Member Info for mrtibbles

Hi Cowichan
I must say that I was of the impression that there is much government corruption in the region with lots of illegal artisanal mining and mafia type exploitation of the local workforce and that little regard is given to safeguarding the environment in which the mining takes place?
However this interview seems to try to give quite a different impression of the running mining operations in the DRC?
But then can we Marna Cloete to be really honest about that considering they have very high exposure to the country and talking it down would be bad for their share rating and go down like a tonne of bricks with the authorities!
The DRC is under the control of corrupt politicians,thieves and chancers!
Just look at the recent experience of AVZ Minerals which was advancing the largest and best lithium deposit in the world.
Their market cap got to well above A$3 billion!
Too high not to attract the attention of the government to steal!!!
As previously said these mining conferences are a great opportunity for those corrupt and parasitic CEO's and senior management of companies with little integrity to reel in the unsuspecting and trusting retails investors!
No I think we are much better off with Martin Horgan than the lady featured in the interview!

13th Oct 2022 14:00

(Alliance News) - Centamin PLC on Thursday said developments at its Sukari project have created further opportunities for cost reduction, as the mine's solar plant delivers savings ahead of expectations.
Centamin is a London-based gold producer with interests in Egypt, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. The Sukari gold mine is its flagship project, and Egypt's first large-scale modern mine, with a workforce of around 3,795 people.
In its update on Thursday, Centamin said full commissioning of the solar plant could lead to annual cost savings of USD20.0 million, based on current diesel prices.
The company found that the plant reduced its exposure to volatile fuel pricing, saving up to 70,000 litres of diesel per day, and an average of 22.0 million litres per year.
Looking ahead, Centamin expects the plant to reduce its scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions by 60,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per annum.
The company also said it had received initial proposals from the Egyptian government and independent power providers to supply 30 to 50 megawatt alternating current units of grid power to Sukari.
Grid power supply at the higher end of the spectrum would make it possible to stop using diesel power completely at the mine, which is located near the Red Sea coast below Luxor with the Egyptian grid in close proximity.
The Egyptian power grid is generated from natural gas and a mix of renewables, and could if used further reduced Sukari's greenhouse gas emissions. Egyptian industrial grid tariffs also are significantly cheaper than the cost of power generation using diesel fuel.
Centamin expects full commissioning of the Sukari solar panel by the fourth quarter of 2022.

"The solar plant and potential to integrate grid power will contribute materially to our environmental stewardship philosophy and our strategic objective of maximising returns for all stakeholders," said chief executive officer Martin Horgan.

Centamin shares were trading 0.8% higher at 84.26 pence each in London on Thursday afternoon.

By Holly Beveridge; hollybeveridge@alliancenews.com

TF Metals Report, Craig Hemke, to disclose why central banks are buying more gold than they have in 50 years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocmYHl7iGvI&t=38s

The Financial Conduct Authority has opened an enforcement investigation into the London Stock Exchange’s (LME) suspension of nickel trading in March 2022, following controversy over its handling of the events.
Nearly a year later, the UK's financial watchdog said today (3 March), that it will investigate some of the LME's "conduct and systems and controls in place" in the period between 1 January 2022 and the time of suspension on 8 March 2022.
https://www.investmentweek.co.uk/news/4076925/fca-enforcement-investigation-lme-nickel-trading-suspension

Lets hope our day comes too!
The FTSE 100-listed engineering group reported a 21 per cent increase in revenues at constant currency levels to nearly £2.5billion as total operating profit jumped 25 per cent to £395million.
Weir company has increased its final dividend by 57 per cent to 19.3p, making it 32.8p for the year!
https://investing.thisismoney.co.uk/quote/WEIR

Hi Sotolo,
There are a number of mines globally which have a series of open pits and once the first pit is mined out and then the waste from the second pit fills the first and so on.
So in theory this works as long as the waste being generated is close to the mined out open pit (even better if its downhill as well!).

Hi Paul,
Put your question to someone who knows the industry well, see answer below-

"This is always done when circumstances allow. It is however not practical if you have one pit that is mined such that it follows the deposit to the bottom in a steep fashion.
Where it can be done is when there are a number of pits that are mined sequentially.
A good example is what Orezone plans to do.
Alternatively, if you have a single pit that stretches over a long distance and there are areas that no longer need deepening, those can be filled as long as there is no risk of that material spilling over in the pit where you are working"

Hi Paul,
Your question and idea in principle seems to make very good sense because if feasible it would reduce haulage distance and times,also reducing plant wear and tear and diesel consumption even possibly help to make the surrounding area more stable?
I will see if I can find out more!

In the meantime you may care to see this link which although not connected with Centamin shows the importance of properly regulated mining tand industry the world over!
https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/stop_war_on_water_uk_12/?crtqjhb

Tibbs

Hi Somnamma,
Possibly they have regarded the Centamin dividend reduction as an excuse or opportunity to reduce theirs without getting too much flack from shareholders?
Really can't see Cey cutting the divi any more, unless something dire happened!

It’s not clear how any deal which results in new funding for projects in Northern Ireland will affect the rest of the UK.

The Barnett formula aims to make changes to funding for services in England have the same pound-per-person effect on the money which goes to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for those services.
t’s not set out in law, and in practice the Treasury decides how to apply it. It can also be bypassed if the Treasury decides certain spending is outside the formula. If the devolved governments disagree they can argue the case.
The formula itself is basically: any change to UK government department budget multiplied by the percentage of devolved services in that area multiplied by the percentage population in that country.
So, if the Barnett formula is used the result would depend on which departments are affected. It only applies changes in the fixed budget of a department to the ‘block grant’ paid to the devolved governments. It doesn’t decide all funding.
How any additional funding for Northern Ireland might affect the rest of the UK will be decided by political negotiation.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/confidence-and-supply-northern-irelands-1-billion/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-44397110
https://www.ft.com/content/7bf09766-5a66-11e7-9bc8-8055f264aa8b
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-politics-may-idUSKBN19H0HB
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/621794/Confidence_and_Supply_Agreement_between_the_Conservative_Party_and_the_DUP.pdf

Do not put too much faith into All-In-Sustaining-Cost figures as reported by mining companies. All too often the figures are not ‘all-in’ and are not ‘sustaining’ over more than a single reporting period.

We recommend you see that analysis of cash flow statements in financial statements give a vastly superior picture of the true cost of sustained mining than AISC.

The formulas is relatively simple:

(Cash from Ops after Changes in Working Capital – Cash Used for Investing Activities) / Au ounces Sold

Yes, there are flaws as the cash flow statements can give an incomplete picture as they hide tax-like outflows under “financial activities”, do not show the consideration paid in company shares and include temporary items such as restricted cash, but they give you a much better understanding of the Company.

The fact that AISC figures produced by mining companies is highly selective explains why even “low AISC” companies somehow never make enough net free cash to pay dividends. Not only that but many of these ‘highly profitable’ companies find themselves having to come back to the equity markets over and over again, to refinance.

We recommend that you do yourself a favour and in future do the analysis. Again, it is the cash from operations after changes in Working Capital, minus the cash used for investing activities, and all of that divided by the ounces of gold sold.

Make sure to check that there are no exceptional items included and see whether the company can genuinely claim a proportion of the capital expenditure was spent on a project that will truly increase production in the medium to long term. The amount of cash spent on this particular project can be found in the financial statements under a table in the notes called Property, Plant and Equipment and deducted from Cash Used for Investing Activities in the formula.

Why AISC is Meaningless and Abused by the Mining Industry!
To demonstrate that AISC is meaningless as a gauge on how much a company really generates in cash, the performance of five diverse precious metal companies have been reviewed, some with important co-product revenue (e.g. SSR Mining), some purely open pit, others with both open pit and underground operations.
50% profit share
In the case of Centamin (CEE) an adjustment was necessary. The reason is that the company is exempt from income taxes in return as part of its production sharing agreement with the Egyptian government.
The government shares 50% of the cash flow after the company had recouped its investments. It is therefore a kind of “income tax” and should therefore be accounted to make comparison with their peers that are subject to income tax, possible.
The green highlighted cell shows the total cash disbursed to the government.
https://www.cruxinvestor.com/articles/analysts-notes-week-5

Gold miner says area of open pit Sukari mine not safe to operate in and drops forecast production for 2020 by at least 13 per cent
Centamin cuts 2020 guidance on safety grounds
https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/shares/2020/10/02/centamin-cuts-2020-guidance-on-safety-grounds/
In summer 2020 operations at Centamin’s Sukari mine were affected by subsidence and this put the shares under significant pressure.
https://www.sharesmagazine.co.uk/news/shares/shares-in-centamin-are-finally-move-higher-after-two-years-of-being-in-the-doldrums

Hi Confluence,
Thank you for your considered reply, I certainly agree about the number of politicians putting their own self interests before those of the people the are supposes to represent!
in my view the DUP acted despicably by accepting a bribe to support the Tory government , rather like Nick Clegg did when he went into partnership with Cameron and Co which certainly wasn't in the best interests of the ordinary people!
My second cousin was a tank (Saracen)commander) and did several tours of northern island and he despaired at the way the country tore itself apart and due to this experience he was active in the campaign for a peace accord.
Tibbs

Part 2
Calculating the 13% figure
The first method takes UK Acts and Statutory Instruments which put in place, or refer to, things the UK has to do under EU law.
This varies from ones which make only a passing reference to EU obligations to ones where the main purpose is to implement EU obligations.
The House of Commons Library found that between 1993 and 2014, 13% of these two types of law were EU-related, on average.
So 13% is likely to be too low, in reality, but 62% is much too high!
The first method doesn’t consider all legal influence that the EU has on the UK. Some EU initiatives don’t need to be made into laws at a national level as they are implemented through 'EU regulations'.
EU regulations automatically have binding legal force in every EU member country. The important ones are usually agreed by government representatives on the EU’s Council, as well as by the directly elected European Parliament.
Some of these are important: big businesses considering a merger will need to know a lot about the EU Merger Regulation, for example.
But some of these EU regulations are about things like tobacco growing in the Canary Islands or whether Danish ships can catch mackerel, which won’t directly impact on the UK!
Many others are relevant but highly technical: assigning a customs code to light-up plastic skulls, or the regular calculation of the ‘standard import value’ for fruits and vegetables. They’re made by the European Commission on its own, without going through the main lawmaking process.
These kinds of decisions are more like what a civil servant or even a local council might decide in the UK, which reflects the fact that the Commission isn’t like any one UK government body. Its output consists both of important laws and proposals for laws, as well as mundane administrative decisions.
So while leaving EU regulations out of the count of ‘UK laws’ is likely to underestimate EU influence, including them is likely to overestimate it!
Counting them all would give a figure of around 62% over the past 20 years. Business for Britain says this figure is 65%, although that analysis includes corrections to laws!
Legal experts have described this method as “comparing apples with pears”. As many of these are administrative decisions passed in the forms of laws, you could compare them to all the decisions made in government departments rather than Acts and Statutory Instruments passed by parliament.
All this goes to show the difficulties of these counting exercises in the first place!

Petroc, UK law: What proportion is influenced by the EU?
n brief: Simply counting laws does not consider that some laws have more impact than others. Quoted figures have varied wildly from under 10% to 70%. It's possible to justify many of these, depending on which definition of 'UK law' you look at, but those at the higher end count EU rules that aren’t really laws in any meaningful sense.
Counting the uncountable
It makes little sense to treat major Acts of Parliament such as the 457-page Health and Social Care Act 2012 which reformed the whole NHS the same as, say, three pages of technical regulations on VAT fraud.
The House of Commons Library has warned that "there is no totally accurate, rational or useful way of calculating the percentage of national laws based on or influenced by the EU."
So no set of figures can give us a good measure of the influence of the EU on law in the UK.
It’s more meaningful to look at specific sectors and areas of law.
In agriculture, fisheries, external trade, and the environment, it’s fair to say that EU legislation and policy is indeed the main driver of UK law and policy, although the UK retains some freedom of action in these areas.
In other important areas—for example, welfare and social security, education, criminal law, family law and the NHS—the direct influence of the EU is far more limited.
Estimates range from 13% to 65%, although all have problems
In 2010, the House of Commons library published a comprehensive analysis of the variety of ways this percentage can be calculated. There are difficulties with all measurements, but it concluded "it is possible to justify any measure between 15% and 50% or thereabouts".
Since then, part of its analysis has been updated, and other estimates have been produced, for example by the campaign group Business for Britain.
The figures depend on which UK law is included in the calculation, and the extent of 'EU influence' are the key factors.
There’s no single definition of ‘UK law’. Rules made by judges have the force of law, for example, but counting them up is probably impossible.
Those aside, the main types of laws in the UK are Acts put in place by the UK Parliament, rules and regulations drawn up by ministers known as Statutory Instruments, and regulations produced by the EU which apply automatically.
An estimated 13% of Acts and Statutory Instruments have an EU influence, whereas that rises to 62% when EU regulations are included in addition to Acts and Statutory Instruments.
So simply counting up the variety of 'EU influenced' UK laws, which vary from Acts to protect against terrorism through to restrictions on Moldovan milk, does not provide a conclusive picture.
The other thing to bear in mind is that in areas for which the EU is responsible, EU laws override any conflicting laws of member countries. So there’s an overall influence in these areas that is harder to count.

Cont

Hi Confluence, thank you for and interesting post, regarding your fair comment on the relevance of this conversation, It's not unusual on this forum during quiet times or during "Closed period" or even very difficult times, and there have been plenty of those, that over weekends one discussion or comment will lead into something else, it keeps the forum alive or ticking over and healthy, no doubt though that as soon as one of the members has some Centamin related news it will be posted!

There is a great deal of misunderstanding about what has taken place in Ireland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI3nGVHxFI8
Ireland’s history is brought vividly to life as REVOLUTION IN COLOUR explores the struggle for Irish independence during the early decades of the 20th Century through restored and colourised newsreel footage, and photographs from the period.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReGXyZRiDS4
https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/nationalism-war-independence.htm
https://www.neversuchinnocence.com/impact-of-conflict-irish-war-of-independence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executions_during_the_Irish_Civil_War

The problem-
Let’s say you were trying to sell Welsh lamb to Ireland and, after the end of the transition period, the EU charged a tariff on British lamb imports. Under the rules detailed above, you could (instead of shipping directly to Dublin, incurring a tariff) ship your lamb from Wales to Belfast (with no tariff) and then over land to Dublin (with no tariff). In effect you’d have got your lamb into Dublin tariff-free, making a mockery of EU tariff rules.
So the UK government and the EU have come up with a fix—the border in the Irish sea.
EU tariffs will be applied to selected goods crossing from the rest of the UK into Northern Ireland. Any good which is deemed as “at risk” of moving into the EU after crossing into Northern Ireland will be subject to the EU tariff—a definition of an “at risk” good is yet to be decided.
Experts have said it’s likely that most UK exports to Northern Ireland won’t face a tariff.
But this means there will be customs checks and controls on goods crossing from the rest of the UK into Northern Ireland, in order to ensure the correct tariffs are applied. This also applies to goods entering Northern Ireland from other non-EU countries.
If the “at risk” good crossing into Northern Ireland doesn’t end up in the EU, traders will have paid the EU tariff rate, when they should have paid the UK tariff instead. In those cases, traders will be entitled to a refund from the UK government, provided the UK tariff is lower.
This new protocol replaces the previous Irish backstop in the former withdrawal agreement negotiated by Theresa May. Under the terms of the backstop, if the UK and EU had failed to agree a free trade agreement by the end of the transition period, then the whole of the UK would have entered a “single customs territory” with the EU.
That would have meant no tariffs on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. However Northern Ireland alone would have remained aligned to some extra EU rules (to ensure the Irish border remained open), meaning there would have been some quality checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

(So quite a mess with only one obvious solution, rejoin the EU !)

The Boris supposed "Oven Ready Brexit deal"never existed and it is now very apparent, as is the complete failure of the "Brexit deal to deliver any of the supposed advantages to the UK as a whole, so Sunak is stuck between a rack and a hard place!
It has been argued that the new withdrawal agreement will create a “border down the Irish Sea” with checks taking place on goods crossing into Northern Ireland from Great Britain.
It’s correct that goods checks will have to take place. This will kick in at the end of the transition period, unless or until the UK and EU sign a trade agreement superseding it. The transition period would last until December 2020 at the earliest, or at the latest December 2022.

FACT CHECK
Viral 'average energy cost' Europe price list is not what it seems
We’ve seen a number of tweets and Facebook posts giving figures for the “average energy costs” in different countries across Europe, which suggest the UK’s energy costs are the highest by far at £2,585 (around €2,960). This claim was also retweeted by Labour MP Karl Turner.
But these prices aren’t “average energy costs” for consumers in those countries. They are wholesale electricity costs for suppliers which were correct for a specific hour on one day back in December.
A map of Europe with the same figures was tweeted on 15 December 2022, with the caption “Comparative energy prices. What's going on?”
The map pictured was clearly taken from the day-ahead market data published on the website of Epox Spot (also known as the European Power Exchange), which is used by around 300 companies across Europe to buy and sell electricity at short notice to meet demand.
A spokesperson for Epox Spot told us that the data corresponded to day-ahead prices per megawatt hour (MWh) of electricity, for delivery on 12 December 2022, specifically for hour 19 (between 6pm and 7pm), and gave us the data that appears to back this up.
These prices are not what consumers pay for energy, or any type of average. They are how much electricity cost companies in those countries for delivery in the 19th hour on 12 December. These hourly prices vary throughout the day, and the £2,585 used for Great Britain was the peak. On average, electricity on that day cost £675 per MWh.
The Household Energy Price Index, which measures consumer energy prices in the capital cities of 33 European countries showed that in January 2023, out of the countries in the post, electricity cost the most in Germany at 54c per kilowatt hour, followed by Denmark, where it was 53c. In the UK it was 47c (42p) while the European average was 29c.
Why is there such a vast difference in average energy costs?

€650 - France
€650 - Belgium
€620 - Spain
€558 - Germany
€558 - Denmark
€546 - Holland
€545 - Austria
€543 - Norway
€476 - Finland
€174 - Poland
€2,960 - UK
— Dave Sumner Smith (@davesumnersmith) February 13, 2023
As others have noted, the list has appeared dozens of times on Twitter since December 2022, and has been retweeted by Labour MP Karl Turner.
But these prices aren’t “average energy costs” for consumers in those countries. They are wholesale electricity costs for suppliers which were correct for a specific hour on one day back in December.
https://fullfact.org/latest/