Related: Corporations are paying for worker abuse audits that are ‘designed to fail’, say insiders

RICC, the major McDonald’s franchisee in Saudi Arabia, did not answer questions for this story, but said in a statement that it was in the process of updating its employment standards to align with McDonald’s enhanced recruitment standards. “Nothing is more important than ensuring the safety and respect of the employees who keep our restaurants running every day,” RICC said.

Amazon said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned” some of its contract workers were not treated with “the dignity and respect they deserve”. The InterContinental Hotels Group and the Chuck E Cheese brand’s parent, CEC Entertainment, said they took fair treatment of workers very seriously.

The four harmful practices that workers alleged

Many of the 97 current and former workers interviewed for this story agreed to be identified by name. Others spoke on the condition that their identities not be revealed because of concerns about retaliation. To support their accounts, workers provided photos, videos and copies of hundreds of documents, including paystubs, work certificates, passports, employment contracts and plane tickets.

In interviews, workers tied the four brands’ operations in the Persian Gulf region to one or more of these harmful labor practices:

• Charging big recruitment fees: Eighty-two of the workers report paying steep recruiting fees to independent employment firms in their home countries. This includes 18 of 21 workers at Prince Mishaal’s McDonald’s restaurants and all 54 Amazon contract workers from Nepal who talked to reporters.

Sunar, the McDonald’s worker from Nepal, says he paid more than $600 in fees to a firm in Nepal. The Nepali workers at Amazon warehouses report paying between roughly $830 and $2,300 in fees to local recruiting agents in their home districts or to large recruiting firms in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. Those are huge sums for a Nepali family living near the poverty line – and far above the limit of less than $85 that Nepal’s government says workers heading to the Persian Gulf can be charged.

Large recruiting fees are a major indicator of possible labor trafficking, the US and UN say. Laborers often take out costly loans to cover the fees, trapping them into oppressive jobs to pay off their debt – a form of labor trafficking known as debt bondage.

Like McDonald’s, Amazon and the InterContinental Hotels Group said their standards forbid workers in their labor pools being charged recruiting fees.

• Deceiving workers about the identity of their employer: Forty-eight of the 54 Amazon warehouse workers report that they were told by recruiting firms in Nepal that they’d be direct Amazon employees. Instead, their real employers turned out to be Saudi labor supply firms that placed them in temporary positions at Amazon. As a result, they say, they were tricked into working for a fraction of what they would have earned as direct employees of Amazon.

According to the UN, deceptive recruiting practices – including making false promises about wages, working conditions and the identity of the employer – can indicate labor trafficking.

• Confiscating passports and other identity documents: All nine kitchen and service workers for Chuck E Cheese franchises and five of nine housekeeping and food service workers at InterContinental Hotels-branded locations report local managers confiscated their passports.

An assistant restaurant manager for Chuck E Cheese in the Persian Gulf region confirms that it’s “company policy” for the brand’s franchises in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to hold workers’ passports – to make sure they don’t “run away from the company and work in other companies”.

Five workers for the InterContinental Hotels Group say managers took their passports while they were working at Crowne Plaza and InterContinental hotels in Oman, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. A former housekeeping manager for an InterContinental hotel in the UAE confirms that management there confiscated workers’ passports.

Passport confiscation is considered another key indicator of labor trafficking because it denies migrant workers’ freedom of movement, preventing them from leaving their jobs and their host country. This practice is illegal in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but reports by the US government and human rights groups show some employers in these countries continue to seize workers’ passports.

The InterContinental Hotels Group said its policies require that workers “have freedom of movement at all times” and forbid confiscation of their passports. It said it is investigating the information provided by the media partners “to ensure our policies are being fully implemented”.

CEC Entertainment did not address a question about the passport issue, but said that it regularly inspected Chuck E Cheese restaurants in the region “to assess their operations, and during these visits, we have neither observed nor received reports of improper activities by our franchisees”.

• Limiting employees’ freedom to quit: Workers at Chuck E Cheese and Amazon say Arab firms partnering with the big brands make it difficult for them to resign.

Seven of the 10 Chuck E Cheese line staffers say local franchise managers delayed issuing documents – sometimes known as “release papers” – that are required under Saudi and Emirati law before a worker can seek a job with a different employer. Twenty Nepalis say Saudi labor supply companies that placed them in jobs at Amazon warehouses wouldn’t let workers leave the country unless they paid the labor firms exit fees that often equaled several months’ wages.

The abuses uncovered in this investigation may mean the American parent companies have breached the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, a federal law enacted in 2000 to protect trafficking victims and prosecute traffickers, legal experts say.

“In the United States, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act imposes liability on companies who benefit from participation in a venture that uses forced labor, provided that they knew or should have known of the forced labor,” says Agnieszka Fryszman, partner and chair of the human rights practice at Cohen Milstein, a US law firm. “A franchise agreement would certainly seem to qualify as a venture, and any profit or market share would qualify as a benefit.”

Fryszman and other anti-trafficking experts say big corporations should aggressively monitor the labor practices of their subsidiaries and partners in the Persian Gulf region, which is known for weak labor protections and abuses against migrant workers.

None of the four major brands covered in this story directly answered questions about the experts’ comments. Amazon, McDonald’s and the InterContinental Hotels Group all said they are strongly committed to respecting human rights. CEC Entertainment said it requires all of its “independent operators” to “comply with the local laws and regulations of the country in which they operate”.

Under the kafala system that operates in some Arab countries, foreign laborers’ legal and immigration status is tied to their employers. This gives employers broad control over them, leaving them open to exploitation. In Saudi Arabia and other countries where forms of the kafala system still exist, many foreign workers are fearful they can be punished if they leave an employer.

Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries have announced reforms of their labor laws in recent years. But human rights advocates say migrant workers in the region remain vulnerable because these limited protections have yet to be widely implemented or enforced.

Workers are still unable to change jobs easily without the permission of their old employer 

Michael Page of Human Rights Watch

“Migrant workers are still facing severe abuses despite these highly touted reforms,” says Page, the Human Rights Watch official. “Workers are still unable to change jobs easily without the permission of their old employer.”
Working under the Golden Arches – and prevented from quitting

Macrae Lee, the Filipino migrant worker, came to Saudi Arabia in 2018 to work at McDonald’s so he could send money home to his partner and his daughter, then a toddler.

An independent recruiting agency in the Philippines that placed him in the job promised him a salary of $450 a month, Lee says. But when he arrived in Saudi Arabia, RICC, the McDonald’s franchise holder, paid him just $325 a month, he says.

“I asked McDonald’s why my salary was less than what it says in my contract. McDonald’s told me to ask my recruitment agency. But my recruitment agency told me to ask McDonald’s,” Lee says.

A year later, he tried to move to a different employer. But the McDonald’s manager for RICC refused to give him release papers, Lee says. He was unable to work for four months, he says, and resorted to begging for help from other Filipino migrants he’d see on the streets of Riyadh.

Lee is one of 15 current and former employees who say managers at McDonald’s outlets operated by RICC make it difficult for employees to leave their jobs.

In addition to waiting months for release papers, workers say, local managers require them to pay fines if they leave before the end of their two-year contracts.

One current employee says RICC denied his resignation request, so he is now working in a McDonald’s uniform against his will. The worker, whose name and country of origin is being withheld to protect his identity, provided a screenshot of this resignation attempt. He says his managers told him he could not leave because of a “business need.”

They hired people from poor countries, so people are afraid to speak up

A foreign worker at a Saudi McDonald’s

“I’m fed up. I want to leave,” he says. “They hired people from poor countries, so people are afraid to speak up.”

In its statement, RICC said it worked to be “a responsible and meaningful employer for the local communities we serve”. It said it provided “a variety of channels for employees to report concerns, including hotlines as well as regular visits to restaurants by our human resource teams”.

RICC’s president, Prince Mishaal, is a member of the al-Farhan branch of the House of Saud, which traces its lineage to a brother of the country’s founder.

When he took over the family’s McDonald’s franchise business in 1996, there were just 15 McDonald’s restaurants in RICC’s operating territory. As of this March, the firm reported it had 6,929 employees working at 220 branches spread across 36 cities and regions. Sixty-four per cent of those workers were non-Saudis.

In his 2018 interview with the Australia-based CEO Magazine, the prince said RICC benefits “from the strong support we get from the global corporation. We are privileged to have a high level of involvement from the McDonald’s global team in every aspect of our business.”

The prince also told the magazine he strives to “be there for my team and support them. My door is open 24/7 to every employee in this organization, from crew all the way up to senior management. In return, they will try to give their heart and soul to the business.”
Hired by Amazon – or so they thought

In 2021, Surendra Kumar Lama landed at King Fahd international airport in eastern Saudi Arabia after a long flight from Nepal. He thought he’d be met by representatives of Amazon. But that didn’t happen, he says.

Lama and dozens of other Nepalis say they discovered they weren’t going to be direct Amazon employees only after they landed in Saudi Arabia. Instead, they would be working for go-betweens – Saudi labor supply firms that would place them in positions at Amazon warehouses.

Because they had already paid large recruiting fees to employment agents back in Nepal, these workers say, they had no choice but to stay in Saudi Arabia and work under these unwanted arrangements.

One result of working for the Saudi labor contractors, workers say, is they earned roughly $350 a month doing day shifts at Amazon warehouses, while colleagues who did similar tasks but were direct employees of Amazon earned roughly $800 to $1,300 a month. Another result, the Nepali workers say, was that they were often targeted for terminations and layoffs while direct Amazon employees from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other places were generally secure in their positions.

“The managers of Amazon told us that we were simply workers supplied by the [labor contracting] company,” Lama says. “If we did not work properly, they could terminate our work anytime. They said this during the first briefing when we started the work.”

They could terminate our work anytime. They said this during the first briefing when we started the work

Surendra Kumar Lama

Warehouse laborers who get fired or laid off say they often end up stuck for weeks or months with no wages and little food, waiting for the supply company to find them new work. Even if the firm doesn’t place them elsewhere, workers say, they can’t leave Saudi Arabia unless they pay the local firm a large exit fee.

Some of the workers at Amazon warehouses – and workers in the Persian Gulf region under the logos of McDonald’s, Chuck E Cheese and the InterContinental Hotels Group – say limits over their freedom of movement extend even to their requests for time off to attend funerals, births and other family events back in their home countries.

When employees make these requests, workers say, local franchise or labor supply company managers often require them to enlist co-workers to sign contracts as “guarantors” who will pay a fine if the workers taking leave don’t return. Forty-three workers from the four brands confirmed this practice in interviews. Some say the local firms do this to ensure workers don’t use their leave time as a way of fleeing the country and escaping unbearable work situations.

In its statement, Amazon acknowledged that some workers in Saudi Arabia were mistreated. It said it was working with the Saudi labor supply firm that employed most of the affected workers to “align on a compliance plan” that “includes ensuring their employees are repaid for any unpaid wages or worker-paid recruitment fees, are provided clean and safe accommodations, and that the vendor is committed to ensuring ongoing protections for workers”. It added that it was “implementing stronger controls” and “providing enhanced trainings for our third-party vendors on labor rights standards with a specific focus on recruitment, wages, and deception”.
Alleged passport confiscation at Chuck E Cheese: ‘Sometimes I feel trapped’

The four years Rhandy Temperatura worked at a Chuck E Cheese franchise in Saudi Arabia were difficult, he says, but he made the sacrifice so he could send money to support his family in the Philippines. At the restaurant, when he was around happy kids having birthday parties and playing arcade games, he cheered himself up by imagining they were his son.

When he decided to leave in 2019 because of low wages and unpaid overtime, he says, management delayed providing him the paperwork that would have allowed him to get a job elsewhere.

“After I finished my contract, I had to wait almost six weeks for the manager to give my release papers and passport,” he says. “I had no income during that time … I survived by eating a diet of just bread.”

Chuck E Cheese and its sister brand, Peter Piper Pizza, have footprints in 47 states and 17 other countries and territories, according to CEC Entertainment. Generations of American children and parents recall its tagline: “Where a kid can be a kid”. In Saudi Arabia, local franchises today embrace the motto “A place where the fun begins and friendship never ends”.

Temperatura and other current and former employees describe a different side of the Chuck E Cheese experience – one where local managers take away workers’ passports and limit their freedom to leave their jobs and find other work.

“I was shocked when they took my passport. That’s my own passport,” a south Asian employee of a Chuck E Cheese franchise in Saudi Arabia says. “If I don’t have the passport I cannot apply to another company. This is against the Saudi government rules. Sometimes I feel trapped.”

A worker at a Chuck E Cheese franchise in the UAE says her HR manager delays providing release papers to workers who want to resign “to punish the staff who want to go”.

CEC Entertainment said it demands “fair treatment of team members” from Chuck E Cheese franchisees. “We will continue to hold our partners accountable to ensure they meet the high expectations and standards set by CEC,” it said.
The hotel workers who say they’re unable to resign: ‘We can’t move’

Workers for the InterContinental Hotels Group’s franchises and partners in the Persian Gulf also report problems with resigning from their jobs.

“When we get better offers from other companies, we can’t move because the managers won’t allow us,” says a female worker in Oman at a Crowne Plaza, an American brand that’s part of InterContinental’s portfolio.

InterContinental said that respecting human rights “is an integral part of our global commitment to be a responsible business. We take all reports concerning labor and human rights issues within our hotels and supply chains seriously, investigate them comprehensively and are committed to ongoing human rights due diligence.”

Jho Atendido worked at an InterContinental hotel in Riyadh for 15 months before she returned to the Philippines in December. The mother of four says she was paid $400 a month working long shifts – including unpaid overtime – as a beach attendant, laundry assistant and cleaner.

Atendido says she was employed and paid through a Saudi labor supply company that placed her in a position at the hotel.

She says the conditions of the housing provided by the labor supply firm also made life difficult. She shared a dormitory room with 11 other women. They were given three small meals a day but were often hungry, she says, and they were not allowed to cook or bring snacks into the room. Guards would check their bags before they entered their compound, and those caught sneaking in food would be punished with salary deductions, according to Atendido.

They were not allowed to leave worker housing without permission from their labor firm’s management, she says.

“It’s like a jail. Management was afraid that maybe some of us would run away,” she says. “I was struggling so much working there because I’m a single mother. Life is like this. Some people are lucky, some are not. I’m not lucky in life.”

Contributors: freelance journalist Shyam Karki; Delphine Reuter from the ICIJ; Andy Lehren and Anna Schecter from NBC News; Tanka Dhakal, Eman Alqaisi, Mara Kessler and Hoda Osman from Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism.

This story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism and the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York

How to turn mine tailings into healthy soil

Staff Writer | October 10, 2023 |

Tailings pond in Yellowknife. (Reference image by Ramjheetun Elodie, Flickr.)

University of Queensland researchers have developed an innovative method to turn mine tailings into healthy soil.


“We have basically taken engineering solutions into the context of natural soil formation from rocks because tailings have some useful minerals common to natural rocks,” Longbin Huang, co-author of the paper that presents the solution, said in a media statement

In Huang’s view, his team’s proposal could save billions of dollars around the world by minimizing the costs and risks of tailings storage.

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to determine the underlying mechanisms of soil formation, the group found a way to accelerate natural soil processes to convert tailings into healthy soil.

“Tailings have no biologically friendly properties for growing plants. Roots and water cannot penetrate them, and soluble salts and metals in tailings can kill plants and soil microbes,” Huang said. “If you wait for nature to slowly weather the tailings and turn them into soil, it could take a couple thousand years.”

He and his colleagues, thus, decided to convert colossal volumes of biologically hostile tailings into growth media by developing a soil structure that would enable the biological activity of microbes and plants, virtually establishing a natural ecosystem.

The process involves encouraging specific microbes to grow in tailings that have been amended with plant mulch from agricultural waste and urban green waste. These microbes “eat” the organics and minerals in tailings, transforming them into functional aggregates or soil crumbs, the building blocks of healthy soil.

“You have microbially active surfaces in soil crumbs that develop a porosity in compacted tailings that allows the gas, water, roots, and microbes to survive, just like in arable soil,” Huang said. “Therefore, the dead mineral matrix of tailings becomes a soil-like media that will enable plants to grow.”

Huang noted that this process—which can occur in as little as 12 months—can also be used to restore soils damaged by over-farming, overuse of fertilizers, and climate change.

Using the CLS’s synchrotron light the scientists were able to visualize the detailed mechanism of how they developed the organic-mineral interfaces and revitalized the tailings.

“We needed to use the SM beamline to unravel, at the nanometer scale, the immediate interfaces and how the minerals change, and how they interact with organics,” Huang said. “The facility access and the expert inputs of the beamline staff were critical to enable us to collect quality data and, therefore, to have reliable scientific evidence.”

The team has also completed a field trial and an extensive greenhouse trial using the rehabilitated tailings to grow crops and native plants.

“We are confident that it works. The maize and sorghum love it,” Huang noted. “The technology is usable now. Someone just needs to use it at mine sites.”

Swedish industrialists explore $6 billion green steel project in Canada

Bloomberg News | October 9, 2023 | 

H2GS executives also seek to benefit from access to the St. Lawrence River for shipments and the region’s iron ore reserves, in particular from Rio Tinto’s Iron Ore Co. of Canada. (Image of IOC operations courtesy of Rio Tinto)

Sweden’s H2 Green Steel is in talks with governments in Canada to build a factory in northern Quebec, as the young firm tries to deliver on a promise to customers — steel produced with minimal carbon emissions.


The company is just starting on construction of its first plant in Boden, Sweden, with an ambitious goal to begin production by late 2025. Supply agreements have been signed with automakers including Mercedes-Benz Group AG.

“We bring with us a portfolio of customers who want to have supply in North America,” H2GS Chief Executive Officer Henrik Henriksson said in an interview with Bloomberg News in Ottawa, where he was part of a Swedish delegation led by business mogul Marcus Wallenberg to meet officials including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Stockholm-based H2GS was launched in 2021 by private equity veteran Harald Mix’s investment vehicle Vargas Holding AB, and includes backers such as Spotify Technology SA billionaire Daniel Ek.

Vargas is also behind Northvolt AB, which recently announced plans for a C$7 billion ($5.1 billion) electric vehicle battery plant near Montreal.

The potential Quebec green steel project would be located on a 500-acre site in the city of Sept-Iles, northeast of Montreal, and require an investment of between €3 billion ($3.2 billion) and €6 billion. One plan would see H2GS build a “green iron” plant and a giant electrolyzer powered by renewable energy that would supply the site with hydrogen, replacing the use of carbon-intensive coal. The iron would then be exported.

A more ambitious scenario would include a full steel mill requiring as many as 2,000 workers, similar to the Boden site.

“It will depend on the dialogue we have with authorities in Canada regarding power allocation,” explained Henriksson. The firm is looking for as much as 700 megawatts of electricity — about 1.5% of Quebec’s actual capacity. Peak demand can create bottlenecks on the grid during winter, and government-owned utility Hydro-Quebec has become more selective about projects as demand surges for its low-cost clean power.

H2GS executives also seek to benefit from access to the St. Lawrence River for shipments and the region’s iron ore reserves, in particular from Rio Tinto’s Iron Ore Co. of Canada and Champion Iron Ltd.

“Fairly early, we could see that Quebec has this perfect place with a combination of logistics ready and a certain quality of iron ore,” said Kajsa Ryttberg-Wallgren, an H2GS executive vice-president. Still, a single condition prevails before going further: “No green power, no project.”

Steel production, which has relied on many of the same production techniques for more than a century, accounts for about 8% of total energy system emissions, according to the International Energy Agency.

Aside from Quebec, H2GS is also doing a feasibility study on Texas, betting on rapid wind and solar development. “Canada is definitely ahead, but Texas has a very progressive view on creating business,” said Ryttberg-Wallgren. “They are not many places in the world where you actually have optimal conditions.”

Sites in Brazil and Portugal are also in the firm’s future pipeline with its partners Vale SA and Iberdrola SA.

H2GS’s management did not comment on the financial support expected from Canadian governments, stating only that it will be benchmarked with other states.

The steelmaker hopes to kick off the construction of a North American site by 2026, with production starting four years later. Executives say it will take about 18 months of permitting, similar to Sweden, but public support for major projects can be unpredictable in Quebec.

Still, governments in Canada have been willing to promise billions in subsidies to lure industrial projects that pledge lower emissions. At Northvolt’s announcement in September, Quebec government officials said the province had secured C$15 billion ($11 billion) worth of investments related to the electric vehicle industry over the past three years, an amount that should double in the near future.

Pierre Fitzgibbon, Quebec’s minister of economy and energy, is interested in a green steel project, spokesperson Mathieu Saint-Amand said by email. “The specific project from H2GS has not yet been analyzed by the ministry. We understand the importance of developing decarbonization technologies in the steel sector.” Laurie Bouchard, a spokeswoman for Canadian Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, said the Swedish company’s interest “speaks to our efforts and commitment to a greener future.”

So far, H2GS has secured €6 billion — €1.8 billion in equity and €4.2 billion in loans — for the construction of the Boden facility. Henriksson said the firm will close a small funding round in October. The next big round, estimated at €1.5 billion, will be linked to the North American project or Boden’s expansion, he said.

“We will be a company that is in constant funding mode,” said Henriksson, the former head of Swedish truck manufacturer Scania CV. “After 2026, when we’re up and running with positive cash flow, that would probably be a better timing to do an initial public offering.”

(By Mathieu Dion and Rafaela Lindeberg, with assistance from Lars Paulsson)

Fertilizer stocks jump with Israel conflict stoking supply concerns

Bloomberg News | October 9, 2023 | 

Nutrien had paused plans to boost potash production. (Credit: Nutrien)

Fertilizer makers jumped after Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel raised concerns over how the conflict could impact global supplies of nutrients used to grow crucial food crops.


Israel’s Port of Ashdod, just north of Gaza and a key hub for the country’s potash fertilizer exports, is in emergency mode amid the deadly conflict. That’s putting as much as 3% of global potash supply at possible risk, Ben Isaacson, a Scotiabank analyst, said in a note Monday.

Further, if Iran, a critical nitrogen exporter in the region, is drawn into the conflict, Isaacson said prices of the nutrient needed for grain production could spike due to limited supply and potential premiums in benchmark Dutch TTF natural gas, a commodity used to make nitrogen-based fertilizers.

Nutrien Ltd., the world’s biggest potash maker, rose as much as 4.2%, the most since July. CF Industries Holdings Inc., the leading nitrogen producer, gained as much as 6.2%, the most in more than a month. Mosaic Co., climbed as much as 6.7%, the stock’s biggest intraday gain in almost a year.

Global fertilizer prices had significantly cooled this year after surging in 2022 due to supply disruptions from the war in Ukraine.

Potential involvement from Iran in the Israel conflict could endanger movement of vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital conduit that Tehran has previously threatened to shut down. A third of traded liquefied natural gas passes through the waterway, Isaacson noted.

Firmer nitrogen prices were already expected later this year due to a nearly 10% surge in European natural gas prices following a pipeline leak in the Baltic, Alexis Maxwell, a Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, has said.

(By Kim Chipman)

Top emitters underreport coal, oil & gas methane emissions – study

Staff Writer | September 28, 2023 

Coal-fired power plant. (Reference image from Pxfuel.)

Underreporting of methane emissions by the four largest emitters – the US, Russia, Venezuela, and Turkmenistan – means that the oil and gas sector releases 30% more of the greenhouse gas than what the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has on record.


A recent study by researchers at Peking University used 22 months (May 2018–Feb. 2020) of satellite observation data from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument – launched in October 2017 – which provides considerably high global data density. They were able to quantify country-by-country methane emissions more accurately than previous studies.

The group’s optimized estimates of global methane emissions are 62.7 ± 11.5 Tg a−1 (million tons per year) for the oil and gas sector and 32.7 ± 5.2 Tg a−1 for the coal sector.

From the total, eight countries have methane emission intensities from the oil and gas sector exceeding 5% of their gas production. Lowering these intensities to the global average level of 2.4% would reduce global oil and gas emissions by 11 Tg a−1 or 18%.

The Global Methane Pledge signed by more than 110 countries commits them to reducing collective methane emissions by 30% by 2030.

As the fossil fuel industry accounts for about one-third of total anthropogenic methane emissions, the study considers crucial targeting such sources of pollution.

Methane stands as the second most important greenhouse gas caused by human activities after CO2 and has been responsible for 0.6°C global warming since preindustrial times.

Interventions against illegal mining have a spillover effect on legal mining areas – study

Staff Writer | September 28, 2023 

A former mining camp shows where shallow mining ponds have overwhelmed a former river system in the La Pampa region of Madre de Dios, Peru. 

(Image by Jason Houston – iLCP Redsecker Response Fund/CEES/CINCIA).

Stronger regulations are needed in legal gold mining areas when interventions against illegal mining are carried out, new research has found.


Taking a Peruvian operation as an example, an international team of researchers led by Evan Dethier from Dartmouth University analyzed the spillover effect of addressing unregulated activities in one area when the same activity is allowed in a nearby location.

Back in 2019, the Peruvian government deployed “Operation Mercury” (Operation Mercurio) in the La Pampa region, an area where gold mining is banned in most places. La Pampa straddles the Interoceanic Highway. North of the highway, mining is mostly legal in mining concessions. However, south of the highway mining is strictly prohibited in the buffer zone of the Tambopata National Reserve.

Through Operation Mercury, armed military and national police were dispatched to the region and had a sustained presence until March 2020. Miners were evicted and mining equipment was destroyed. The intervention successfully stopped illegal gold mining activity in La Pampa but activity in legal areas spiked, triggering many of the same environmental concerns.

“Although illegal gold mining operations in La Pampa came to a near halt during Operation Mercury’s two intervening years (2019–2020), mining activity essentially just shifted across the road to legal areas on the other side of the Interoceanic Highway,” Dethier said.

Following Operation Mercury, mining decreased by 70% to 90%. Excavated mining pits in illegal mining areas decreased by up to 5% per year as compared to increasing by 33% to 90% per year before the intervention.

Although deforested areas experienced revegetation at a rate of 1 to 3 square kilometres per year, progress was offset by increases in deforestation in legal mining areas north of the Interoceanic Highway at a rate of 3 to 5 square kilometres per year. Most of the revegetation occurred on the edges of deforested areas, with the highest revegetation in La Pampa south. Mining pond areas outside intervention zones also saw increases ranging from 42% to 83%.
Satellites tell the truth

To assess Operation Mercury’s impact on mining activity, the research team drew on satellite data from 2016 to 2021 from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2. Data was obtained from nine mining areas: four illegal mining areas targeted by the intervention, two legal areas to the north on the other side of the Interoceanic Highway, and three distant sites that were not part of the enforcement, which served as a control for the study.

Using the radar and multispectral data, the researchers were able to quantify changes in water, water quality, mining pond areas, and deforestation in La Pampa following Operation Mercury, by comparing data from before, during, and after the intervention.

As part of the analysis, the team examined the spectral properties of the mining ponds and changes in pond colour.

Mining ponds typically take on a yellow colour, which acts as a marker for gold mining activity. The “yellowness” of the ponds is associated with increases in suspended sediment in the water.

Through gold mining processes, sediment is churned up from the land, creating turbid water with lower reflectance levels, while clearer water has higher reflectance. After Operation Mercury was implemented, reflectance increased in mining ponds in La Pampa south but then stabilized.

Following Operation Mercury, pond yellowness decreased rapidly after mining activity was suspended in all areas of La Pampa, except in the north. In La Pampa northwest, mining activity spiked and pond yellowness increased by 43%, as compared to before the intervention. In La Pampa northeast, yellowness remained stable due to continued mining activity.

“Like many other countries around the world with highly prized natural resources, with Peru’s rich deposits of gold, it has had to determine who controls this extractable resource and how this particular mining sector will be formed,” David A. Lutz, co-author of the paper that presents these findings, said.

By January 2023, when the paper was under review by the journal, illegal gold mining had resumed in protected areas, as enforcement and anticorruption activities by the military and national police had ceased, as they were redeployed to focus on the covid-19 pandemic.

“Our results demonstrate how intervention at the federal level can effectively stop illegal mining in Peru,” Dethier said. “But that is just one aspect of the problem, as a multifaceted approach is necessary to address the long-term impacts of both illegal and legal gold mining activity on humans, wildlife and the environment in the Madre de Dios watershed.”

In the researcher’s view, strong governance and conservation and remediation strategies are needed to protect this tropical biodiversity hotspot.

Dethier also mentioned that the same applies to protected areas in other counties, as another study he and Lutz co-authored showed the rise of similar mining operations in 49 countries across the global tropics.

Coal industry faces 1 million job losses from global energy transition – research

Reuters | October 10, 2023 |

Stock Image

The global coal industry may have to shed nearly 1 million jobs by 2050, even without any further pledges to phase out fossil fuels, with China and India facing the biggest losses, research showed on Tuesday.


Hundreds of labor-intensive mines are expected to close in the coming decades as they reach the end of their lifespans and countries replace coal with cleaner low-carbon energy sources.

But most of the mines likely to shut down “have no planning underway to extend the life of those operations or to manage a transition to a post-coal economy,” U.S.-based think tank Global Energy Monitor (GEM) warned.

Dorothy Mei, project manager for GEM’s Global Coal Mine Tracker, said governments needed to make plans to ensure workers do not suffer from the energy transition.

“Coal mine closures are inevitable, but economic hardship and social strife for workers are not,” she said.

GEM looked at 4,300 active and proposed coal mine projects around the world covering a total workforce of nearly 2.7 million. It found that more than 400,000 workers are employed in mines set to cease operations before 2035.

If plans were implemented to phase down coal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), only 250,000 miners – less than 10% of the current workforce – would be required worldwide, GEM estimated.

China’s coal industry, the world’s biggest, currently employs more than 1.5 million people, GEM estimated. Of the 1 million job global job losses expected by 2050, more than 240,000 will be in the province of Shanxi alone.

China’s coal sector has already undergone several waves of restructuring in recent decades, with many mining districts in the north and northeast struggling to find alternative sources of growth and employment following pit closures.

“The coal industry, on the whole, has a notoriously bad reputation for its treatment of workers,” said Ryan Driskell Tate, GEM’s program director for coal.

“What we need is proactive planning for workers and coal communities … so industry and governments will remain accountable to those workers who have borne the brunt for so long.”

Read More: BHP plans to keep remaining coal after completing mine sales

(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Sonali Paul)

 

Denison Announces $15 million Strategic Investment in F3

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Denison Mines Corp. 

Oct 06, 2023

TORONTO, Oct. 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ - Denison Mines Corp. ("Denison") (TSX: DML) (NYSE American: DNN) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a binding agreement with F3 Uranium Corp. ("F3") to make a $15 million strategic investment in F3 in the form of unsecured convertible debentures (the "Debentures"). View PDF Version.

David Cates, President and CEO of Denison commented, "F3's technical team has an incredible track record of exploration success including the discovery of the JR Zone on the Patterson Lake North ("PLN") property, which represents one of the top new uranium discoveries globally. We are pleased to be investing in F3, supporting the further assessment of the PLN property, and providing Denison shareholders with exposure to this exciting new discovery in the Athabasca Basin."

Dev Randhawa, CEO of F3 commented, "We are pleased to welcome Denison as a strategic investor in F3. Denison is a uranium industry leader, possessing a diverse array of both early and advanced-stage assets in the Athabasca Basin, where F3 is currently advancing the PLN property. We highly value Denison's perspectives on uranium exploration, and look forward to pursuing a productive relationship."

Terms of the Debentures

The Debentures will carry a 9% coupon (the "Interest"), payable quarterly over a 5-year term and will be convertible at Denison's option into common shares of F3 at a conversion price of $0.56 per share (the "Conversion Price"), representing a 30% premium to F3's five-day volume weighted average share price ("VWAP") on the TSX Venture Exchange (the "TSXV") as at October 5, 2023. F3 shall have, at its sole discretion, the right to pay up to one-third of the Interest in common shares of F3 issued at a price per common share equal to the VWAP of F3's common shares on the TSXV for the 20 trading days ending on the day prior to the date on which such payment of Interest is due.

On or after the third anniversary of the date of issuance of the Debentures, at any time F3's 20-day VWAP on the TSXV exceeds 130% of the Conversion Price, F3 will be entitled to redeem the Debentures at par plus accrued and unpaid Interest. Further, in the event of an F3 change of control transaction, F3 may redeem the Debentures at par plus accrued and unpaid interest plus an amount equal to the greater of (i) 15% of the principal amount of the Debentures being redeemed and (ii) the amount of remaining unpaid Interest that would be payable during the initial three-year term of the Debentures being redeemed.

The gross proceeds of the Debentures are to be used primarily for exploration and development of the PLN property and for F3's general working capital purposes. The closing of the Debentures is expected to occur on or around October 18, 2023 and is subject to certain conditions including, but not limited to, the receipt by F3 of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the acceptance of the TSXV.

Advisors and Legal Counsel for the Transaction

Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP is acting as legal counsel to Denison and Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP is acting as legal counsel to F3. Canaccord Genuity Corp. is acting as financial advisor to Denison and Haywood Securities Inc. is acting as financial advisor to F3.

About F3

F3 Uranium is advancing the newly discovered high-grade JR Zone on the PLN Property in the Western Athabasca Basin. This area of Saskatchewan is poised to become a major uranium producing region and is home to large deposits including Triple R, Arrow and Shea Creek. F3 Uranium currently holds 18 projects across the Athabasca Basin. 

About Denison

Denison is a uranium exploration and development company with interests focused in the Athabasca Basin region of northern Saskatchewan, Canada. The Company has an effective 95% interest in its flagship Wheeler River Uranium Project, which is the largest undeveloped uranium project in the infrastructure rich eastern portion of the Athabasca Basin region of northern Saskatchewan. In mid-2023, a Feasibility Study was completed for Wheeler River's Phoenix deposit as an In-Situ Recovery ('ISR') mining operation, and an update to the previously prepared PFS was completed for Wheeler River's Gryphon deposit as a conventional underground mining operation. Based on the respective studies, both deposits have the potential to be competitive with the lowest cost uranium mining operations in the world. Permitting efforts for the planned Phoenix ISR operation commenced in 2019 and have advanced significantly, with licensing in progress and a draft Environmental Impact Statement ('EIS') submitted for regulator and public review October 2022. 

Denison's interests in Saskatchewan also include a 22.5% ownership interest in the McClean Lake Joint Venture, which owns several uranium deposits and the McClean Lake uranium mill, contracted to process the ore from the Cigar Lake mine under a toll milling agreement, plus a 25.17% interest in the Midwest Main and Midwest A deposits and a 67.41% interest in the Tthe Heldeth Túé ('THT') and Huskie deposits on the Waterbury Lake property. The Midwest Main, Midwest A, THT and Huskie deposits are located within 20 kilometres of the McClean Lake mill. 

Through its 50% ownership of JCU (Canada) Exploration Company, Ltd ('JCU'), Denison holds additional interests in various uranium project joint ventures in Canada, including the Millennium project (JCU, 30.099%), the Kiggavik project (JCU, 33.8118%) and Christie Lake (JCU, 34.4508%).

Denison's exploration portfolio includes further interests in properties covering approximately 285,000 hectares in the Athabasca Basin region.

Follow Denison on Twitter @DenisonMinesCo 

AUSTRALIA

Aboriginal elders suspend Rio Tinto site survey over heritage concerns

Reuters | October 10, 2023 | 

Rio blew up the 46,000-year-old rock shelters in Western Australia’s Pilbara region in 2020 to extract about 8 million tonnes of high-grade iron ore. (Image courtesy of Rio Tinto.)

Aboriginal elders have walked off a heritage survey on a Rio Tinto iron ore project in Western Australia over concerns the global miner has played down the harm it caused them after blasting impacted an Indigenous rock shelter in August.


Rio Tinto conducted a visit to the Nammuldi site last weekend with representatives of the Muntulgura Guruma people after a blast on Aug. 6 led to the fall of a Pilbara scrub tree and one square metre of rock from the overhang of a rock shelter estimated to have been inhabited over 40,000-50,000 years


“Assessments found no structural damage to the rock shelter itself, and no damage to cultural materials,” Cecile Thaxter, a Rio Tinto vice president, said in a webcast on Monday. “We will learn from this incident, including modifying our practices if deemed appropriate.”

There has been much less public outrage about this incident compared to three years ago, when Rio Tinto destroyed rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in the same region which had showed evidence of human habitation stretching back 46,000 years.

But reflecting the deep concern of traditional owners over Rio’s handling of the latest incident, Muntulgura Guruma elders halted the survey on its Brockman Syncline project – needed for the world’s biggest iron ore miner to sustain its output.

“Rio were very quick to tell their investors that they had caused no impacts to our heritage but failed to accommodate our views again,” said Dawn Hughes, a director of the Wintawari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation (WGAC), which represents the Muntulgura Guruma.

“We asked Rio in 2016 to adequately protect this site but they did not,” she said in a statement to Reuters.

A Rio Tinto spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rio Tinto, which did not make a public statement for seven weeks after the blast, has said it was sorry, and that it had taken steps to inform appropriate parties and reformed its practices since Juukan. This was the first time in more than 1,800 blasts that it had detected such a disturbance, it said.

“We are extremely concerned to learn that 87 of our rock shelter sites are subject to blast management. What condition are they in? How many others have been impacted?” said Hughes, adding that traditional owners have no input or oversight of the blasts.

The dispute comes as investors and automakers are increasingly scrutinising human rights and heritage protection in their assessments of Australian mines.

Rio’s destruction of rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in 2020 prompted a global outcry, the departure of top executives and a parliamentary enquiry that recommended an overhaul of Australia’s Aboriginal heritage protection laws.

However, Western Australia is set to overturn its 2021 Aboriginal cultural heritage protection laws, introduced on July 1, due to opposition from landowners.

The latest incident comes amid fading support for a referendum on Oct. 14 that would recognise Indigenous people in Australia’s constitution and set up an Indigenous body to advise the government on issues that impact Aboriginal people.

(Reporting by Melanie Burton; Editing by Sonali Paul)

Rio Tinto says no damage to Aboriginal rock shelter structure from Aug. 6 blast

Reuters | October 9, 2023 

Yandicoogina, the Pilbara, Western Australia. Image from Rio Tinto.

Global miner Rio Tinto has found no damage to the structure of a rock shelter at an Aboriginal heritage site in Western Australia that was impacted by blasting at its Nammuldi iron ore operations, it said after a visit over the weekend.


Rio Tinto employees and representatives from the Muntulgura Guruma people visited the site last weekend, where a blast on Aug. 6 led to the fall of a Pilbara scrub tree and one square metre of rock from the overhang of a rock shelter estimated to have been inhabited over 40,000-50,000 years.

There has been much less outrage about this incident compared to three years ago, when Rio Tinto destroyed rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in the same region which had showed evidence of human habitation stretching back 46,000 years.

“Assessments found no structural damage to the rock shelter itself, and no damage to cultural materials,” Cecile Thaxter, Rio Tinto iron ore vice president said in a webcast on Monday.

“An internal review is underway, and we will learn from this incident, including modifying our practices if deemed appropriate,” she said.

Wintawari Guruma Aboriginal Corporation has been contacted for comment.

Rio Tinto, which did not make a public statement for seven weeks after the Aug. 6 incident, has said it was sorry, and that it had taken steps to inform appropriate parties and reformed its practices since Juukan. This was the first time in more than 1,800 blasts that it had detected such a disturbance, it said.

Rio’s destruction of rock shelters at Juukan Gorge in 2020 prompted a global outcry, the departure of top executives and a parliamentary enquiry that recommended an overhaul of Australia’s Aboriginal heritage protection laws.

Nevertheless, Western Australia is set to overturn its 2021 Aboriginal cultural heritage protection laws, introduced on July 1 after the destruction of the Juukan Gorge shelters. The law was repealed after just five weeks in force due to opposition from landowners.

The latest incident occurred amid fading support for a referendum on Oct. 14 that would recognize Indigenous people in Australia’s constitution and set up an Indigenous body to advise the government on issues that impact Aboriginal people.

(By Melanie Burton; Editing by Sonali Paul)

 

Core Power Begins Coolant Tests on Molten Salt Reactor Prototype

Core Power's test facility in Everett, Washington (Core Power)

PUBLISHED OCT 5, 2023 3:23 PM BY THE MARITIME EXECUTIVE

 

A Bill Gates-backed microreactor consortium has successfully begun testing of a prototype's basic operations at a shore-based experimental plant in Everett, Washington. The team described it as a major step forward in the development of molten salt reactor technology for maritime applications. 

Startups Core Power and TerraPower have teamed up with the utility Southern Company and the U.S. Department of Energy to design and test a novel fast-spectrum molten salt reactor design. The technology uses solid uranium fuel mixed into a chloride salt that melts at high temperature. It has inherent safety advantages: it contains no pressurized water, and in the unlikely event of a casualty involving a leak, the salt would cool and solidify.

In a statement Wednesday, Core Power said that chloride salt coolant has been loaded into the test platform's coolant loops and high temperature molten pumped-salt operations have begun. The operators used hot argon and chloride salts to evaluate the test unit's readiness, filling and flushing its drain tanks and checking the operation of a safety-valve system. The team plans to conduct tests of the salt coolant system for several months.

“The startup of the Integrated Effects Test is a milestone achievement in the development of the first fast-spectrum molten salt reactor, and we are immensely proud to contribute to its success," said Mikal Bøe, president and CEO of CORE POWER. "The Integrated Effects Test allows us to collect that crucial last-mile data for a design and build of the Molten Chloride Fast Reactor, and takes the team one step closer to a genuinely unique way to do new nuclear that is appropriate for the commercial marine environment."

Project partner TerraPower wants to use the technology for shore-based utility-scale power, and has purchased land to build a trial Natrium powerplant in Wyoming. The project features a 345 MW sodium-cooled fast reactor. Once started up, it will be the world's first fast-spectrum salt reactor in operation. 

Core Power believes that a properly-designed molten salt reactor could provide enough energy to power the ship for 30 years (a typical vessel lifespan) without refueling. This would remove traditional nuclear propulsion's cost challeneges with mid-life refueling cycles and would allow the vessel to operate without concern regarding bunkering capacity in overseas ports. Alternatively, the firm suggests that its reactors could be operated onshore or on power barges to produce electrical power, which could be used to manufacture carbon-neutral hydrogen or ammonia in large quantities for use as a marine fuel. 

Portland-based NuScale Power, a competing designer of next-generation small modular reactors (SMRs), is working with Canadian mobile-reactor company Prodigy Clean Energy on the design of a new "marine power station." The concept is scalable up to about 900 megawatts.

In a separate venture, Washington state-based ThorCon is working with the Indonesian government to develop a 500 MW power barge using thorium/uranium molten salt fuel technology. The ultimate objective is to use barge-based nuclear power to generate 3 GW of power for utility applications. 

Most compact reactor designs under development today are built around the availability of "high assay low enriched uranium," or HALEU, which contains 5-20 percent U-235 - the isotope needed for fusion. At present the only commercial vendor is Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom. 

In the U.S., TerraPower announced in December that it is delaying its reactor's operational startup because Rosatom products are unavailable in the United States. "Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused the only commercial source of HALEU fuel to no longer be a viable part of the supply chain for TerraPower, as well as for others in our industry," president and CEO Chris Levesque said in a statement in December. "It has become clear that domestic and allied HALEU manufacturing options will not reach commercial capacity in time to meet the proposed 2028 in-service date for the . . . demonstration plant."