HIGH-GRADE NI-CU-PT-PD-ZN-CR-AU-V-TI DISCOVERIES IN THE "RING OF FIRE"
NI 43-101 Update (September 2012): 11.1 Mt @ 1.68% Ni, 0.87% Cu, 0.89 gpt Pt and 3.09 gpt Pd and 0.18 gpt Au (Proven & Probable Reserves) / 8.9 Mt @ 1.10% Ni, 1.14% Cu, 1.16 gpt Pt and 3.49 gpt Pd and 0.30 gpt Au (Inferred Resource)
Message: The road to nowhere: Claims Ontario’s Ring of Fire is worth $60-billion are nonsense
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https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-the-road-to-nowhere-why-everything-youve-heard-about-the-ring-of/
Ontario Premier Doug Ford has talking points he’s fond of repeating – over and over again – and one of his favourites is a pledge to build a billion-dollar road to a boggy, remote region of Northern Ontario known as the Ring of Fire.
When asked about the promise by a reporter at a plowing match in September, Mr. Ford repeated almost verbatim an infamous tweet from last year’s provincial election campaign: "If I have to hop on a bulldozer myself, we’re going to start building roads to the Ring of Fire.”
“You’re going to see me on that bulldozer,” Mr. Ford declared, with a confident chuckle
The declaration by the Ontario premier is just one example of the big talk over the past decade by politicians of all stripes about the Ring of Fire.
The Ontario government has repeatedly played up the prospects for the region with breathless assertions about the supposedly stratospheric value of minerals in the ground, and an apparent bonanza of jobs and economic benefits that lie in wait for locals.
In a throne speech nine years ago, then-premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government zeroed in on the Ring of Fire as one of the keys to reviving Ontario’s sputtering economy.
In 2013, his successor, Kathleen Wynne, started claiming the mineral deposits were worth upwards of $60-billion.
That same year, Tony Clement, then federal minister responsible for northern Ontario’s economic development, likened the financial impact of the Ring of Fire to Alberta’s oil sands. In an interview with Huffington Post Canada, Mr. Clement claimed the riches could generate as much as $120-billion for the economy.
During the 2018 provincial election campaign, Mr. Ford’s Progressive Conservatives promised to "finally, open up the incredible resources of our North, starting by cutting through the special-interest and bureaucratic delays blocking us from developing the Ring of Fire.”
There’s only one problem with all these grand pronouncements about this crescent-shaped mineral discovery about 550 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay: It’s mostly aspirational hogwash.
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tario Premier Doug Ford has talking points he’s fond of repeating – over and over again – and one of his favourites is a pledge to build a billion-dollar road to a boggy, remote region of Northern Ontario known as the Ring of Fire.
When asked about the promise by a reporter at a plowing match in September, Mr. Ford repeated almost verbatim an infamous tweet from last year’s provincial election campaign: "If I have to hop on a bulldozer myself, we’re going to start building roads to the Ring of Fire.”
“You’re going to see me on that bulldozer,” Mr. Ford declared, with a confident chuckle.
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The declaration by the Ontario premier is just one example of the big talk over the past decade by politicians of all stripes about the Ring of Fire.
The Ontario government has repeatedly played up the prospects for the region with breathless assertions about the supposedly stratospheric value of minerals in the ground, and an apparent bonanza of jobs and economic benefits that lie in wait for locals.
In a throne speech nine years ago, then-premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government zeroed in on the Ring of Fire as one of the keys to reviving Ontario’s sputtering economy.
In 2013, his successor, Kathleen Wynne, started claiming the mineral deposits were worth upwards of $60-billion.
That same year, Tony Clement, then federal minister responsible for northern Ontario’s economic development, likened the financial impact of the Ring of Fire to Alberta’s oil sands. In an interview with Huffington Post Canada, Mr. Clement claimed the riches could generate as much as $120-billion for the economy.
During the 2018 provincial election campaign, Mr. Ford’s Progressive Conservatives promised to "finally, open up the incredible resources of our North, starting by cutting through the special-interest and bureaucratic delays blocking us from developing the Ring of Fire.”
There’s only one problem with all these grand pronouncements about this crescent-shaped mineral discovery about 550 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay: It’s mostly aspirational hogwash.
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The financial case for heavily indebted Ontario to invest in the Ring of Fire has always been questionable.
In 2014, the Wynne government pledged to spend $1-billion of taxpayers’ money to build an access road connecting the deposits to a provincial highway 300 kilometres to the south. But at least another $1-billion is needed for added industrial infrastructure such as bridges and electrical power. At the moment, nobody is willing to pick up that tab.
More importantly, there is no evidence that minerals in the Ring of Fire – mostly chromite, which is used to make stainless steel, but also nickel, copper, palladium and platinum – are worth anything near $60-billion. In fact, there may not be much of anything worth mining, for that matter, beyond one moderately promising nickel project.
No comprehensive study has ever been done that analyzes the costs of extracting minerals from the Ring of Fire and, ultimately, whether there is an investment case to do so. Despite years of boosterism from politicians and regional business leaders, industry experts say it’s highly unlikely it will ever live up to even a fraction of the hype.
Global demand for new sources of chromite, experts say, ranks between low and non-existent. And the company that holds more than three-quarters of the mining concessions in the Ring of Fire, tiny Noront Resources Ltd., has raised concerns about its ability to continue as a going concern.
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