THE NORTHERN MINER | APRIL 2024 1 PDAC finance panel dissects decline of Canada’s once-mighty junior sector / 11
GLOBAL MINING NEWS
Geotech_Earlug_2016_Alt2.pdf 1 2016-06-24 4:27:20 PM
specialfocus
.com
LATIN AMERICA Miners dig Ecuador’s new president; plus the hunt for precious and critical minerals. / 31–35
expert advice VTEM™ | ZTEM™ | Gravity | Magnetics 905 841 5004 | geotech.ca
from exploration to closure
DELIVERING QUALITY EXPERTISE GLOBALLY ACROSS THE ENTIRE MINING LIFE CYCLE WWW.SGS.COM/MINING
MINERALS@SGS.COM
APRIL 2024 / VOL. 110 ISSUE 4 / GLOBAL MINING NEWS • SINCE 1915 / $5.25 / WWW.NORTHERNMINER.COM
EXCLUSIVE:
Barrick CEO Bristow drives another U-turn in a remote land PDAC BY COLIN MCCLELLAND
B
arrick Gold (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD), the second-biggest gold miner by market value, has poured its first gold in Papua New Guinea in nearly four years as CEO Mark Bristow marks another turnaround in a career coupling value investing with local partnerships. The Porgera mine in the hills of the Pacific island country was under care and maintenance from April 2020 to December 2023 while Barrick and partner Zijin Mining renegotiated terms with the government. Hiring is going better than envisioned and the mine will ramp up this year, Bristow said in an exclusive interview with The Northern Miner on March 5. “Last Friday we poured our first bar of gold under the new company – we don’t make too much fuss about it,” Bristow said with a laugh in the Barrick headquarters in Toronto before turning more serious. “We’ve got some work to do re-erecting the power towers after people blew them up.”
| Hands-on leader has penchant for tackling troubled assets “Mining rights are binary. You either have a mine or you don’t. You can’t sort of say ‘I’m in a tough jurisdiction, so I’m going to discount it by 20%.’ I mean, there’s no such thing.” MARK BRISTOW, BARRICK GOLD CEO
Tribal conflicts and protests have downed power lines several times since Porgera started production in 1990 under Canada’s Placer Dome,
DST is engaged in the development and commercialization of environment-friendly technologies for the treatment of materials in the mining industry. Through the development of patented, proprietary processes, the CLEVR and GlassLock processes, DST extracts precious and base metals from mineralized material, concentrates and tailings, while stabilizing contaminants such as arsenic, which could not otherwise be extracted or stabilized with conventional processes because of metallurgical issues or environmental considerations.
which Barrick acquired in 2006. Such unrest might continue even with the new agreement, as assaults on illegal miners and toxic waste claims have dogged the operation, like at the Acacia mine in Tanzania. But Bristow, who’s led the company since it merged in 2019 with the South African company he built, Randgold Resources, transformed Acacia after what he called “a great deal for a crippled organization.” Barrick held 72% of Acacia but no management control when authorities shut it down, forcing the company to take it private and renegotiate operations over several years. At the giant Reko Diq copper project in Pakistan, it took a decade to resolve arbitration in Barrick’s favour, and four years to sort out Papua New Guinea’s nationalization of Porgera. Reko Diq Now, Porgera has an ownership structure where locals control more than half the company and its profit, similar to how Barrick is developing Reko Diq with half split evenly between the central government and the province of Baluchistan, leaving Barrick with half. Operating in locations deemed
http://dundeetechnologies.com/home info@dundeetechnologies.com
Barrick Gold CEO Mark Bristow. COLIN MCCLELLAND.
risky is about building partnerships because without permissions, the mines shut, Bristow says. “It’s all about licence to operate,” he said. “Mining rights are binary. You either have a mine or you don’t. You can’t sort of say ‘I’m in a tough jurisdiction, so I’m going to discount it by 20%.’ I mean, there’s no such thing.” All gold miners have benefited from the metal achieving record prices — US$2,182.72 per oz. on March 11 — which Bristow ascribed to global risks such as slackening economic growth and rising geopolitical tensions. “The Chinese Communist Party came out with a 5% growth forecast, which is not good for anyone, and a messaging that that they’re pivoting away from a construction-driven economy,” he said, then turned to wars. “There’s this de-globalization, so we see it because of costs, particularly in the logistics supply chain.” Barrick’s gold and copper production fell slightly in 2023. The Barrick Gold P10 >
ESG metals premiums? / 10
PM44082538