May 24 (Reuters) – A $3.3 billion plan to build North America’s first major chromite mine deep in the Canadian wilderness promises to usher in an era of prosperity for the region’s aboriginals and generate millions of tax dollars over its lifetime.

Tucked deep into northern Ontario, the Ring of Fire contains rich mineral deposits that could transform the region much as the oil sands have transformed Alberta. Much like the oil sands, it has raised deep environmental and social concerns.

But the Ring of Fire stands apart from other resource mega-developments around the world in one important respect. Rather than oil, gold or iron ore, its main attraction is a relatively minor ore – chromite – which is refined into ferrochrome to make stainless steel.

The region contains North America’s only known large-scale chromite deposit. If Cleveland-based Cliffs Natural Resources Inc develops the Black Thor project, it will likely revolutionize the stainless steel industry on the continent, which now relies on imports from South Africa and Kazakhstan. It would make Canada the world’s fourth-largest chromite producer.

Black Thor is the first of many projects that could keep the Ring of Fire bustling with drills, crushers and dump trucks well into the next century – until the deposits run dry.

“We’ve got a whole bunch of projects and you could have an enormous boom that ends in an enormous bust,” said Bob Gibson, an expert on environmental policy at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario.

Rapid urbanization in China, India and other developing nations has driven up demand for base metals such as copper, nickel, iron ore and chromite, used to build everything from skyscrapers to household appliances.

TORONTO/CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – Enbridge Inc, Canada’s No. 2 pipeline company, reported a 14 percent jump in quarterly earnings on Wednesday and said it remains committed to building the controversial C$5.5 billion ($5.5 billion) Northern Gateway pipeline despite fierce opposition from communities along the route.

At its annual meeting in Toronto on Wednesday, the Calgary-based company was greeted by protesters from environmental groups and from some of the British Columbia aboriginal groups that have staunchly opposed the project over worries that oil spills could contaminate their water supplies.

If built, Northern Gateway would carry 525,000 barrels per day of Alberta oil sands crude to a deepwater port at Kitimat on the British Columbia’s Pacific Coast.

“We are the wall that will stop this pipeline dream,” said Chief Jackie Thomas of the Saik’uz First Nation in British Columbia. Thomas traveled to the meeting with other protesters on a train journey organized by the Yinka Dene Alliance, a coalition of British Columbia First Nations opposed to the project. “We’ve looked at it and made our decision,” Thomas said.

The line, which Enbridge expects to be in service by 2017, would allow Canadian oil producers to tap high-paying Asian markets. It has the backing of the Canadian government, which has said the project is in the national interest even as regulatory hearings proceed.

Despite protests by native groups, Enbridge Chief Executive Pat Daniel said he is certain he can win the backing of aboriginal communities, which are known as First Nations.

“The project is so much in Canada’s national best interest that we’re committed to working with First Nations that are presently opposed, to bring them onside,” he told reporters following the company’s meeting, where he faced questions from the line’s opponents. “Even (after) the meeting, I’ve chatted further to try to find some sort of common ground, so that we can make this a win-win for First Nations, for communities along the right of way, for all of Canada.”

TORONTO, May 9 (Reuters) – Cliffs Natural Resources Inc said on Wednesday that its board approved plans to conduct a feasibility study for its proposed $3.3 billion chromite project in the Ring of Fire region of Northern Ontario.

The Cleveland-based miner also announced plans to build a ferrochrome processing facility in Sudbury, a nickel mining hub that is home to major Xstrata Plc and Vale Sa operations.

Morningstar analyst Daniel Rohr said the project would make Cliffs one of the largest chromite producers in the world. The company estimates it will produce of some 600,000 tons of ferrochrome a year and 1 million tons of chromite concentrate for export.

South Africa, Kazakhstan and India are top global producers of the metal, a key ingredient in stainless steel.

Cliffs did not say when it expects to complete the feasibility study, but said it expects the majority of capital spending for the project to occur in 2014 and 2015. Its stock was slightly higher at $56.96 on the New York Stock Exchange.

The company will not make a final decision until it has both environmental approvals and agreements with aboriginal groups.

The mine has the potential to open up the Ring of Fire, a remote swath of mineral-rich land some 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) northwest of Toronto, to development. Numerous small mining companies are exploring metal deposits in the region.

TORONTO, May 8 (Reuters) – Research In Motion Ltd has named a technology marketing veteran to build excitement around the launch of its next-generation BlackBerry 10 smartphones later this year, sending its downtrodden share price higher.

Shares of RIM rose as much as 3 percent on Tuesday after it said Frank Boulben, who was executive vice president of strategy, marketing and sales for ill-fated telecom startup LightSquared, would assume the role of chief marketing officer. The position had been vacant for a year.

The announcement, part of an overhaul of the company’s executive ranks under new CEO Thorsten Heins, sparked a ray of optimism that RIM co u ld succeed in fashioning an effective marketing campaign for the ne w BlackBerry line.

The devices represent its best hope of reversing deep market-share losses to Apple Inc and Google Inc’s Android that have sent its share price about 75 percent lower over the past 12 months.

In a second major appointment on Tuesday, RIM named Kristian Tear, a former executive vice president at Sony Mobile Communications, as chief operating officer. Tear will oversee all operational functions for handhelds and services, including research and development, global sales, manufacturing and supply chain management.

DIFFICULT JOB

Boulben has taken on the difficult task of reinventing RIM’s brand, which built its reputation as a business tool but has since lost ground in the corporate market while failing to catch on among premium smartphone customers in the consumer market.

TORONTO, May 6 (Reuters) – Louis James, a mining investment strategist at Casey Research’s office outside Seattle, first started to hear the odd question about graphite a year ago.

Today the buzz is deafening, he says, and shares of companies involved in graphite – a once-obscure segment of the mining industry – have soared, probably to unsustainable highs.

Natural graphite is expected to become the material of choice to make advanced lithium ion batteries that power smartphones and tablet computers, as well as hybrid and electric vehicles, among other products. Most of the world’s supply of natural graphite currently comes from China.

Sound familiar?

Like rare earths two years ago, graphite is red hot, and the excitement has the shares of small Canadian miners exploring for the stuff doubling and even tripling almost overnight.

“If that isn’t the ‘Flavor of the Day,’ I don’t know what is,” James says.

Shares of Northern Graphite Corp have climbed to C$2.51 from C$0.95 on the TSX Venture Exchange since the beginning of the year. Zenyatta Ventures Ltd has climbed from 14 Canadian cents to 59 Canadian cents, while Focus Metals Inc has jumped 40 percent to 97 Canadian cents.

TORONTO (Reuters) – Endeavour Silver Corp (EDR.TO: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), fresh off announcing a $250 million deal to buy AuRico Gold Inc’s AUG.TO El Cubo silver-gold mine in Mexico, is open to more acquisitions, though its immediate focus is on unlocking El Cubo’s value, the company’s CEO said on Monday.

With the deal expected to close within 45 days, Endeavour will spend the next few months developing a plan to improve operations and increase output at El Cubo, Chief Executive Bradford Cooke told Reuters.

“It’s enough to keep us busy for a few months,” he said, adding that the Vancouver-based company, which owns two other mines in Mexico, remains “acquisitive”.

“We typically buy small mines in historic districts that are fully built, permitted and staffed, but impoverished in some way,” Cooke said. “El Cubo very much qualifies for that. It was a non-core asset, a silver-rich asset, in a larger gold company.”

Late on Sunday, Endeavour said it would pay AuRico $200 million for the El Cubo mine with an additional $50 million paid out based as targets are hit over the next three years.

Shares of Endeavour slid 3.96 percent to close at C$8.74 on Monday on the Toronto Stock Exchange, while AuRico was down 2.58 percent at C$8.69 as precious metals prices fell.

El Cubo is a producing silver-gold mine in the historic Guanajuato mining district in central Mexico and is located less than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) from Endeavour’s Guanajuato mine.

* Most mining-related engineers hired before graduation

* U.S. mining grads earn about 50 pct more than college median

* Admissions tripling at Canadian mining schools

* Deficit of mid-career mining professionals dire

* Geologists face more challenges, lower pay than engineers

By Julie Gordon

(Reuters) – When Travis Howard started his degree at the Colorado School of Mines four years ago he decided to pursue a double major in mechanical engineering and metallurgy to give himself the best chance of landing a high-paying job when he graduated.

April 15 (Reuters) – When Travis Howard started his degree at the Colorado School of Mines four years ago he decided to pursue a double major in mechanical engineering and metallurgy to give himself the best chance of landing a high-paying job when he graduated.

Turns out he had nothing to worry about. The 21-year-old, who dropped his mechanical classes to focus on mining after his second year, has accepted a job with Kinross Gold Corp at a starting salary of $64,000 a year plus bonuses.

With graduation still a month away, “pretty much everyone is sitting on an offer or two,” said Howard of his classmates, adding that some students were juggling four or five offers.

In fact, students at the Colorado School of Mines are some of the most employable in the country – 94 percent of 2011 graduates from the mining engineering, metallurgy and materials, geological engineering, and geophysics programs have jobs.

The average starting offer across the four departments was $65,868 a year, well above the $42,569 median that the National Association of Colleges and Employers expects first-time job seekers with college degrees to command in 2012.

The sky-high starting wages for fresh graduates highlights the difficulties faced by mining and exploration companies to find and retain skilled labor. In fact, mining CEOs often cite the labor crunch as their No. 1 cost pressure.

The problem is rooted in the low metals prices of the 1990s, when gold was worth $350 an ounce, and mining was the last choice for engineering and science students.

TORONTO, March 30 (Reuters) – The prospects of a mining boom in Canada’s Arctic territory of Nunavut – once as bright as the Northern Lights – are fading fast as costs in the inhospitable region spiral higher, forcing writedowns on two major gold projects there.

The sparsely populated territory has gained a reputation as one of the most promising regions in Canada for exploration, with prospectors promoting discoveries ranging from gold to uranium. But getting the ore out of the ground is a different story entirely.

While climate change has made it easier to find mineral deposits in Nunavut, the task of mining is complicated by a lack of roads and other infrastructure, the still-crippling cold and the challenge of attracting and retaining an adventurous workforce.

Agnico-Eagle Mines, which owns the only working mine in Nunavut, recently booked a partial writedown on changes to the mine plan at Meadowbank, wh ile c ash costs at the gold mine have risen to more than $1,000 per ounce.

That happened just months after a fire destroyed the mine’s kitchen, crippling staffing levels and slashing into 2011 gold output, illustrating how susceptible remote projects are to the even the smallest operational hiccups.

“It is a high-cost part of the world to operate in,” said Agnico’s chief executive, Sean Boyd. “There are risks in that part of the world, no doubt about it.”

It’s a risk Newmont Mining isn’t willing to take. The world’s No. 2 gold miner shelved its Hope Bay project in the northern territory and booked a $1.6 billion writedown after the economics of the project failed to meet its investment criteria.

TORONTO, March 27 (Reuters) – Demand from mining companies for alternative financing like stream deals or royalties is at an all-time high, but deals over $500 million will be few and far between, with most happening in the mid-tier market, the head of a leading royalty company said on Tuesday.

With share prices lagging, miners are wary of turning to equities markets to raise money and are looking at all alternatives, Franco-Nevada Corp Chief Executive David Harquail said at the Reuters Mining and Steel Summit in Toronto.

“We’ve never had as many calls coming in from people looking at some sort of financing for their projects,” he said. “It is clear that people are trying to avoid the equity market.”

With most major players able to finance development through their own cash flow, the biggest market right now is mid-tier producers looking to use a royalty or stream as part of a financing package that may also include equity and debt.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of business done in the $50 to $150 million range for some of these smaller development projects,” said Harquail. “They see royalty financing as part of a three-way.”

He pointed to the example of a $50 million deal the company struck in February whereby it will buy both an equity stake in Lake Shore Gold and a royalty interest on the sale of minerals from its Timmins West complex in northern Ontario.

With royalty deals, Franco-Nevada provides an instant cash injection in exchange for a set percentage of future profits, while with a stream deal miners get upfront cash in exchange for agreeing to sell future by-product production at a set price.